There was too much happening inside the house, so Rosalind had forcibly removed herself to stand by the canal, her 1sts clenched and tucked under her arms.
Lourens had brought a whole luggage case full of concoctions and chemicals, everything he could possibly need to 1x Orion. It was that alone keeping Rosalind from lunging at him even now, that alone which had reined her in after he had casually admitted to his part in the experiments that had changed Orion.
Well… and the fact that Juliette had arrived on the scene just in time to physically yank Rosalind back the moment she released Orion and sprang forward with her arms outstretched. Her cousin had held her in place with a death grip, barely comprehending what was going on and why on earth Rosalind was trying to attack Lourens until Benedikt and Marshall yelled their quick explanations, voices overlaying each other. With a muttered curse, Juliette had taken one look at Orion on the ground and understood, then told Rosalind, “You need to let Lourens make his cure fivst. Then you can decide what he deserves.”
Juliette was right—that needed to come 1rst. Beside the canal, Rosalind breathed out, keeping her eyes closed against the cold Autter of wind. Everyone else was inside. This wasn’t supposed to take long. Lourens hadn’t seemed to fret in the slightest when he’d opened his case. Either he had a 1x that would already work, or he didn’t. Either there was something already invented that could bring Orion back, or Lourens would require a whole lab and years of research time.
“Rosalind.”
Juliette’s voice. When Rosalind ignored the summons, resolute only to listen to the elements and the low rumble of an incoming storm moving across the afternoon clouds, her cousin cleared her throat. The sound carried a layer of warning. Rosalind opened her eyes.
Juliette tipped her head into the house. “Come in.” “Must I?”
If Lourens declared that there was nothing he could do for Orion, she wouldn’t even know what to do. Go back into the city? Hide Orion somewhere to keep him out of his mother’s grasp? And what were they to do about Lady Hong anyway—go after her before she provoked them, knowing that eventually there would be some move made, or wait until trouble rolled in?
“Lourens says—”
“Do you have any errands for me to run?” Rosalind interrupted suddenly. Juliette appeared confused. “What?”
“Letters to drop oP, groceries to get, enemies to kill…”
“First of all”—Juliette put her hands on her hips—“I have people for that.
What’s going on with you?” She couldn’t stand here.
“I can’t,” Rosalind managed. She turned on her heel. The urge to run thrummed from her bones, prickled discomfort along every inch of skin. I can’t, she’d said aloud, but the unspoken continuation of that sentence was I can’t face him fovgetting me a second time. It was so much worse to be waiting in anticipation. So much worse to be cold and shivering and left behind than already hiding away somewhere in the shadows. At last, at the end of the road, where there was no more room to muse about whether he was better oP without her, she had to admit: getting him back meant everything. How could she bear it if she remained nothing to him?
She hastened toward the bridge.
“Could I at least 1nish what I was saying 1rst?” Juliette bellowed after her. “Lourens says he’s awake.”
Rosalind whirled around, one hand already on the railing, one foot raised onto the 1rst stone ledge. Her attention refocused on the doorway, on her cousin waiting, just in time to see Orion emerge from behind her, his eyes wide
and hair disheveled, half the buttons on his shirt undone and no coat anywhere to be found.
She wasn’t breathing. Maybe when Lourens changed her 1ve years ago, it wasn’t only the lack of sleeping and the lack of aging; maybe she simply hadn’t noticed that she would survive perfectly 1ne never ful1lling her lung capacity either—
“Where are you going?” Orion shouted.
Rosalind took a step away from the bridge. In the time it took her to turn properly, Orion shot forward, colliding with her and wrapping her in his arms before she could register what was happening. It felt like she’d had new air injected directly into her lungs. Like she had leaped oP a precipice expecting to hurtle to her death and grown the ability of Aight instead.
“Is it you?” Rosalind asked, though she knew, she’d known the second his arms came around her.
“I love you,” Orion said in lieu of a reply, in perfect replacement of any straightforward answer. “I love you, I love you, I’m sorry I said so many stupid things. I can’t believe I asked why we couldn’t cross the Suzhou Creek.”
Rosalind choked on her laugh, her arms 1nally lifting to clutch him. She allowed herself a few seconds of absorption, focusing on the sensation Aooding into her chest and the solid existence of Orion under her 1ngertips. Then, knowing that they were being watched, Rosalind pulled away, peering back at her cousin in the doorway.
Rosalind jolted. Where did Juliette go?
“Did she return inside?” Orion asked without looking, reading the surprise in her expression.
Juliette’s voice Aoated out from the house, getting fainter and fainter.
“Roma, my love, fetch the lettev openev fov Ah Cao’s messages. He’s sealed them too tightly. And keep Mavshall away fvom Hong Liwen—I’m afvaid fov the state of this house if they befviend each othev….”
It was such an oPhanded statement that Rosalind couldn’t resist a single laugh, looking up at Orion to see if he had heard the same. Orion, though, didn’t seem to be paying attention to what was going on behind him. No longer observed by witnesses, he leaned in, and then he was kissing her to make up for
every day they had lost, every week that had been stolen, every month spent torn apart. Just as Rosalind had known that his memories had come back by the tone of his voice, it was clear at once that there was a diPerence in this, the hum of her skin where there was contact, the sheer familiarity when he touched the back of her neck and she rose to the tip of her toes.
They drew back slowly, putting an inch between them. Orion breathed out, but he didn’t move farther.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Rosalind had always thought of herself as a performer—a pretender. When she let herself laugh, let herself grab Orion and draw him close again, for once in her life it felt like she had found the curtain into backstage, allowed her to shed her mask and show her true face.
“I do hate to interrupt.”
That was a new voice: de1nitely not Juliette. Rosalind pulled away, looking over Orion’s shoulder right as he turned too. Benedikt Montagov leaned in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest casually and a slight lift in his brow. Despite his words, he didn’t seem to hate interrupting at all. If anything, he enjoyed being the one to barge in.
“Do you?” Orion asked, catching the same tone.
Benedikt’s lips quirked. He pushed oP the wall so he could return through the door. “If I don’t, everyone else here is too soft to do it. Come in—there’s been a message.”
The message was from Celia, sent along to Juliette and Roma’s city contacts and brought in as an urgent missive. With the state of the border, however, any urgent missive was half a day old at least, which meant Celia’s message was even more dire.
Alisa got in touch. She found Lady Hong’s base of operation in the International Settlement. Her experiments have succeeded—there’s a new concoction. If you can get back into
the city by sundown, I’ll find a way to disperse her militia for you.
7 Arden Road.
P.S. Alisa also says “я не хочу принимать ванну.”
Rosalind blinked at the last line in the note. She looked at Roma. “Did you transcribe this?”
He shook his head. He also seemed to be puzzling over it, turning the note over and around as though there might be an explanation at the back. “It came in as is. I didn’t get lazy and start writing in Russian.”
Why had Celia suddenly switched to Russian to tell them that Alisa didn’t want to bathe? Or had Alisa herself relayed only that line in Russian? What a bizarre thing to include.
“What does it say?” Orion asked, leaning over the table.
Rosalind shook her head. There was no time for what would probably turn out to be a trivial joke. Her cousin and Roma were deep in thought, mulling over the situation at the table. Benedikt and Marshall, on the other hand, appeared very puzzled, entirely out of the loop by the kitchen counter. Only Lourens remained in the living room, dozing on the couch.
“Orion and I need to head back,” Rosalind decided. “If we leave in the next hour, it’ll time us roughly for sundown.”
Juliette took the note from Roma. Her hands were gentle when she laid the paper down Aat on the table. “We’ll go with you.”
A wave of horror lurched through Rosalind at once. It might as well have been a physical sensation for how viscerally she felt it rip through her organs.
“I beg your pardon?” she demanded. “I thought I just misheard you say you were coming too.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Juliette replied.
“Absolutely not,” Rosalind countered. “Are you kidding me? The city is being invaded. The north is being bombed without pause.”
“That actually increases our chances of blending in without trouble,” Roma said plainly.
“No,” Rosalind snapped. “The last time you were both in Zhabei, you died.”
When the kitchen went quiet this time, it was an awkward silence, compounded by Marshall making a squeaking noise and Benedikt giving him a light kick to shut him up. Rosalind huPed. Juliette watched her, waiting for her to give in.
“I won’t pretend to know what happened in the past,” Orion said, trying to break the tension. “But this could be all-out war within a war. My mother has the 1ghting force of a militia. She is one arm of the Japanese invasion ePort.”
“That’s why you need us,” Juliette said. “No more arguments. I won’t hear it.”
Rosalind was slick with dread. She had just managed to accept that her
burden wasn’t as big as she had believed these past few years. How could they be so careless now as to follow her back?
“I have a question,” Benedikt said suddenly. Though everyone in the kitchen turned to him, he was looking into the living room. “Lourens.”
“Hmm?” Lourens replied, jerking to attention.
To Rosalind’s surprise, Benedikt tilted his head toward her next. “You altered Miss Lang, right?”
“Alteved is not quite accurate.” Lourens cleared his throat. He could sense
the glare that Rosalind had turned on him. She didn’t care if it made her ungrateful. No matter what good he had done in the past, his work with Orion canceled it all out. “That sounds as though I was performing a routine experiment. I was not. Miss Lang was dying. I had to 1nd whatever would act fast and keep her heart going.”
“Sure.” Benedikt reached across the counter, plucking up that original missive from Priest, the one sent to warn Oliver that Lady Hong was after him. “Then I am only curious why we keep talking about the danger of this Lady Hong’s new invention when yours already exists. Hers is stabilized by putting”—Benedikt scanned one of the lines—“sevamovine in a person and taking the mutated version from their children to be used. Why is she spending twenty years and two generations trying to harvest an ingredient before making immortal soldiers? What did you use?”
Rosalind’s 1sts closed tight. From her side, Orion reached over and smoothed his hand over hers, his thumb brushing the inside of her wrist. There was no
pomp accompanying the gesture; in fact, she almost suspected he didn’t realize he was doing it. He had merely sensed her aggression and wanted to put her at ease, too familiar with her small tells.
“Did you know”—Lourens hobbled to his feet, coming to read Priest’s telegram too—“I became acquainted with Hong tàitài because we were both working on this sort of research? I read her thesis when it was published. Fascinating 1ndings.”
“Lourens,” Roma said dryly. “That wasn’t the question.”
“It had been exceedingly difficult to 1nd her because she published under her maiden name, and by the time I’d identi1ed who she was, she had left the city for the countryside,” Lourens went on. “She thought a spy might have sent me. Eventually it was only an exchange that won her trust. She sat down to talk about her thesis when I started sharing my own. She was very interested in what was achievable through chemical conditioning of the mind.”
Orion Ainched. Now it was Rosalind’s turn to clutch his hand in reassurance, interlacing their 1ngers together. Out of his periphery, Roma must have noticed the motion, because when he looked at the scientist again, he was frowning with disapproval.
“Lourens,” he prompted again, much sharper this time.
Lourens started. He peered up from the telegram with his eyes wide, as if he were surprised to 1nd that there remained others in the room while he waAed on. “Pardon?”
Benedikt rapped his knuckles on the counter. “The immortality concoction,” he reminded. “What did you use?”
“Ah. Right.” The old scientist pulled on his beard. “There is only so much known science in this world, you know. I had the same base ingredients, but the entirely wrong method. With twenty years and two generations, Lady Hong’s invention is—as Benedikt said—stabilized. True immortality.” With a grimace, his eyes dropped to Rosalind. “Mine was not stable. Rosalind Lang only has a few years of borrowed time before it kills her.”
