“If all is settled, I am going back to sleep,” Lourens announced.
Roma looked up suddenly, frowning from across the apartment. He was on the sofa with Alisa, a needle and thread in his hand as he fixed a rip in Alisa’s sleeve, leaning the both of them so closely into the candlelight that there was a risk Alisa’s blond hair would catch aflame.
“Lourens,” Roma said, almost chidingly as he finished his stitching. “How can you sleep? There’s about to be mass slaughter outside.”
“I highly suggest you children do the same,” Lourens chided back. He plucked an orange from his fruit bowl and set it down in front of Juliette. “Take it from someone who ran once too: when you leave all that you know, you want to be well rested.”
Juliette picked up the orange. “Thank you?”
Lourens was already shuffling away, moving from the kitchen into the living room. “Miss Montagova, you will take the spare room, yes? Miss Cai, you should find that the sofa will suffice, and, Roma, I will find a floor sheet for you.”
Juliette watched Roma frown, watched him look at the sofa and mentally measure its width, finding it would probably fit two.
“You don’t have to—”
“Thank you!” Juliette repeated, cutting in. Lourens disappeared down the hallway.
“Juliette, what—”
“He’s old, Roma.” She pushed herself up from the kitchen table and took the orange with her, peeling the skin into neat strips. “Are you trying to horrify him with your social impropriety?”
“Social impropriety while there is mass slaughter outside,” Roma grumbled.
Juliette pulled an orange segment free and plopped it in her mouth. She started to walk around the living room, inspecting the various vases that Lourens owned. As she poked her nose here and there, she heard Alisa begin to mutter to Roma, only Alisa’s version of muttering was loud enough that each word was quite clearly enunciated.
“Roma.”
“What is it?” He prodded her sleeve. “Another rip?”
“No,” Alisa whispered, frowning and drawing her arm away. “So did you . . . ? Did you marry Juliette Cai?”
Juliette choked, the orange immediately lodging in her throat.
“I—” Even by the dim light, Roma looked faintly red. “We are well acquainted.”
Half spluttering, half holding back the most inappropriately timed laugh, Juliette managed to cough the orange out of her windpipe. Roma, meanwhile, cleared his throat, getting to his feet and nudging his sister up too.
“Come on, Alisa. Go get some rest.”
He quickly pushed Alisa down the hallway, exchanging some words with Lourens before Lourens retired into his room. Juliette thought she heard vaccine and are you certain? There was some more murmuring from the guest room before Roma emerged again, fumbling around in the dark with something that looked like a mat.
“Lourens insisted I take this,” Roma explained, setting it onto the floor.
By now Juliette had finished her orange and calmed down, seated upon the sofa. The humor was an instinctive reaction; the city was collapsing outside, and blood was going to run so thickly that the roads would turn to an ocean of red. Laughing was the only way she wouldn’t cry.
“And will you?” Juliette asked.
Roma’s head jerked up. His eyes narrowed, trying to gauge if Juliette was asking a genuine question or teasing.
She smiled. Roma exhaled in relief, kicking aside the mat.
“No one holds a straight face like you do,” he said, joining her on the sofa. “I’m still mad at you, dorogaya.”
Juliette reeled back, placing a hand to her heart. “Mad at me? I thought we already got past that.”
“I already forgave you for everything else,” Roma said. “I’m mad at you for having me think you were dead. Do you know how horrible that was?”
Juliette shifted her knee. It pressed up against Roma’s leg. He didn’t move away. She would take that as a forgiving sign. “Benedikt lived with the same feeling for months.”
“Which is why I didn’t think you would pull it twice,” Roma said. “Which is why I thought it to be true.”
Juliette reached out with her hand. Gently, she pressed her palm to his cheek, fingers skimming softly on skin, and Roma reached up to clasp his hand on hers.
“I should be mad at you too,” she said quietly. “How dare you take a gun to your head as if your life is something that can be thrown away.”
Roma leaned into her touch with a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed. He looked young. Vulnerable. This was the boy she had fallen in love with, underneath all the harsher layers he needed to wear to survive. But in her mind’s eye, she was remembering the sight before her when she had pushed open the doors to the lab. Roma, his pistol pressed to his temple. Roma, looking ready to shoot.
“I panicked,” he said. “I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. I only needed Benedikt to believe I would so he could let me go.”
But the threat had to have come from somewhere. The very fact that Benedikt had believed it meant Roma was capable of doing it. Of threatening his own life just to get to her. Juliette couldn’t shake off her own ill ease. She didn’t want to be a girl who incited harm. She didn’t want it, but perhaps by mere virtue of being Juliette Cai, she was the embodiment of this city’s violence.
“You can’t ever do that.” Juliette tightened her fingers. “You can’t choose me above everything else. I will not accept it.”
A beat passed. The candle was dancing vigorously atop the table, casting them both in moving shadows.
“I won’t,” Roma whispered. When he opened his eyes again, slowly to adjust to the dim light, he added, “Don’t leave me, Juliette.”
It sounded like a plea. A plea to the heavens, to the stars, to the forces that drew their fates.
“I would never,” Juliette replied solemnly. Too many times had she done it already. “I will never leave you.”
Roma loosed a soft breath. “I know.” He pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “I think I was more afraid that they took you from me.”
Oh. His admission stirred a tightness in her throat. This was their lives. Constantly operating in fear, even when they were supposed to have power. Wasn’t power supposed to provide control? Wasn’t power supposed to solve everything?
Juliette pulled her hand away, only so she could extend her pinkie finger instead. “With my whole heart,” she promised, “if I have any say in the matter, you will never lose me.”
The candlelight flickered. Roma’s eyes, too, flickered up and down, from her face to her hand.
“Is this . . . ,” he said, “a strange American custom?”
Juliette huffed a short laugh, grabbing Roma’s hand and hooking her pinkie with his. “Yes,” she answered. “It means I cannot break my promise or you may chop my finger off.”
“That’s the Japanese interpretation. Yubikiri.”
Her eyes snapped up. “So you do know what it means!”
Roma didn’t give her the satisfaction of being caught out. His expression forcibly serious, he only lifted her hand and smoothed out her fist, so that all her fingers were separated, her palm held facing him.