“You can take 1rst choice on the rooms.”
Oliver pushed the door open as he spoke, the key to the inn suite dangling from his 1ngers. When Celia stepped through, the carpet made a peculiar crunching noise—and it wasn’t as if she were stepping very hard, wary as she was about not making too much noise in the corridor. Early morning had barely crept over the horizon. They had wanted to get settled before the town started rumbling with activity… and before Rosalind’s tour arrived. Blending in was critical when it came to being successful tails. If the Nationalists found out that two Communists were shadowing their movement, Celia and Oliver would get a bullet between their eyes faster than they could blink, sibling relations to their highest agents be damned.
“Oliver,” Celia said dryly, closing the door after herself. “There’s only one bedroom.”
“What, you don’t like having the illusion of choice?” He tossed his bag onto the table. They adopted the same routine whenever they were on these sorts of missions: going in and out of diPerent towns to follow a target. Get the cheapest suite at a shabby inn, which usually meant one bedroom. Celia would take the bed. Oliver would insist he loved sleeping on the hard living room carpet, that she was doing him a favor. Instead of just admitting that his sense of chivalry would give him a heart attack if she so much as suggested taking turns on the bed, he claimed Aoors improved his posture and toughened up his back.
Celia shrugged. When her bag moved up and down with the motion, Oliver reached out quickly to take it from her, placing it on the table too.
“I suppose,” she said, indulging him, “that I will choose this one.”
She walked into the bedroom, making a quick inventory. It was a narrow box of a space, barely enough walking room on either side of the small bed. One wooden table in the corner, with a lamp plugged into the wall. She turned the light on. Then she drew the curtains tight and shivered.
“I’m going to take a look around the perimeter before the day begins,” Oliver called over. He rustled about in the living room, moving the furniture into a more secure formation. “Something felt oP on our way here.”
Celia had sensed the same. Being spies meant growing sixth senses triggered by the faintest brush of notice. She had felt watched while walking in. And though Celia had looked around thoroughly, eyes scanning the nearby tree line and searching the hazy morning for movement, there had been nothing.
Orange light pricked through the curtains. Sunrise, creeping higher.
“Do you want me to accompany you?” Celia asked, returning to the living room. It was rare for trouble to arise so early in a mission. Usually, though, when they were assigned to travel, they were only gathering intelligence. Drawing conclusions on soldier units or passing messages for other agents who needed to make contact but couldn’t go into the city. For a mission where they were directly in the Nationalists’ line of sight, anything was possible. Maybe they had already put people here to prepare for Rosalind’s arrival. Maybe it was already too late.
Oliver shook his head. “Stay here. I doubt it’s anything.”
“All right.” She wandered over to the dresser. Spare sheets in the 1rst drawer. Towels in the second drawer. “I will search for hearing devices.” Celia pulled out one of the mold-ridden sheets. “Though I’d be shocked if someone can get equipment in here when they cannot even get fresh laundry.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t say that.” Oliver, meanwhile, was shaking a second scarf from his bag. It wasn’t as cold here as Shanghai’s below-zero wet freeze, but enough to warrant bundling thickly. “I don’t want to think about sleeping on mold.”
Celia tossed the sheet onto the Aoor. “You’re out of luck, then.” “None of them?”
She tugged forth another sheet. Then another. “Would I ever lie about moldy sheets, Oliver?”
“I know you have a magic touch. Summon one that is clean.” “Unfortunately, my magic has its limits.” She tossed out the 1nal sheet. Now
there was a mountain on the Aoor and nothing more in the drawer. “Each and every one of them is moth-bitten in some shape or form.”
Oliver made a theatric sigh. He stuck a hat on. Both to brace against the cold and to shield his face.
“How much will I have to plead to be invited into the bed instead?” Celia blinked. Turned around slowly.
Wait, what did he just say?
The silence drew on. She needed to say something. She needed to say something right now.
“I’m… going to check in there for listening devices.”
Promptly, Celia walked into the washroom, then slammed the door after herself.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? her reAection bellowed.
I don’t know! she mouthed back.
THAT WAS YOUR CHANCE TO TALK TO HIM!
“Be careful,” Oliver called from outside. His voice was entirely level, with no indication of concern over her behavior. He was joking, after all, in that terribly sardonic way of his. No reason to believe otherwise. “I will return shortly.”
The main door closed after him. The suite fell quiet. And Celia was arguing with herself in the mirror.
With a huP, she stormed out of the washroom, feeling absolutely ridiculous. She had been brooding for weeks about his silence, and at the 1rst opportunity that presented itself for her to throttle words out of him, she turned in the other direction instead. The problem was, even if she did summon the willpower to demand an answer, what was she to say? In truth, Oliver had spoken everything he needed to say. It was on her now.
Celia kicked the mound of sheets.
How was she supposed to accept this? She had grown up convinced that romance would skip over her. As though it were a great hand from above counting its darlings, and when it reached her, it would only grimace and cover her up with a blanket of invisibility. Instead… instead she was pulling that
blanket over herself, scrambling for excuses to keep the comfort. She had spent years ignoring whatever it was that was trying to bloom to life between them, so why did Oliver have to go tugging at it—
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Celia froze, her foot halting halfway through another kick. She had been so lost inside her own head that she was only just hearing the sound coming from the bedroom.
At once she reached inside the slit of her qipao and pulled out her gun. Maybe she ought to start carrying blades around instead, because if she needed to 1re a bullet, it was going to be loud. Then again, if she had to 1ght with a knife, the only person she would be stabbing was herself.
As quietly as she could manage, Celia slid around the bend of the wall and entered the bedroom. It was brighter than before. The sun was climbing higher. Where had the sound come from? Was it Oliver surveying the perimeter?
Celia waited, listening. Though the sound didn’t come again, her attention gravitated 1rmly toward the window. When she’d pulled those curtains shut, the window had de1nitely been closed.
So why was the fabric billowing now, letting in a faint breeze? She crept forward a step. Another.
Then, before her very eyes, a small hand stuck itself into the room, groping around the wall.
Celia’s heart leaped to her throat, but she didn’t waste time with the scream that lodged itself on her tongue. With one frantic motion, she hurtled to the window and grabbed the hand, pulling the intruder into the room. She was pointing her gun at them before the tumble of motion stilled at her feet.
“Oof!” Alisa Montagova peered up, her hair tangled around her face. She gave
a sheepish smile. “Hello.”
“Oh my God.” Celia tossed the gun away quickly, then scrambled to haul Alisa upright. When the girl was standing again, she patted along Alisa’s arms, making sure nothing was broken. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry.” Alisa winced, rubbing her shoulder. “I was trying to make a sly
entrance. I didn’t think you would hear me undoing the latch.” Celia frowned. “Is the front door too ordinary for you?”
“Yes.” With the trickiness of a house cat, Alisa slinked away from Celia, tugging out of her grip and prancing around the room. “I won’t stay long—the Kuomintang are still after me. I just needed a moment with you once Oliver left.”
Of course it was Alisa who had been watching them as they came into the inn. Alisa and her creepily keen stare.
“What is your objection to Oliver?” Celia asked. She couldn’t hold back the slight hitch in her voice.
It had been the same that night in October. Alisa had been about to give her something. Celia hadn’t known it at the time, but Rosalind told her later it was Lady Hong’s last vial—the chemical concoction that she had been killing civilians to perfect. When Alisa spotted Oliver in the house, she had turned on her heel and run. Celia hadn’t seen her since then.
Alisa folded her arms. Twisted her lips, which had gone almost entirely white from the cold outside. “It’s not an objection to him,” she answered. “He’s loyal. If anything, I am looking out for his interests so that he’s not making a hard decision.”
Celia considered the answer. She hauled the blanket oP the bed and, without bothering to wait for approval, draped it over Alisa’s head to warm her.
“Are you and I not loyal, Alisa?” she asked quietly.
Alisa let the blanket settle around her head. Her dark brown eyes pulled wide, her hands clutching the covering.
“I have to report to you, but you can’t report back,” Alisa said in a hush. “Or report up, I suppose. Or… whatever—you can’t report in any direction, including Oliver.”
“I am technically your superior,” Celia countered. “I do still have the right to
handle any intelligence you pass me on my own call.”
“Yes, but I’m not telling you because you are my superior.” Alisa squirmed deeper into the blanket. “I’m telling you because you are Rosalind’s sister. Two very diPerent matters.”
So this was what it was. Celia felt a breath snag in her throat. “Tell me.”
“I think there’s an ambush coming for her.” With a waddle, Alisa hurried to the window, peering out into the yard. The curtains had been left disturbed,
with a gap that spilled sunlight into the otherwise gray room. This inn was located in a less populated part of the town, surrounded by the woods on one side and a carefully cultivated scenic view on the other. The innkeeper had planted bamboo shoots that framed the stone walkways. Dug a little pond into the dirt, its water providing a drinking station for the birds that Aew near the lotus Aowers.
“I don’t know how soon,” Alisa continued. “When I move around, I don’t go any farther north than Nanjing… which, I know, is still very south. But whispers travel through major cities faster than they do through the townships. When Shanghai’s papers are constantly writing about Lady Hong’s traitorous forces, people are going to be looking for her too.”
“Lady Hong has been spotted,” Celia guessed. “Hasn’t she?”
Alisa turned away from the window. “I stuck my nose into our own grapevine last week. We have a few safe houses left in Nanjing that are receiving underground reports. There’s been mobilization in the Shandong region. Lady Hong is heading south, very quickly. She must have seen Rosalind’s tour route and decided to intercept her, especially now that Rosalind has run her mouth lying on the very 1rst stop, claiming to have the vial.”
Rosalind did what?
Celia’s head was starting to hurt. She couldn’t keep up with the papers quickly enough while traveling.
“I don’t think the Nationalists know that Lady Hong has left Manchuria yet. It’s hard for them to determine which units are theirs and which units are her brainwashed soldiers wearing Kuomintang uniform,” Alisa went on. “But… but our side might soon. We have been observing for long enough to tell the diPerence.”
A thud came from upstairs. It was unrelated, only other guests waking up, but Celia stiPened nonetheless. They needed to wrap up this conversation. Oliver would be returning at any moment.
“You know what my mission is at the moment, don’t you?” Celia asked. “We’re supposed to want Lady Hong to come after Rosalind. That way we can grab Orion.”
“I know. I 1gured Rosalind wanted that too the moment I saw the tour poster.” Alisa tapped her foot on the Aoor. Its echo was loud, like gunshots, like a gavel striking death sentence after death sentence. “I wanted to give you a warning, nonetheless. Because if the objective comes down from central command…” A pause. “What if Oliver is instructed to grab his brother without any regard for Rosalind in the middle?”
Celia reared back. “You are not trying to imply Oliver would kill Rosalind for
our goals.”
“I absolutely did not say that.” Alisa sighed. Her shoulders slumped, and then the blanket fell oP too, crumpling in a semicircle on the Aoor. “I am only saying that we’re 1ghting a war, and I don’t want you to be taken aback. If it were my sister, I’d want to raise my shields early. Be careful. The battalion is arriving any day now.”
With that, Alisa hurried to the window again, clambering up onto the sill.
She turned back. “I will be close by. Give a shout if you need me—” “Wait.”
Celia stepped into the living room brieAy and lugged her bag to the bedroom. From a side pocket, she pulled out a trinket she had bought just before they left the city, a tiny ox with a blond fringe that covered its eyes. It had reminded her of Alisa, so she’d held on to it on the chance they might run into each other.
“For you,” Celia said, pressing it into Alisa’s hand. “Happy belated birthday.”
Alisa beamed. She held the ox up to the light. “I haven’t been keeping track of the Western calendar anymore. This is adorable.”
“Looks a little like you, don’t you think?”
Alisa snorted, but her expression was one of delight. “I will treasure it forever and ever. See you soon.”
She hopped oP the sill and disappeared. The glass pane swung with her momentum. A bird started to sing outside. A chorus soon followed.
Quietly, Celia closed the window, then gathered up the fallen blanket and threw it back onto the bed. She picked up her gun and put the safety on. When she tried to shove it into her bag for safekeeping, the weapon slipped from her grasp, landing on the carpet with a small thump. Celia sighed. Its shape was
hideous. As would be the shape of knives in her bag too. Or wires, or poison bottles, or anything they needed to use in this war.
Goddamn. She had always known a day like this would come: when it
became apparent that she and Rosalind were working for diPerent sides. She just didn’t think it would get this complicated. An enemy sister who was utterly committed to putting herself in danger. A mission partner who always felt ten miles away, no matter how much she wanted to trust him.
Oliver walked back into the suite at that moment. When he stepped near the bedroom entrance and saw her, he stopped in his tracks. “Sweetheart?”
Celia looked up. Her heart twisted. “Yes?”
His brow furrowed. “What is your gun doing out?”
For a moment, she considered telling him the truth. Alisa showed up. She thinks the ambush is coming any moment. Can you promise not to harm my sister? Can you do that for me?
Maybe that was why Oliver chose to operate in silence with his information, why he would rather withhold than tell her what he had been tasked to do. Let them Aip the table—let her stand here wondering if she ought to ask for his input, and she clammed up in an instant. It felt so much worse imagining her requests denied. Instead, she could let them hover forever in ambiguity, in that space where she was neither accepted nor rejected. If she never asked, she wouldn’t have to face the possibility of a terrible answer.
Celia kneeled to pick up the gun, breaking from Oliver’s gaze.
Her father had been the one to teach her that lesson. There were so many moments in childhood when she would have been better oP had she asked fewer questions. She would be bearing far fewer scars ripped into her heart if she had written her own narrative and just stuck with it. Instead, she fumed around the living room during that 1rst month back in Shanghai, unaccustomed to the sounds and sights after so long in Paris, nothing better to do than to hover around her father all day. She wanted to press him to a breaking point, as if that might make him reconsider whether it was really necessary that she take Kathleen’s name. Why were they pretending a diPerent sibling had passed away from illness in Paris? Did they think their relatives so unforgiving that they
would rather believe Kathleen Lang had always looked like this than that the sole Lang son had come back a daughter?
Celia had pushed it. Kept pushing it. Finally, she had said: “I wish you would hear what I’m saying. Don’t you care about how I feel—”
“No, I don’t!” her father had interrupted. “You shouldn’t have this much to say about it to begin with. I wish you’d go back to how you were born, but apparently that’s not an option, is it?”
Celia had reared back with such shock that she hadn’t known how to react. Not until she was telling Rosalind about the conversation later that night while they were tucked into bed and the sobs started, unbearable bubbles of grief Aoating up from her stomach and into her throat.
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Rosalind had spat 1ercely, wrapping her arms around her. “I love you like this. I love you as you are.”
Pretending to be Kathleen during her time with the Scarlet Gang had been a compromise. It felt safe and protected her, but after that day with her father, it began to gnaw at her inside every time she thought about her situation. She had pushed too far, and instead of being able to trust that her father was simply looking out for her, she realized with chilling certainty that this was the only option he would allow. If Kathleen had lived—if her sister hadn’t died in Paris and left her identity for the taking—Celia would have been the one destined to die instead.
“Sweetheart.”
Celia blinked, pulled from her thoughts. She wasn’t in that place anymore; she had severed her ties to the Scarlet Gang and the need to shield herself from their judgment.
“I was just moving it, don’t worry.” Finally, she tucked the weapon into her bag. Oliver had entered the room with an unmistakable presence, the chill of winter mingling with a metallic tang in the air. She stood slowly, taking in his demeanor. “Everything clear on the perimeter?”
“We seem to be good. But…”
As she stood face to face with him, Oliver took her chin in his hand. The touch was casual, like a gentle nudge to get past her in a hallway, but his eyes were narrowed and intense.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
Celia’s breath caught in her throat. She could ask him directly, but then what? If the scenario she dreaded unfolded, he might turn against her. If the one she hoped for came to pass, he might choose her and risk everything he stood for. How could she ever ask that of him?
She needed to let this play out. She needed to save her sister without getting in his way.
“Celia,” Oliver prompted.
“Yes,” Celia said 1rmly. “Never better.”
