She wanted to say it aloud. It was on her tongue. It burned the whole length of her throat, begging to be let out. What was the harm in another secret between them? What could they not withstand if they had already fought a monster and the stars themselves?
Then Alisa, from the other end of the alley, called, “We’ve got people incoming. Juliette, Perhaps you should go.”
Juliette heard the voices too. They were still some distance away, but keenly audible, overlapping one another in Russian. Laughing, they spoke of dead Scarlets, of her people falling to the ground with their lifeless eyes staring up at the sky.
It was that which had Juliette remembering herself. It was that which jolted the truth back to the forefront of her mind, like a slap to her face.
This wasn’t about fighting for love. This was about staying alive.
“You ask why?” Juliette said quietly. She swallowed hard—leaving nothing but lies studded in her mouth like extra teeth. “It stopped you from trying to kill me, did it not? I keep telling you, Roma—I need your cooperation.”
In an instant, the tentative readiness for peace fled from Roma’s expression. He was a fool if he thought the truth would make it easier. It would only tear them apart to think that this could end any other way: both of them consumed by the blood feud.
“Thursday,” Juliette said. The White Flower voices were getting closer. “Chenghuangmiao at the ninth hour. Don’t be late.”
Juliette walked away before the other White Flowers could happen upon the alley, before Roma saw the tears rise to her eyes, utterly, utterly frustrated that this was what they had been reduced to.
Roma breathed out, kicking his bloody jacket. It was unsalvageable, but he hardly cared.
“Roma!” one of the White Flowers exclaimed, seeing him in the alley. They looked between him and Alisa, noting the blood on Roma’s hands and his haggard appearance. There was definitely a bruise or two on his face after his fight with Juliette. “What are you doing here?”
“Leave us,” he snapped.
The White Flowers hurried away without another word. Slowly Alisa walked back to him, cocking her head to the side. Instead of hurrying to ask what had just happened, she started packing up the first-aid box.
“Dammit!” Roma hissed aloud. He had had her. Right here. He could kill however many bodies he wanted on the streets, land perfect shots upon the Scarlets that ran at him with knives. But none of that mattered if he couldn’t strike a killing blow on the heart of the Scarlet Gang. On Juliette. Revenge on disposable parts was not revenge at all, but cowardice. And maybe he was a coward. He was a coward who couldn’t stop loving a wicked thing.
“What was that all about?” Alisa asked plainly.
Roma scrubbed at his hair. A dark lock fell into his eyes, covering his whole world in black. “I should be asking you if you’re all right first.” He sighed. “Are you hurt?”
Alisa shook her head. “Why would I be?” She sat down, leaning up against the wall. “Juliette jumped in front of that knife.”
She had. And Roma could not comprehend a single reason why . . . or at least one that made sense, no matter what Juliette had said.
“So?” Alisa prompted. “Why were you trying to kill Juliette?”
Roma decided to sit too. He shuffled beside his sister like they were awaiting a bedtime story, not hiding out in an alley stained with blood.
“Well, two generations ago, her grandfather killed ours. . . .”
Alisa wasn’t buying it. “Leave the blood feud out of this. You were collaborating with her, and then suddenly you’re not. I’ve heard the rumors—the ones that seem logical and the ones that are so preposterous to be laughable. What is the truth?”
Roma pushed his hair out of his eyes. His pulse was still raging, his palms slightly damp. “It is . . . it’s complicated.”
“Nothing in this world is complicated, only misunderstood.”
Roma peered at Alisa, his nose scrunching. Alisa scrunched the exact same button nose back, and the siblings suddenly seemed like mirror images of the other.
“You are entirely too wise for your young age.”
“You are nineteen. It is not far by much.” Alisa tapped her knee. “Does Papa know?”
“It was his idea,” Roma muttered. Seeing that he could not keep his sister in the dark anymore, he started at the beginning, from the moment Lord Montagov called him into his office to discuss the plan and then the snide, knowing glance Roma had caught from Dimitri in the living room.
“The last of it was in Zhouzhuang,” he finished. “Then the Scarlets blew up our safe house, and I figured the alliance was called off.”
Alisa was staring at the wall of the alley, clearly mulling through the events. The gears in her head were turning, her frown deepening. She wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything. It was a waste of energy to try.
“I almost wanted to stay.”
Alisa’s frown disappeared quickly, surprised by his sudden pivot. “In Zhouzhuang?” She snorted. “It’s so quiet.”
“We need a little quiet. This city is always so loud.” Roma tipped his head up, staring at the flurrying clouds. The desire to run had been pulling at the edge of his mind for years: a constant whisper surrounding the idea of escape. He remembered one late night leaning on his windowsill, his cheek still smarting from Lord Montagov’s discipline, wishing he could pick himself up and fade into a life somewhere outside these city boundaries. He wanted air that didn’t smell like factory smoke. He wanted to sit under the cover of a large tree, lean upon the trunk and see nothing but green for miles. Mostly, that night in 1923, he wanted Juliette back, and he wanted to take her and run, far from the clutches of their families.
Only he also knew exactly what that meant: leaving the White Flowers without an heir, carving open a space that any hateful soul could fill.
“It is loud because you listen,” Alisa said.
“It is loud because everybody’s always talking at me.” Roma sighed, pressing the heel of his bloody palm into his eyes. Constant demands from the White Flowers. Constant demands from his father. Constant demands from the city itself. “I entertain that it must be nicer to live simply instead. To catch fish and sell it on the fresh market every day for livable wages instead of trading mounds of opium for amounts of cash we’ll never need.”
Alisa thought on it. She pulled her legs up to her chest and leaned her arms on her knees. “I think,” she said, “that is something you say because we have been rich all our lives.”
Roma smiled tightly. Indeed. They had never been born for a simple life, and so they did not deserve it either. It had taken generations to climb to where they were now, and who was Roma to throw it away?
All the same, that part of him never seemed to go away. The part that wanted to run, the part that wanted a different life. If only he could erase every memory of his earlier years, maybe he could erase these thoughts too, but he would always remember lying in a park with Juliette—fifteen and carefree, his head in her lap and her lips pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, the grass under his fingers and the birds fluttering in song on the branches above him. He would always remember that little nook where nothing could disturb them, a world of their own, and thinking this—this is the only complete happiness I have ever felt.