First and foremost, Rosalind had needed some way to bypass the fact that her face was plastered on every second poster from here to the Huangpu River. She considered her every option. She could bandage herself up again. She could pretend to have a particular nasty cough and hold a handkerchief over her mouth.
But that didn’t solve the fact that Orion was identi1able too. Hence what she ended up doing was so blatantly obvious that she was rather surprised it worked. “That is the third time someone has mistaken me for that assassin girl this week,” Rosalind bellowed when they entered the inn. “Do we look so alike to
them? I don’t see it.”
“I think it’s your hairdo, qīn’ài de,” Orion replied. “I don’t resemble the hanjian in the slightest. I merely get dragged in by association standing next to you.”
They had put on horri1cally Northern accents. Orion’s attempt could use some work. Rosalind’s, on the other hand, was polished albeit grating to the ear
—a result of her evenings lounging around with Celia and Juliette in the past, nothing better to do except speak to each other like they hailed from a family of Beiping mistresses. In Shanghai, there was no easier way to stand out as an outsider than by speaking diPerently. And the moment someone marked themselves to be diPerent, it was hard to think of them as a Shanghai native, hard to push past the inherent, puPed-up sense of self this whole city possessed
—for better or for worse.
“A room, please,” Rosalind simpered when she approached the front desk. Before the silver-haired innkeeper could say anything, Rosalind sniPed with displeasure and turned to Orion with: “Why did your sister insist on moving
here? Look at this mess in Zhabei. We’re going to get stuck inside city bounds
forever.”
“You think I want to be here?” Orion slipped a little. A hallmark of Northern accents was the curliness of their words, extra er’s added wherever they could go. Shanghainese, meanwhile, was too Aat, and the tail end of his sentence curved back down. Rosalind stomped on his foot subtly; his wheeze of air disguised the mistake. “I blame that little bastard she married. Some mèifū he is, kicking us out like that.”
“I can open a room for you,” the innkeeper said at the desk, looking sympathetic. She glanced at the log book in front of her, tracking a 1nger down the page. “You will certainly have trouble leaving anytime soon though. Do you have anyone you can ask a favor of?”
What she meant was, Do you know anyone in the Kuomintang who can make
a call?
Rosalind shook her head. “We’re unimportant. The most we can hope for is a ride.” She pretended to consider the matter. “I don’t suppose you know any traveler who comes in and out often?”
“I do not.” The innkeeper grabbed a key below the desk, then gestured for
them to follow her. “You may like to speak with my niece when she returns. She knows lots of people.”
Rosalind nodded. They couldn’t rush this. Messing up now was the diPerence between getting out safely and getting hauled into a Kuomintang cell. They trailed after the innkeeper into a small room, stepping in and chorusing gratitude. After pointing out where their amenities were located, the innkeeper closed the door after herself.
Rosalind turned to Orion.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
“Why do you assume something is wrong?” Rosalind marched to the window, pulling at the curtain and peering out onto the roadside. The inn was very quaint. Watercolor paintings for decoration and half-burnt candles for light. Low ceilings and creaky Aoorboards, which meant it would be hard for people to sneak around because their footsteps would be audible from miles away.
“Well…”
Orion trailed oP, gesturing vaguely—almost awkwardly—in her direction. She knew why he asked: her entire demeanor was on edge. But perhaps he decided against speaking it aloud in case it was oPensive, and the thought gave Rosalind a peculiar surge of warmth. Despite the scramble in his head, he remained overly considerate. Despite everything, this was just who he was.
Orion’s awkward wince suddenly turned into a sound of pain. Rosalind let the curtain fall into place, striding toward him and grasping his face.
“Bad?” she asked.
“No,” Orion replied. He had closed his eyes. “No, it’s 1ne.”
“Orion.”
His eyes snapped open. It was brief, yet Rosalind caught that Aicker, that moment of absence when there was no one looking back at her. As soon as his gaze adjusted, though, he returned to normal, and those dark brown irises glowed once more by the daylight streaming through the curtains.
Rosalind couldn’t help herself. She sighed, putting her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder. Orion’s arm wound around her waist on instinct, resting against her in return even as he said: “I’m all right. Really.”
“I know,” she murmured. And she knew that he would try his best to keep it to himself even if he wasn’t. That he was the type of person to hate appearing troubled because he had gone his whole life without being allowed to, even if he couldn’t remember any of it.
She needed to get him back to Zhouzhuang. It wouldn’t solve the headaches until there was some 1x on his mother’s strength experiments, but it would eliminate the possibility of him sinking too deeply into one and his mind snapping into blankness permanently. Lourens needed to help him. She had a terrible feeling that she was going to lose him otherwise.
Slowly she withdrew, pulling away from his warmth, from his steady, raging heartbeat. Orion didn’t release her immediately, so for a moment they stood nose to nose, his head tilted down without moving farther, her head tipped up to hold time still.
Rosalind exhaled softly. “Get some rest,” she said. “I’ll 1nd us a way out.”
The question, then, was whether Rosalind would discover an exit route 1rst, or if the Nationalists would 1nd the vehicle they had left on the road. It could take some time to trace the vehicle’s ownership, even if they had hauled the wreck in already. And once they traced it back to the Hongs, who was to say they would 1nd this inn?
The innkeeper’s niece didn’t return until the next day. Though Rosalind was already asking around for her in the morning, apparently the niece kept strange sleeping hours, and Rosalind ended up checking back every ten minutes until she woke up.
“We’re looking for a way out of the city and we’re not fussy in the slightest,” Rosalind said, both her elbows propped up on the desk when she 1nally got the chance to speak to the girl. She was young—de1nitely younger than Rosalind. Late-afternoon storm clouds had darkened the inn, robbing the day of its hours and teetering toward evening early. The radio droned continuously about the invasion. Distantly, Rosalind caught a snippet talking about the country’s capital moving from Nanjing to Luoyang; the Nationalists were worried that Japan’s willingness to attack Shanghai meant Nanjing might be next. Western powers, meanwhile, were trying to negotiate a cease-1re, too worried about their own interests to stand back while the city raged with battle.
“You aren’t in trouble, are you?” the girl asked casually.
“Of course not,” Rosalind returned without missing a beat. “We’re only trying to go home. My husband has a condition. He needs his own bed. Plenty of rest.”
She wasn’t really lying, to be fair.
The innkeeper’s niece was leaning back on her chair, balancing on its hind two legs. She hardly seemed to be paying attention to this conversation, head tilted for the radio instead.
“Which direction?” the girl asked.
Rosalind hesitated. She was still faking that Northern accent. The better answer would have been northward, just to see who could get them through the city’s control points. But time really was of the essence.
“West,” she said instead. “Toward Suzhou.”
If the girl found it peculiar, she didn’t voice it. She tapped a pencil on her nose, thinking.
“Oh, easy. Our grocery deliverer brings produce from his farm in Suzhou every week. I imagine he would be willing to take you with him on his way out. Our inn is always his last stop.”
“When is he coming next?”
“Wednesday.” She peered at the logbook on the desk. “February third, if we’re looking at the Western calendar.”
Rosalind hesitated. Wednesday would make it a whole eight days since they had left Zhouzhuang. The longer they remained here, the more likely it was that they would get caught. Yet if Rosalind cast her inquiry wider, if she kept poking her nose around asking other sources for faster routes out of the city, that might get her on the Kuomintang’s radar anyway. This would have to do. At least they could hide at the inn until then.
Rosalind pushed away from the front desk. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s great.”
“You look familiar,” the girl said suddenly. It was an oPhand observation, one made while still balancing on those hind legs, but Rosalind froze all the same. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I can’t imagine so.” She imagined every possible outcome of this. The worst- case scenario played like a reel behind her eyes: the Nationalists hurrying to the inn, hauling Orion away, keeping him locked until he deteriorated beyond saving.
The girl shrugged. “All right. If you need me again, my name is Millie.”
It wasn’t the Nationalists that came knocking a day later. It was a messenger. And though Rosalind lunged back in an instant when she opened the door to the unfamiliar face, the boy threw his arms up, signaling goodwill.
“Waitwaitwait—someone sent me!”
He turned over a slip of paper in his hands, showing Rosalind before she could grab the coatrack and hit him with it. Two characters were written in small, squished strokes: 姐姐. Celia’s handwriting.
“What?” Rosalind demanded, quickly veering away from the coatrack. Orion heard the commotion and got up from the table, hovering over her shoulder when she took the paper and unfolded it for the message inside.
Safe. Stitched. Yours? Have you heard from Alisa?
It was like speaking in code, except rather than following a cipher, Celia knew that Rosalind would understand exactly what she meant no matter how much she shortened her message. Stitched meant that they were at a hospital and Oliver had been under surgery for his wound. Yours? was to ask about Orion.
“How on earth did she 1nd me?”
The messenger appeared sly. “We have our secrets. Do you want me to take a reply? I have a few minutes to spare.”
Rosalind shuAed for the table at once, searching for a pen. “Yes, yes. Stay there.”
Also safe. Trying to leave. No—have you heard from Phoebe?
Her sister’s reply came a few hours later.
No. I’m worried.
So was Rosalind. When the same boy asked if he could take anything back, Rosalind shook her head. There was nothing they could do except wait.
On Monday, Rosalind ventured outside with a scarf over her head. Their mangled vehicle had been removed. Two Municipal police officers stood at the site of the crash, investigating the glass pieces on the road.
Rosalind hurried away, stepping inside a small fruit shop. She bought a bag of apples.
On Tuesday, Orion had almost gotten through the entire bag.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said when he started peeling the last one. “That’s way too many apples.”
“I keep telling you to eat as well,” Orion protested, as if that were the issue at hand. He had rolled his sleeves up, cuffing them at his elbows to get them out of the way.
“I will have one apple a day, and that is quite enough.” “Then why did you buy a whole bag? Hmmm? Checkmate.”
Rosalind scoPed, turning in her chair to resume reading the newspaper the innkeeper had delivered earlier. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Orion grin at her, and though she fought with great ePort to maintain her frown, she lost.
“Hah.” Orion shoved his arm out, oPering the peeled apple. “Bite.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she said again. Nevertheless, she leaned in and took a bite.
Wednesday arrived. She and Orion waited patiently at the back of the inn, having paid for their lodgings with a necklace. Neither of them was carrying enough cash—Orion wasn’t carrying any, understandably—and going to a bank would summon the Kuomintang faster than a spotlight into the sky. Rosalind wasn’t going to miss the necklace anyway. She had acquired it years ago with Scarlet money, and the only sentimental value was the fact that it had even lasted this long before she found some better use for it.
“There,” Orion whispered, spotting the truck pulling up around the corner.
Talking their way onto the farmer’s truck was a breeze. Rosalind put on her best teary eyes, asking if the farmer was perchance driving west in the direction of Zhouzhuang. Her husband had an injury, she sobbed, and they needed to get to a specialized doctor outside the city.
“Come on, come on,” the farmer said easily, fetching a handkerchief from his faded denim overalls and practically throwing it at Rosalind. “No need to cry. There’s plenty of space to accommodate an emergency.”
Rosalind shot Orion a satis1ed look, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief. Though Orion had been pinching the bridge of his nose before to
emphasize the injury she claimed he had, she suspected that some of that tension in his expression wasn’t feigned anymore. His head really was starting to ache, as it had been doing in waves these past few days.
“Will they check papers, do you think?” Rosalind asked when the farmer 1nished loading his groceries for the inn. Her tone stayed demure. Posed the question out of curiosity, rather than worry.
“Ah, no one bothers on this route,” the farmer said. He slapped his knee. “As long as you’re not a criminal!”
Rosalind laughed nervously.
So they hadn’t needed to get into the cargo bed at the back. The truck had room on the long seat at the front, and Rosalind had sidled in beside the driver, pulling Orion next to her. She made idle conversation with the farmer. Orion leaned his head against the side. There was no window; he could only close his eyes and brace against the brutal winter cold rushing against him.
Hours passed on the road. Now they were almost at their destination, and Rosalind couldn’t believe how close they were… so of course that was the point when trouble started to arise. She felt it 1rst in the sharp inhale Orion made. The farmer was heartily distracted, talking about his chickens, answering every question Rosalind threw at him. Rosalind, however, had been splitting her attention with monitoring Orion at all times.
“What’s happening?” Rosalind whispered when the trees turned dense overhead. The road was scattered with branches that snapped under the truck’s wheels, 1lling the space with sound and making the driver grunt with complaints as he focused on proceeding forward. “What are you hearing?”
“So many things,” Orion mumbled. “I will be 1ne.” He didn’t sound like he believed it.
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer. When Rosalind touched his shoulder, forcing him to look at her, his eyes went blank. She jolted in her seat; Orion blinked, his focus returning. In that split second passing between them, his panic Aashed starkly in his expression, knowing that he had just barely suppressed whatever was about to come over him.
Oh, shit.
“Is there any chance,” Rosalind said brightly, turning to the farmer, “that you could drive a little faster?”
“I am going as fast as I can, tàitài,” the farmer remarked.
“I do understand and appreciate that,” Rosalind said. She was keeping her voice so falsely happy that it had the potential to grow wings and Autter oP. “However, if there’s a chance of speeding up—”
Before she could 1nish her sentence, there was a gust of wind to her side. She whipped around just in time to catch Orion kicking the door open wide and diving out from the truck.
She gaped. “What the heck—”
Rosalind followed suit and jumped after him, barely bracing before she was rolling on the sharp gravel. The truck kept driving forward—perhaps the farmer had scarcely registered the series of events and didn’t have time to stop, or perhaps he didn’t have the willingness to halt for the two city dwellers who were foolish enough to dive from a moving truck.
Rosalind’s shoulder hit a large rock. She came to a rough stop.
“Are you out of your mind?” she shouted at Orion, lifting herself onto an elbow. A slow trickle of blood obscured the vision in her left eye. Her forehead must have gotten cut on the rock, but she wiped it away, barely paying it any attention.
“Yes!” Orion shouted back, some distance away. He had stopped near a hanging tree branch that poked onto the road. “That’s why I threw myself out!”
Another car sounded as though it was approaching along the road. Rosalind hurried to Orion, then grasped his shoulder in an attempt to get him up.
“Orion, come on.”
“I can’t,” he said tightly. “If I move, I’m going to lose control.”
“That’s 1ne.” Rosalind gave him another tug. “You can stab me again. I don’t care.”
“I care.”
The hum of an oncoming vehicle got louder.
“Come on, come on,” Rosalind said, frantic. “We’re going to get run over.”
Too late. The vehicle rounded the turn and barreled toward them. With a curse under her breath, Rosalind grabbed Orion immediately and threw an arm
up, as if her one mere limb could counter the impact. Though she had accepted that the car would not see her in time, there came a deafening screech of its brakes.
The echo bounced through the forest, through all the trees. The car’s bumper halted inches away from contact.
Rosalind lowered her arm, the motion slow and hesitant. She breathed out shakily, adrenaline rushing like a torrent in her body.
The rear door of the car opened; the man who stepped out looked incredibly familiar. It took Rosalind a prolonged moment to remember that the last time she saw him, she had been tied to a chair in Zhabei, waiting for the world to strike her down.
“Hello,” Benedikt Montagov said plainly. “Any reason you’re in the middle of the road?”
Rosalind gulped. When Orion shifted under her touch, there was an edge to his manner.
Hold on, she pleaded. Please. You have resisted for so long.
“Don’t come any closer,” she warned. “He’s—”
Another door opened. Rosalind couldn’t believe her eyes when Lourens Van Dijk stepped out, peering over the car carefully.
“Oh,” the old man said. “Hong Liwen. I remember working on him.”
… What?
“You what?” Rosalind asked aloud. Her grip tightened on Orion. Whether she was trying to keep him back or keep the others away, she wasn’t entirely certain.
Lourens took a step forward. In haste, another man pushed open the driver’s door to stay with him, his dark hair in a frenzy. This was Marshall Seo—despite her rare encounters with him in Shanghai back when the gangs were around, Rosalind had to assume the person always accompanying Benedikt was his now- husband.
“Wait, Lourens. You probably shouldn’t—”
Rosalind didn’t have time to second his warning. Orion stood so quickly that Rosalind was forced to release him, reeling in surprise. One second he had been sprawled on the gravel, and the next he was lunging for Lourens. Acting on pure
instinct, Rosalind kicked her leg out, striking the back of Orion’s knee. He teetered oP-balance, his attack averted only a mere hairsbreadth short of striking the scientist.
“Get back!” Rosalind shouted.
She didn’t wait to see if Lourens would listen. With a huP of exertion, she dove for Orion, intent on pinning him to the ground. The moment her hand closed down on his shoulder, however, he whirled around to face her. He barely brushed her elbow in his wide hit; still, he was so strong that Rosalind went sprawling into the gravel, landing hard enough for the bits and pieces to cut into her Aesh.
“Ouch,” she spat. “Orion!”
He didn’t hear her. He wasn’t listening anymore, lost in what had come over him. Perhaps lost utterly, but Rosalind couldn’t think like that or she would stop 1ghting, or she would splay her arms wide and accept whatever was to come while he loomed over her. At least she had his attention now.
In her periphery, she could see Benedikt drawing a pistol. “Stop it!” Rosalind shouted immediately. “Put that away!” “Miss Lang, he’s going to kill you—”
“Put it”—Rosalind retrieved a pin from her hair—“away.”
Orion surged forward, but Rosalind was prepared this time. She didn’t swerve out of contact; she met his oPensive maneuver head-on, catching his wrist before it could strike and using his own momentum against him when she twisted her leg around his ankle, taking his balance out from underneath him once again. She couldn’t match his strength, 1ne. She only needed him within range for one moment to get her sedative in.
Rosalind stabbed her hairpin into his shoulder.
“God,” she wheezed. “Do you know how lucky”—she tore the metal out
—“you are to have me?”
For a second, it seemed Orion might possess enough energy to attack before the sedative kicked in. Then his eyes Auttered. Rosalind 1nally relaxed, hurrying to slide her hand forward and soften the impact when his head lolled onto the ground.
Footsteps crunched through the gravel on her left. Lourens came to stand behind her, observing Orion quietly.
“I’m not carrying him,” Marshall declared by the car.
Rosalind needed a second to catch her breath. When she looked over her shoulder, Benedikt had put his pistol away, warily observing the scene with his arm held before Marshall to forbid him from going forward.
“He’s out cold,” Rosalind said. Bitterness put an acrid taste on her tongue. “You don’t have to worry.”
She clambered oP Orion, but she didn’t step away. She was unwilling to relinquish him until she had some answers, so even as she turned to Lourens, her hand remained encircled around Orion’s arm.
“Before,” she prompted, “what did you mean when you said working on
him?”
Lourens didn’t respond for a long moment. He had aged tremendously since Rosalind last saw him. A weary sort of exhaustion had settled over his features.
“Same as how I worked on you,” Lourens replied. “I helped his mother with her research before I left the country.”
