Morning light crawled through Orion’s bedroom window a few minutes after sunrise, on a sluggish delay with the gray clouds. Rosalind watched its shape take form on the wall, the faintest haze of orange brightening a pale cream paint color. She didn’t know if she was surprised at Orion’s decorating choices.
Orion stirred in her lap. The blinds hadn’t been drawn during the night, and his eyes opened slowly, prickled by the light. Though Orion had insisted he wasn’t tired at all, he had lain down while Rosalind remained sitting cross-legged among his pillows. She had simply become another one of his pillows when Orion’s eyes started drooping, protesting between yawns that he was only going to rest for a brief moment, nothing more.
“When did I fall asleep?”
Rosalind snorted. “Sometime during our debate on whether there are penguins in the northern hemisphere.”
Orion lumbered upright. His hair was sticking up in all directions at the back. Rosalind reached out to tame it down.
“Have you been awake this whole time?” he asked, startled.
“Yes.” She 1nished getting his hair down, so easy to put back into order. Of course someone like Orion had hair that always complied. “Orion, I don’t sleep.”
His expression remained vaguely bewildered. Like he had left half of himself behind in his dreams, tethered by a short string that wouldn’t yank properly until the sun was higher in the sky.
A clatter sounded from downstairs. Rosalind shuAed forward on the bed, giving Orion a small prod so he would recline again.
“Get some more rest. You need it. The morning is early still.”
Rosalind stood up. Before she could step away, Orion grabbed her hand, and although it was a casual motion—more an instinct to get her attention than an indicator of anything urgent—she paused with concern.
“You won’t go far?” he asked.
“Of course not.” Rosalind tilted her head to the door. “I will only be downstairs.”
Orion released his grip on her hand slowly. There was a look in his eyes that had Rosalind wondering if she ought to ask whether he was all right, but at this hour, the morning turned soft things harsh and pulled new colors into existence. When Orion blinked, he looked entirely normal again. Rosalind oPered a small smile. Everything was 1ne—she had probably imagined that look. She slipped out from his room, her footsteps silent as she descended the stairs.
The sound was coming from the kitchen. Under the bare-bones dawn, she would have expected it to be Ah Dou rummaging around. Instead, she found her sister putting the kettle on and peering around the cupboards. “Hey.”
Celia whirled around with a small shriek. “Oh my goodness,” she hissed when she saw Rosalind. “Can you make some noise when you walk?”
“My enemies don’t call me a shadow of the night for nothing, mèimei.” Rosalind leaned against the kitchen doorframe, crossing her arms. She looked closer at her sister. Something was diPerent.
“You’re up so early,” Celia remarked, turning to adjust the kettle Aame. “To be fair, I am never not up.”
What was it that had stirred her notice? Celia’s clothes were the same from
the previous night. Nothing of her general appearance had changed, but
something…
Celia, absently, tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “I know,” she said softly. “You ought to get more rest, though.”
Rosalind put it together. She couldn’t resist the smile that spread across her face. “Celia.”
Celia looked over her shoulder suspiciously. Her sister knew her too well: she could hear the puPed-up tone that entered Rosalind’s voice the moment she spoke a single syllable, the signal that the topic had switched.
“What is it?”
“Are you competing with me to see who can marry into the family 1rst?”
Celia grabbed the nearest wooden spoon at once, tossing it in Rosalind’s direction.
Rosalind shrieked, dodging out of the way. “You are!”
“Not so loud! The house is sleeping!”
Rosalind pretended to hurry into the living room. “Alisa! Alisa, get the Aowers ready!”
Celia caught up to her, wrapping an arm around her head and clamping a hand to her mouth. “I should have absorbed you in the womb.”
Despite her threat, Celia was resisting her laugh, and they struggled in good humor for a few moments before she 1nally released Rosalind, letting her gain her bearings with a snicker. They looked at each other for a moment before Rosalind sobered, remembering the last conversation they’d had in this living room.
“I was hoping to 1nd you down here,” she said quietly. “I wanted to apologize.”
Celia leaned against the wall. “We’re sisters, Rosalind. You don’t have to apologize to me.”
“Of course I do.” She mimicked Celia, leaning a shoulder to the side. When she made contact with the wall, there was a dull thud, like the sound of a body hitting the ground. Like the aftermath of a massacre, corpses falling and falling and falling. “I know what you went through. I plucked you out of the carnage— I should know better than anyone. There was no reason for me to argue with you like that.”
Nearly 1ve years had passed since the revolution, but Rosalind still had long scars down her back, and Celia had a puckered bullet scar on her left side. When the Nationalists broke their alliance and turned on the Communists, they had 1red on the protesters, uncaring about the civilians who were caught up in the game between faction leaders. Celia had been among them. She had been on the verge of bleeding out before Rosalind found her and pulled her toward help. The upside to never sleeping was that Rosalind wasn’t subject to nightmares anymore—in the weeks shortly after Celia’s recovery, before Rosalind had been turned into Fortune, she had dreamed about the incident relentlessly. About
picking through the piles of the dead, her shoes splashing down in bloody puddles, 1nding faceless corpse after faceless corpse, none of them her sister.
“If you’re apologizing, then I am too,” Celia said. “I know where your heart was. I clearly just wanted to pick an argument because it felt better to scream than to sit there doing nothing at all.”
Rosalind made a little smile. Celia did the same, then held out her hand for Rosalind to take. They could fall apart and split onto sides at two diPerent ends of the universe, but they would still 1nd their way back here. There was nothing that could truly pull them far from each other.
The front door thudded open.
“Shàoyé?” Ah Dou’s voice Aoated in. He was already calling out for Orion before he had rounded the corner, a note of panic in his voice.
“No, it’s us,” Rosalind supplied. “Everything all right?”
The old housekeeper hurried into the living room, a shopping basket full of vegetables hanging from his arm.
“Terrible news,” he said. “Nationalist vehicles are coming up the road.”
A sharp knock pulled Alisa from her sleep so abruptly that her neck cricked when her head lifted. She made an indecipherable noise.
On the other side of the door, Rosalind somehow understood her. “Yes, now!
Hurry!”
The sun wasn’t even fully up yet. Alisa would have thought they had until daylight rose before someone was on their tail again. She scrambled out of the bed, pushing oP the frilly sheets. In the reAection of the mirror, she Aipped her hair once before tugging the door open, hurrying into the hallway.
She was right in time to see Orion exit his room next door as well and stumble to his knees.
“Hey!” Alisa exclaimed. She hurried to him at once, dropping to a crouch. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you hear that?” he gasped.
The only thing Alisa could hear were Celia and Rosalind’s concerned conversation downstairs. Somehow, she didn’t think that was what he was
referring to.
“Hear what?” she asked. She looked around the hallway.
“Voices.” Before Orion could go on, his hands Aew to his ears, clamping down hard.
Alisa reared back. “Hong Liwen,” she said frantically. “Please don’t be succumbing to the conditioning already. That would be so terrible. We don’t even know if we can get out of the city.”
Orion wheezed something. Alisa didn’t catch it the 1rst time, but on his second try: “Get… Rosalind.”
Alisa was moving at once.
“Rosalind!” She skidded down the staircase. “Rosalind, help!”
The moment she reached the landing and turned for the living room, Alisa slammed right into someone. Two hands shot out to steady her. When she looked up, she was blinking at Oliver Hong, who returned her confusion.
“Why is everyone shouting and running?” Oliver demanded.
“Because we need to go,” Celia answered, appearing from the other end of the hallway. “Kuomintang soldiers are scouting the end of the road. They’re going to come knocking at any second.”
That doesn’t seem right at all, Alisa thought. She had been running from the
Nationalists for months at this point. She knew how they worked. Never had she witnessed a unit forming this fast, especially if they didn’t know where to go. Unless someone in this household had made a phone call—and she doubted it, because even if anyone here had reason to make a summoning, she had slept in the room next to the telephone, so she would have heard it.
Oliver’s eyes Aickered up the stairs. He wasn’t looking for the telephone like her. He was looking directly at Phoebe’s room, a wariness in his eyes.
“I got rid of everything.”
His attention snapped back to Alisa. “I beg your pardon?”
Alisa didn’t think this was a safe place to be elaborating. She merely feigned devout and crossed herself, as if she had suddenly adopted religion.
“I got rid of everything,” she said again. “Don’t worry. You need to check on Orion—he’s acting strange.”
Oliver nodded, both to signal understanding for what she was hinting at and for what she had declared outright. Rosalind hurried into the hallway too, hearing the tail end of Alisa’s instruction. Without asking for further detail, she followed Oliver up the stairs, which left only Celia in the hallway with Alisa.
“Ah Dou said there are two vehicles in the garage, so Rosalind and I are splitting oP,” she said. “I assume you want to go with Rosalind back to your brother.”
“No,” Alisa replied.
Celia looked bemused. Meanwhile, Alisa’s train of thought continued darting from one conclusion to the other at the speed of light, trying to jam a web together and failing at every turn. Sending a military unit into the International Settlement was horri1cally risky. If the Kuomintang suspected their own outlaws to have returned home, they would have sent covert. A single agent, lurking on the rooftops to con1rm a hunch before reporting back. They wouldn’t be sending soldiers. For a faction who de1ned their time in power by small, inoPensive movements, why would they risk accidentally setting oP the foreigners?
“Are you taking Oliver to an underground hospital?” Alisa asked distractedly. There was something here. Complete understanding was hovering right outside her grasp.
Celia nodded. “He needs an actual doctor, as much as he insists otherwise.
The bleeding is starting and stopping too frequently.”
A thud sounded upon the staircase. Alisa and Celia both looked over. Oliver was certainly going to cause further bleeding if he kept launching himself around like that, dragging Orion after him.
“Into the car, into the car,” Rosalind was saying, her voice frantic as she hurried behind them.
“Rosalind, can you even drive?” Alisa asked.
“Of course I can drive.” She opened the door into the garage, pushing Oliver and Orion through. “I know what everything on the dashboard does. In theory.” That de1nitely meant the Nationalists had taught her how to drive once and she had never tried getting on the road. For the love of God, Alisa was tempted
to go with them just in case they crashed.
“If you’re not going with Rosalind,” Celia continued, “are you coming with me?”
“No,” Alisa said again. She tipped her head to the side, listening. Military trucks, rumbling closer. “I’ll regroup with you afterward. Check in with the liaison stations once you’re on the move—I’ll contact you that way.”
Celia hesitated for a moment, and Alisa felt a pang of fear that she might insist on bringing her along anyway. But Celia must have realized that forcing Alisa to go would be like trying to corral a restless cat, so she nodded instead.
“Be careful. Check in later today, even if there’s no news.” Alisa raised an eyebrow. “Why do you sound like Roma?”
Celia reached for her hand. “Because when people care about you, they hold on to you.” She squeezed gently and placed a small orange in Alisa’s palm. “I’m asking out of concern, not restriction. Just be careful, okay? And eat this before you go anywhere, or you’ll starve.”
Alisa nodded. Satisfied, Celia hurried toward the garage, opening the driver’s door of the first vehicle. Rosalind climbed into the second, giving Alisa a quick wave goodbye.
Alisa watched as Celia pulled out first. Rosalind followed, taking her time with more starts and stops, but eventually maneuvered onto the path, making a wide turn to avoid the soldiers arriving on the main driveway.
In the ensuing silence, Alisa didn’t return inside. Celia’s words echoed in her mind as she peeled the orange and popped the segments into her mouth. Alisa was inherently slippery, needing the freedom to roam without constraints. That was just who she was.
She hummed, finishing the last segment of the orange. For certain people, though, she figured she could allow some accountability.
Just as military trucks rumbled into view, cutting through the gardens, Alisa wiped her hands and stepped out of the garage, taking a deep breath of morning air. She found a sturdy foothold on one of the pipes and quickly climbed up.
Hiding behind one of the chimneys, she watched the first truck pull up outside the Hong residence, followed by several others. Though she was at a distance, she didn’t need to see the faces of the men who spilled out. They knocked on the door, asking Ah Dou to step aside so they could survey the house. As they fanned out to search, their movements told her everything she needed to know.
Of course. This wasn’t the Kuomintang at all. This was Lady Hong’s forces.
Alisa jumped from the roof silently, landing at the back of a truck and tucking herself into the corner.
