“What if I don’t want this one?” he asked, tapping her pinkie. He moved his touch to the one beside—her ring finger—and grazed the length of it. “What if I want this one?”
Juliette’s heart started to thud in her chest. “So morbid,” she remarked.
“Hmmm.” Roma continued to draw a circle about her finger, leaving no question for what he was implying. “I’m not sure if morbidity was what I was going for.”
“Then what?” Juliette wanted to hear it. “What were you going for?”
Roma breathed a laugh. “I’m asking you to marry me.”
All the blood in Juliette’s body rushed to her head. She could feel her cheeks blazing red, not out of embarrassment, but rather because there was such an uproar swirling inside her that the hot surge of emotion had nowhere else to go.
“My pinkie promise isn’t good enough for you?” Juliette teased. “Did Alisa put you up to this?”
This time it was Roma’s turn to press both his palms on Juliette’s cheeks. She had thought it would be too dark to notice her blush, yet Roma noticed, a smile twitching on his lips.
“She doesn’t have the power to put me up to this,” he said. “Marry me, Juliette. Marry me so we can erase the blood feud between us and start utterly anew.”
Juliette inched forward. Roma’s hands dropped to her neck, smoothing back the loose hair curling around her shoulders. He seemed to think that she was leaning in for a kiss, but she was in fact reaching behind him, and with a start, Roma blinked, sighting one of Lourens’s many copies of the Bible in her hands.
“I wasn’t aware that you were religious.”
“I am not,” Juliette replied. “I thought you needed a Bible to get married in this city.”
Roma blinked. “So you’re saying yes?”
“Shǎ guā.” She raised the Bible, pretending to beat him with it. “Do you think I’m holding it for a weapon? Of course I’m saying yes.”
Quick as a flash, Roma had his arms around her, pushing her upon the sofa. The Bible fell to the floor with a thump. A burst of laughter rose to Juliette’s lips, muffled only by Roma’s kiss. For a moment that was all that mattered—Roma, Roma, Roma.
Then there was the faintest sound of gunfire, and both of them gasped, breaking apart to listen. The windows were blacked out. They were safe. Only that didn’t change the reality, didn’t mean the world outside was not brightening with light and running with red.
It had started. Although faint, a bugle call could be heard reverberating through the whole city, trickling even into this apartment. The purging had started.
Juliette sat up, reaching for the fallen Bible. She doubted Lourens would be happy if they scuffed it up.
“I should have tried sending more help,” she whispered. “I should have sent more warning.”
Roma shook his head. “It’s your own people. What were you to do?”
Indeed, that was always the problem. Scarlet or White Flower. Communist or Nationalist. In the end, the only ones who seemed to benefit from so much infighting were the foreigners sitting pretty behind their Concession borders.
“I despise it,” she whispered. “If my people can fire on the masses merely because they have Communist sympathies, I despise them.”
Roma did not say anything. He only brushed her hair behind her ear, letting her tremble in her anger.
“I will be free of my name.” Juliette looked up. “I will take yours.”
There was a moment of stillness, a moment where Roma gazed upon her like he was trying to commit her features to memory. Then:
“Juliette,” he breathed. “It is not as though my name is any better. It is not as though there is less blood on mine. You can call a rose something else, but it remains yet a rose.”
Juliette flinched, hearing a shout outside. “So we are never to change?” she asked. “We are forever blood-soaked roses?”
Roma took her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “A rose is a rose, even by another name,” he whispered. “But we choose whether we will offer beauty to the world, or if we will use our thorns to sting.”
They could choose. Love or blood. Hope or hate.
“I love you,” Juliette whispered fiercely. “I need you to know. I love you so much it feels like it could consume me.”
Before Roma could even respond, Juliette lunged for a ball of yarn on the table. Roma watched her in confusion, his brow furrowed as she measured a length of string and pulled a knife from her pocket to slice.
He grew less confused when Juliette took the string and started to wind it around his finger—his right hand, as was customary for Russians. She had remembered. Remembered from their whispered conversations five years ago about a future where they could run away and be together.
“I take you, Roma Montagov,” she said, her voice soft, “to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, until death do us part.” She tied a small, secure knot. “I think I’m missing some vows in between.”
“As well as an officiant and some witnesses”—Roma reached for her knife, cutting his own bit of string—“but at least we have a Bible.”
He took her left hand. Carefully, he wound the string around her fourth finger, making such a delicate effort that Juliette didn’t want to breathe for fear it would distract his task.
“I take you, Juliette Cai,” Roma whispered in concentration, “to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, until . . .” He looked up as he finished the knot. Paused. When he spoke again, he did not look away. “No, scratch that. To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us. In this life and the next, for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours. Those are my vows to you.”
Juliette closed her fist. The string really did feel like a ring: as heavy on her finger as any band of metal. These vows were as substantial as any made in front of a priest or audience. They didn’t need any of those things. They had always been two mirrored souls, the only ones who understood the other in a city that wanted to consume them whole, and now they were joined, mightier when together.
“Even death cannot part us,” she echoed fiercely.
It was a promise that felt colossal. In this life they had been born enemies. In this life they had blood for miles between them, wide enough to run a river, deep enough to forge a valley. In the next, maybe there would be peace.
Outside, metal clashed against metal, an echo ringing all across the city—again, then again. Here, within these four walls, all they could do was hold each other, waiting for noon to come, waiting for the moment they could be free.
Forty-One
Celia seemed to have ended up a soldier, perusing the battleground from above. All she had ever wanted was a quietly revolving world. And she had slapped her hands over her ears, hoping that silence in her head meant silence outside too.
That would work no longer. The world had grown too loud. The city had come to a crescendo.
“Three Scarlets from the north, likely bringing more,” Celia reported. Immediately, the girl who had been idling by the balcony, in wait for her observations, ran off to report. The message would travel from house to house, building to building.