Something cold was brushing across her face. A cloth, accompanied by a gentle hand poking around and moving her hair out of the way.
Rosalind’s eyes snapped open. Her body jolted once, then stilled in a frantic scramble to make sense of her surroundings. She was lying on a couch. Her 1ngers touched a rough material beneath her. If she could see a ceiling directly before her, then she was in a house, and if she was in a house, then…
Rosalind turned to face her side. Traced the hand up to the person it was connected to. Perhaps she had fainted from blood loss earlier, but she might have fainted anyway from sheer shock even if she hadn’t been bleeding from a hole in her shoulder.
“You’re awake sooner than I thought,” Juliette said, her focus directed on brushing away a piece of Rosalind’s hair at her neck. “Don’t move too much. I stitched you up as well as I could, but Roma said it looks like I attempted abstract art on your shoulder.”
Rosalind struggled for words. Her cousin was dead. There was a grave for her and everything, Aocked by mourners every year on the anniversary of an explosion that had devastated a whole street in Zhabei.
“Thank you,” Rosalind whispered, because she didn’t know what else to say. Where did she even begin? With a wince, she eased herself onto her elbow, taking a proper look around. They were in a living room, a 1replace at the wall and a large mantel curving over its stone.
“I have a few antidotes lying around, but I couldn’t 1gure out what poison was on that knife,” Juliette went on. “Better to let it leave your system naturally instead of risk disturbing the wound further. You’ll heal when it’s gone, right? Then we can pull the stitches out. Oh, and I left the knife over there.”
When Rosalind stared at her silently, Juliette gestured to the desk at the far side of the room, where the aforementioned poisoned knife awaited, its metal cleaned and glimmering. Her cousin was chattering so casually, as if this were an ordinary evening visit. As if Rosalind was staring in awe because she wanted a medical report and not because, last she heard, Juliette was dead.
Rosalind suddenly lurched, pulling at her stitches. “Where’s Orion?”
“In the bedroom. Don’t worry,” Juliette replied immediately. “He’s still out. He might be out for a while. Alisa has been checking on him every ten minutes.” This was the very de1nition of an impossibility. Juliette and Roma had emerged from beyond the grave. And with such valiant heroics, with timing so
precise that Rosalind could believe they might have been waiting…
Hold on.
“Did you know we were going to show up?”
Juliette’s lip quirked. “Jiemin gave me a warning. The moment you Aed the scene, he 1gured you might be en route. He’s not very happy with you, by the way.”
Rosalind must have misheard. Jiemin—her temporary handler, the Nationalist—had contacted Juliette to tell her that Rosalind was on her way?
But…
“He’s more my operative than he is a Nationalist,” Juliette explained, seeing the confusion on her face. “So long as his 1rst loyalty is here, he gets fed information from us that he often needs for his larger work.”
“This is…” Rosalind trailed oP, uncertain which adjective she was looking for.
Dear Bosses, Jiemin had been writing into that envelope addressed to
Zhouzhuang. Then, in the car, when Rosalind had asked him about a JM…
Oh. Oh, how could she have not realized?
“I can help you get him back,” Rosalind quoted. “That was you. You had already been waiting for me to 1nd you.”
Juliette Montagova. Arisen from the dead and bearing a solution.
“I had to stay vague. Every correspondence into the city is a chance of getting caught.” Juliette reached forward, giving Rosalind’s wrist a small nudge. “But I knew you’d 1nd your way here.”
The house was illuminated by candlelight. It had to be late, the hour creeping nearer to morning. A kitchen was adjoined on the left, the shadows of two 1gures sitting at the table. Alisa and Roma Montagov, passing something back and forth at each other. Rosalind was positively circling her disbelief again, incomprehension so thick that she felt it dripping oP her skin like molasses. By now she had inspected every aspect of her surroundings, so there was nowhere else for her attention to turn except back to Juliette, who was folding up her cleaning cloth.
“Biǎojiě,” Juliette said eventually, breaking the silence. “You’re looking at me like I grew a third arm.”
Rosalind couldn’t help herself. The term “biǎojiě” wasn’t even accurate anymore.
“Because you’re so… old.” Juliette’s brow shot up.
“No, wait, that’s not what I meant to say,” Rosalind rushed to clarify. She suddenly felt like she had grown a third arm and it was Aopping all over the place, making a scene. “You just look diPerent, and I haven’t seen you grow into this diPerence. Obviously, Celia is diPerent too. It’s just me who’s not diPerent, so it feels as though everyone else has drastically changed—”
“Rosalind.” Juliette’s tone was gentle. She set the cloth down. “It’s 1ne. I get it. Twenty-four is practically retirement age in Shanghai.”
Rosalind leaned back. She pressed her 1st into her forehead. First she couldn’t 1nd a word to say; now she couldn’t shut up. And even though her cousin was cracking a joke, Rosalind felt terrible.
“I used to be more well mannered than this,” she muttered. Her hand dragged down her face. Before she could help it, tears were welling in her eyes. “And then you died.”
“Oh God—” Juliette plopped onto the couch, setting herself at Rosalind’s
side. She had changed since their brief encounter outside, swapping out the black clothes for a white dress. It wasn’t quite a qipao in the same way that Rosalind’s was, the collar lower and the sleeves frilly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have done that to you.”
Rosalind wiped at her eyes. What was her cousin doing, apologizing to her? Rosalind was the one who needed to apologize. Rosalind was the one who had been wanting to apologize for 1ve long, long years, wishing she could open a door into the afterlife and obtain some chance to beg for forgiveness. Maybe that was what had taken her aback most of all: that this whole time, she hadn’t even needed to seek the afterlife—
“Stop that.” Rosalind sniPed. She had never been a crier, and now her eyes
were leaking like faucets. “It’s my fault that you died to begin with.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Juliette gave her a rough shove. She had forgotten how indelicate her cousin was, and the reminder drove back some of the tears when her stitches complained. “The fault is my own. When we ran”—Juliette’s gaze rose above Rosalind’s shoulder, looking into the kitchen
—“I knew what we were choosing. Ourselves over everything else, and though it is terrible to be sel1sh, I did it anyway. I left you behind. You should blame me for it.”
“How do I blame a dead girl?” Rosalind asked quietly. It was a serious question. She was relieved beyond anything she could put into words that her cousin sat beside her. When Rosalind reached out and closed her 1ngers around Juliette’s wrist, she felt solid blood and Aesh, warm and beating with the steadiest pulse.
But Juliette was dead to the city. And never returning to Shanghai—never returning home—was still a heavy matter that Rosalind was responsible for. There was no blame here. Not when it was the deserved outcome of how viciously Rosalind had betrayed her.
“If we’re talking sel1shness, then I was a thousand times worse,” Rosalind went on. She could barely smooth down the tremor in her voice. “I tore through the city like an exit wound, ripping damage wherever I went.”
The past shimmered between them. Dimitri leading his men. Those last days in Shanghai before the revolution came. Those last days before the explosion blew hot and tall, marking the moment that ended gangster rule.
“That a thousand times worse wasn’t your doing,” Juliette countered. “You
got used, Rosalind. What is love if you are not cared for in return? It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you choose it.”
Rosalind looked down at her hands. “Yes,” she said. The past stuttered, lost its color. And in its place came the thought of Orion, 1lling up the broken 1ssures. “I know that now.”
Her tears started again. Years and years of them, desperately making their way out.
“Hold on, hold on—I have a handkerchief.”
Juliette retrieved a smooth square of fabric from underneath the table. It looked like the same black cover she had been wearing over her face. Rosalind took it anyway and patted the tracks down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Rosalind sniveled. She didn’t know what exactly that was directed at. An apology for messing up the handkerchief or a general apology that wanted to cover every wrong she had done.
She pulled the handkerchief away. Stared at the blots she had made.
“The only reason I left so fast that night,” she said, the safe house in Zhabei materializing before her eyes, “was because I didn’t want you to see me cry.” She could feel Juliette watching her carefully. “And after you were gone, I realized that would have been your last memory of me. Walking out on you—not a single goodbye exchanged, only a decision that we would never see each other again.”
“How long have you been carrying that?” Juliette whispered. Her eyes were watering too. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“Neither that conversation nor the city’s events would have happened at all if I hadn’t made so many mistakes,” Rosalind returned. “I betrayed you—”
“And I forgave you,” Juliette cut in, her hands coming around to grasp Rosalind’s shoulders, “a long, long time ago. Even if I were dead, you made a mistake, and then you needed to pick yourself back up to live for me. What else is there to do? Do you expect to repent forever?”
Rosalind took a ragged inhale. Then another. “You’re going to make me start crying again,” she whispered.
Juliette laughed, throwing her arms around her in a tight embrace. When Rosalind hugged her cousin and exhaled, it felt like she was breathing diPerently for the 1rst time in 1ve years.
