“Zelie. It’s not for nothing. Even if we fail, it’s a worthy fight. Freedom is always worth sacrificing for.” When she tilted her face up, he found himself reaching to smooth back the hair still half clinging to his shirt, tucking it behind her ear. “And if you’re not clever enough, then no one is. If you can’t rebuild it, then it can’t be done.”
When her arms shifted, he expected her to pull away. But instead, one of her hands settled on his cheek, caressed. Then she was pulling his head down, rising up on her toes. Heaven help him, she was all fire, bright and hot, and he’d be nothing but ashes in a moment. But he kissed her back, because how could he not, when love for her crashed through him like raging cymbals,fortississimo? Pulled her close, because how could he not take this one chance to do so?
Will you love her as I love her? When it means letting her go instead of caging her in? Will you love her when it means saying goodbye, if it’s for her good? For yours? For the people you fight for?
Questions he’d been asking himself ever since Blaise had insisted she send them away. He had much to learn, about faithand love both, from a ten-year-old boy. Could he give up his will, as she’d done? If it meant giving up her?
But if he didn’t... would he ever really have her at all?
She kissed him as if she’d been dreaming of it too, as if she needed his touch as desperately as he needed hers. But he felt the shift a moment later, as thought bullied its way forward.
Let her go.The command echoed through his own weary soul, seconds before she went taut.
Obeying was the hardest thing he’d ever done. But he let his arms fall, so that when she reeled back, chest heaving, he offered no resistance. Though when he saw the mask she wrestled into place, he shook his head. “Don’t.”
She spun toward the table again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Grief. I know that’s all it was.” Not all hewanted, but he wasn’t going to fool himself, certainly not at her expense.
The out he offered didn’t seem to be enough though. She squeezed her eyes shut, dragged in a breath, squared her shoulders. “You’ll be reporting to Rivière from now on.”
What?His nostrils flared. He would let her go. He would be whatever she needed him to be, whatever God wanted him to be—but would she really cut him off completely? “I’m not asking anything of you, Zelie.”
At least she met his gaze now. “I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re acting like it.” He straightened too but was careful not to crowd her, not to stand between her and the door. “Let’s get something straight right now.”
When her chin came up like that, it only made him want to kiss her again. “What?”
“I love you.”
She shook her head, challenge in her eyes as if she expected to reason him out of it. “Marcel—”
“I’m not finished. I know very well that loving you is like tryingto catch a shooting star—I can never keep up, and if ever I did, I’d be burned. Yet even knowing that, I can’t stop chasing. Can’t stop wishing. Can’t stop loving you for the flash of light you are in the darkness.”
She turned her face away, fingers curling into her palms.
He held out a hand toward the door. “I’m not going to stop you. I’m never going to hold you back. I won’t mention that kiss or ever ask for another and will never, never distract you from your calling because I know with absolute certainty that God wants to use you to help our people. I love you, Zelie, but it doesn’t come with strings. You can still just be my friend.”
“No. I can’t.” She edged back, toward the exit to the hall. “Don’t you see? Even having you for afriendis too distracting. I don’t have time anymore for dinners at bistros, for conversation, for music. I need to focus on expanding Alliance. Finding those inroads in North Africa. No more distractions.”
A recipe for overwhelm and disaster, that. He shook his head. “Even my SS overseer knows a soldier still has to take time for what feeds one’s soul. It isn’t a distraction—it’s a reminder of what you’re fighting for. Building for. What we’re trying tosave.”
“I’m not like you!” She slashed a hand through the air, a fire in her eyes that looked more like fear than passion. “I can’t balance the two, I can’t divide myself anymore.”
Was this what Gabriel had felt, when Marcel had said he couldn’t just rejoin an orchestra? Zelie, when Navarre’s wife had said she just wanted to focus on her children? This horrible feeling of being judged and found lacking? Wrong? He shoved his hands into his pockets. Thatlet her gostill reverberated inside him.
He nodded, eased back, away from her another step. “All right. Do what you must. Know that I’m praying for you, every day. And if ever you need a friend or a shoulder or”—he chanced a smile—“a nocturne or an aria, I’m here. I’ll always be here, waiting. Loving you in whatever way you need.”
A glint, now, in her eyes. “Until you don’t anymore.”
And just like that, aportamento—a slide from one note to another. From calm determination to heartbreak. Not by her, but for her. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It will.”
“Try me and see.”
She shook her head and moved toward the door.
