At the very least, going southward meant it was less cold.
Rosalind breathed into her gloveless hands, trying to spread warmth along her frozen 1ngers. She had opted to go without that extra layer because it made a nicer image in photographs. Still, even though the temperature was bearable, she felt the sting each time the wind blew.
“We’re getting in position around the perimeter,” Jiemin said from her side, his hands behind his back. He wasn’t wearing gloves either, but Jiemin didn’t look like he was bothered by the cold. A wire looped around his ear, which he would tap anytime he was trying to communicate with the other soldiers. Judging by the number of times Jiemin had shaken that thing around, Rosalind suspected the Nationalists didn’t have very good prototypical technology. They might as well yell loudly across the teahouse gardens.
Then again, Rosalind supposed that wouldn’t be very ePective if the soldiers spotted anything unsightly in the crowd and needed to give a warning.
“Okay,” Rosalind said.
Jiemin cast her a glance askew. “And no more running oP this time. I had to do immense damage control convincing the reporters not to write you up as a lunatic.”
“You should have let them.”
“Upper command would not like that.”
“There was no thought of pleasing them when—”
Jiemin’s look of warning intensi1ed. Rosalind cut herself oP, biting her tongue. He was getting distracted by his wire anyway, listening for a moment before swiveling and saying, “Then check for uniform. Our own people are…”
He marched in the other direction, his voice fading. Rosalind, meanwhile, remained where she stood, smoothing out her coat sleeve. She rubbed her hands again. The temperature would get better once they left the vicinity of Suzhou, where there would be less water bringing a damp chill into the air. Maybe she also needed to suggest that they start doing these interviews in the daytime instead of the evening. The sunset was impending, the sky cast in orange and pink.
“We’re ready for you, Lady Fortune.”
The man on the elevated stage gestured for her to ascend. Rosalind barely held back her frown, pasting a smile in its place.
Fortune. It’s just Fortune—my goodness, where did this Lady ever come from?
“Thank you,” Rosalind said. She stopped behind the podium. The crowd stretched to the edges of the gardens, piled out onto the pavement. Wind chimes sang from the teahouse behind her. A camera Aashed in the front row. “I hope
—”
Rosalind stopped suddenly, her gaze locking on one point in the crowd. Jiemin probably thought she was going to make a scene again, because he waved from where he was standing, signaling for her to continue.
Did no one else see the metal object rolling at their feet?
Rosalind rose onto the tip of her toes, trying to isolate its shape. It came to a stop in the middle of the crowd. Still, no one stirred, their attention 1xed on the scene before them: on her, at the stage.
That looked like a damn grenade.
She lunged for the microphone. “Everyone move—”
The world went up in smoke.
Rosalind choked on her gasp. On instinct, she threw an arm over her face as she Ainched, taken aback by the sound. It was not 1re that erupted but opaque clouds, cloaking her surroundings at once and making it impossible to see anything more than her own two hands. She waved at the smoke furiously. The crowd was screaming—from alarm, not pain, but it was hard to tell.
“Lang Shalin! We’re retreating!”
That was Jiemin’s voice. She had no idea where he was.
“Retreating from what?” Rosalind called. A cough scratched at her throat. If the Communists were behind this, it was absolutely not the enemy party’s usual style. Smoke bombs?
The wind blew a gust, clearing certain parts of the gardens for a brief moment. The tour had only brought along ten or so soldiers, stationed around the perimeter for safety. Now it looked like there were more than twenty.
And they were 1ghting each other.
Rosalind ducked behind the podium at once, shielding herself. She allowed herself the barest sliver of view. The smoke swirled low, irritating her nose.
Those aren’t our people, she thought. Each part of that realization Aoated
within reach slowly, in the way that dreams dragged at one’s running speed. Then, at once, the only possible conclusion slammed into place, as if she had startled awake to 1nd herself going at a dead sprint.
There were costumed soldiers on the scene. Which meant…
When Orion emerged from the smoke, he was holding a knife in his hand.
Merde—
Rosalind’s grip tightened on the podium, her knuckles turning white. His mother followed behind him, her shoulders straight and her white coat Auttering with the wind. At that moment, their resemblance couldn’t have been starker. Maybe it was their expressions: Lady Hong’s determined frown and Orion’s blank eyes. Maybe it was the synchrony of their appearance, breaking from the midst of the smoke like gods birthed out of chaos.
Rosalind couldn’t move. She had plotted her steps, had coated each of her hairpins with sedatives and prepared to grab Orion when he arrived. Yet now, faced with him before her, she stayed frozen behind the podium.
He was dressed in Kuomintang uniform. The sleeves weren’t right. The badges were fake. Even if the disguise fooled anyone, that absent gaze would certainly give him away.
A soldier dove at Orion. He stabbed his combatant and tossed him away as though it were nothing. The blood oozed a puddle into the grass. Turned it from green to slick red. While the smoke was clearing in small amounts with every gust of wind, there was still enough opacity to incite confusion, drawing short distances long and long distances short.
Orion took three strides forward. Scanned the gardens.
When he spotted Rosalind, her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. She wasn’t afraid of him; she was terri1ed that she wasn’t going to get him back, that he had been pulled too far away to reach. In her plans, she had envisioned rescuing Orion to be as simple as meeting his eyes and convincing him to leave with her.
Judging by their circumstances at present, that was probably not happening. “Okay, okay,” Rosalind whispered under her breath. “You got through to
him once. You can do it again—Jesus Christ!”
That last exclamation came with Orion leaping onto the stage without warning. One moment he was still maintaining considerable distance, and the next his grip was closing on her shoulder. The stage suddenly felt miles away, swallowed up by the smoke clouds and shadowed by the gray skies.
Dimly Rosalind knew that this moment was dangerous. He could tear her apart. He was poised for attack, and yet her aching heart could only circle around Oh, he’s here.
Oh, he’s—about to stab her.
Rosalind gasped, twisting her shoulder out of his grip and avoiding the slash of his blade by a hairsbreadth. There was an acrid smell in the air when she inhaled, like rubber burning in the distance. Before she could overthink her circumstances, she swiped a leg at Orion’s ankles to take him oP-balance. He wavered unsteadily for only a moment. Still, it was enough for Rosalind to roll herself away, coming to a stop by the stage corner and scrambling to her feet. Smoke blew hard into her eyes. She thought she heard Jiemin yelling for her.
Rosalind held her hand out. As if that alone might keep Orion back.
“I know you don’t remember anything,” she started carefully. Her voice was hoarse. “I know this must be incredibly confusing.”
Something passed in Orion’s expression. It was gone just as quickly. “Where’s the vial?” he asked.
“Listen to me.” Rosalind took a step away, teetering at the very edge of the stage. Her eyes Aickered left, keeping his mother in her periphery. Lady Hong was observing the scene. There were no other soldiers nearby. “Orion, listen.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Rosalind stilled. Anger lurked in his command—or, rather, anger that spilled out of frustration, sharpening his words and contorting them away from that monotone.
All right. This was something to work with.
Orion lunged forward, and Rosalind feinted before skidding left, letting the blade whistle through the air. When the metal caught light, it reAected back a faint purple color.
“That’s your name,” she gasped. “Orion. Hong Liwen.”
The blade swung again. This time Rosalind wasn’t quite fast enough. She felt the knife make contact, cut a shallow line at the highest point of her cheek.
“The vial,” Orion demanded. “Give it to me.”
Her cheek stung like hell. One bead of red started to drip down her face in slow motion, like some color-inverted tear track. When her hand went up to wipe it away, her blood felt sticky on her palm.
The teardrop kept growing larger. Of course. That purplish glean on the blade was poison. Lady Hong knew better than to arrive with an ordinary weapon—it needed to be something that actually worked on her.
On his next strike, Orion slashed up, his blade making an underarm arc. Instead of swerving away, Rosalind caught his wrist with every iota of her strength, narrowly avoiding a puncture in the chest. Before he could recover and push harder, she kicked him back, her heel making a noise when it struck against one of the metal badges on his uniform.
The kick didn’t seem to aPect Orion much at all. It was only a distraction anyway before Rosalind had grabbed a handful of his hair and swung herself onto his shoulders, securing a grip on his throat.
“Do you know who I am?” she demanded. “You called me Rosalind. You said you wanted to call me Rosalind.”
Orion threw her oP.
And though Rosalind could have rolled to absorb the impact, she was so shocked that she fell face-1rst, barely putting her elbows forward to protect her nose before hitting the stage. She heaved for breath. Okay. Maybe provoking him wasn’t working.
“You are nobody.”
“Excuse me?” A wave of irrational anger overrode the pain of her landing. “I am your wife.”
The knife Aashed. Orion stabbed down. Rosalind caught his wrist again, but only after the tip of the blade had already pierced her throat. They held in that stalemate for three seconds, 1ve, ten. She could feel his pulse hammering where their skin made contact, pounding at such speed that she couldn’t tell it apart from one long continuous war cry.
Rosalind’s strength at full force was quickly about to give out. The small trail of blood already running from the tip of the knife would not stop anytime soon. Lady Hong had done the same with the bullets she shot at Rosalind back at Warehouse 34, had likely used the same poison. A lethal wound from this knife would kill her. She wouldn’t heal from it.
“Orion, listen to me,” Rosalind gasped. “You cannot be that far gone. Whatever you have been brainwashed to believe, you can break out of it. Orion, please.”
A shudder quaked down her spine. Her words tremored. She was trying to
convince herself as much as she was trying to convince him: It couldn’t be permanent. It couldn’t.
Rosalind’s grip slackened. Though the natural next action would have been Orion plunging the knife exactly where it had been poised, dead center in her throat, his hand suddenly jerked to the side, a Aash of hesitation stilling his expression. The blade sank deep—into her shoulder instead.
Before he could yank it out and try again, a bag came around his neck.
Celia couldn’t see a thing through the smoke.
She coughed lightly, waving the tendrils out of her face from where she was lurking. Most of the chaos was occurring in the teahouse gardens, and Celia had situated herself around the corner to avoid being sighted. They were prepared. They had been prepared for every stop along the way—it just so happened that at last, chaos had 1nally erupted.
“Christ,” Celia muttered under her breath. Had Lady Hong arrived? The
yelling would suggest the affirmative. As would the smoke bomb rolling out to
interrupt Rosalind’s event, obscuring the orange evening and turning everything into an impenetrable haze.
Celia surged forward, coming around the corner. Oliver had been stationed on the second Aoor of the building next to the teahouse. He had a ladder that spilled out the window and a fast-track route into the gardens in the event of an attack; he was the counter-distraction, and she was the agent who needed to improvise the best way to grab their target and 1lch him from both adversaries. There was no way to draw up a plan with further speci1cs. They went where the tide took them.
Celia choked on a half cough. But how was she supposed to grab Oliver’s brother with all this?
“Where the hell are you?” she hissed aloud.
She caught sight of movement a few paces before her. Without time to spare, Celia backed up, her shoulder hitting a tree that she could use to take cover. There was no sign of Orion Hong, but that was an authentic uniform. When the 1gure in the smoke yelled out, raising his arm and calling for his forces to move forward, Celia identi1ed him as Rosalind’s newest handler.
Shit. She reached into her sleeve. Pulled a knife into her palm, just in case. Lin
Jiemin—they had sent along a folder with his information, detailing his early education in the military and transition into covert intelligence. Celia scanned the scene again, waiting for another gust of wind to blow. A loud clatter came from the north end of the gardens. Then a shout.
Rosalind.
Jiemin surged forward. “Lang Shalin!” he bellowed. “Did you hear me?
Retreat! Now!”
Wait, wait—
“Sweetheart.” Just as Celia was about to follow, a hand closed on her shoulder, a whisper of breath coiling against her ear. She identi1ed Oliver’s presence behind her by feeling; he was going too fast for her to turn and con1rm. He held her only long enough to hiss, “Orion’s with her. Get him,” before he was moving again. Celia pivoted left instantly, merging deeper into the smoke. A cluster of soldiers were on Oliver’s pursuit, being led away.
But Jiemin was still heading in the right direction.
Celia tore oP her coat. Then her hat.
“Jiemin!” she yelled into the smoke. Her hair unfurled down her back, half loose and the other half pinned.
Celia had mulled over their plan of action dozens of times. In fact, she had spent most of their time on the road calculating how on earth she could intercept someone who had been enhanced beyond human, how she could possibly take him unaware short of shooting him until he went down.
Movement swiveled ahead. Jiemin turned in confusion, trying to locate what sounded like another Rosalind.
This part, Celia hadn’t told Oliver. She knew he would ask the question she didn’t want to answer: whether she was actually improving their plan or plotting to help Rosalind from the sidelines. Whether she was even working toward the ultimate endgame of securing their asset, or if she only cared to make sure the soldiers weren’t impeding her sister.
Celia tugged at her qipao collar. “I’m here!” she shouted at Jiemin, taking a step back. “I’m over here!”
