Page 97 of Winterveil

It didn’t need elaboration. Julian just nodded and said, “You too.”

“Did you do it for me?” Nadiya asked. “Or for her?”

She inclined her head toward Klaudia, who was walking ahead of them with Giselle. Klaudia, who had impressed upon them the importance of cooperation, who had all but ordered them not to defect. Still, Julian had considered it, of course—not at the beginning, but as the moments wore on and the screams raked at him like claws. He thought of how easy it would have been to call out Deckard’s name.

But then he’d looked through the glass and seen Nadiya huddled there beside him, tears wetting her cheeks and making her dark eyes shine. A memory had layered itself over the real world, a familiar face over her face. And he’d bit down so hard on his tongue that he tasted blood.

“I did it for all of us,” Julian answered at last. “Isn’t that the point?”

Now Julian blinked, banishing the echoes of their conversation. He met Klaudia’s gaze, which was wavering with a shy sort of concern.

“Deckard played something for you, too,” she said. Her tone was careful, making it more of a statement than a question.

Instantly weariness overwhelmed him. “Yes.”

Klaudia glanced briefly away and worried her lower lip—a habit of hers that Julian had come to recognize. “It might be helpful to know what it was.”

Julian stiffened and didn’t reply.

“For strategic purposes, of course. Deckard used it against you once. He might do it again.”

Klaudia, for all her many skills and virtues, did not suffer from an excess of tact. Usually he liked that about her—her utter lack of interest in the subtle graces of social interaction charmed him. Now he wished she had more of an instinct for comfort rather than merely an eye for weakness.

But, when he remained silent, Klaudia dipped her head and said, “All right. Get some sleep.” Julian tried not to flinch at the obvious disappointment in her voice.

“You should, too,” he said. “You can read the files again in the morning.”

Klaudia hesitated.

“Come on. You deserve to rest.”

She worried her lower lip again and then said quietly, “Okay.”

Julian was surprised, and more than a little moved. It was the first time, he thought, that he had managed to win her over.

She turned and started up the steps to the mezzanine. Julian watched her for a moment before he found his words. One word, really.

“Klaudia.”

She paused halfway up the stairs and looked back at him.

“Thank you,” he said. “For coming for me.”

It was Prokofiev; he recognized it now—the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet. Klaudia nodded, her gray eyes bright as they lingered on him for just one moment more. Then she continued up the stairs and was gone.

When Julian finally lay down in bed, he was dismayed to find that, despite his exhaustion, he still couldn’t sleep. It had nothing to do with the fact that Crispin was slumbering a few yards away, his bed in the path of silvery moonlight that flooded in from the window. It was that whenever Julian closed his eyes, memories flowered up, and his ears rang with the relentless, echoing screams.

He didn’t know how Deckard had gotten those screams. His explanation didn’t make any sense. There were no recordings of his brother’s voice—at least, nothing that Deckard would have been able to get his hands on. His father had made sure of that.

His brother. Aurelian. He had always been a disappointment to their father, a source of immense yet private shame. Three years younger than Julian, so close in age, but Aurelian had always been different. He would often go days or even weeks without speaking, locked in some private quarrel with himself, face contorted and dark.

One of the many doctors their father engaged had suggested that the family all learn sign language in order to communicate. His father had dismissed the doctor with none too gentle language of his own. But Julian had taught both himself and Aurelian basic ASL, a few signs for desperate times, when spoken words were impossible or insufficient.

Though Aurelian’s distress was mostly silent, it was palpable, like the heaviness of the air before a storm. He would rock back and forth sometimes for hours, or repetitively scratch the palms of his hands until they were raw and bleeding. In the worst moments he would bang his head against the wall, while Olivia hid in terror and his mother sobbed and his father shouted. Julian was the only one who dared approach him, hesitantly, tremulously, speaking in soft tones and hoping that something—anything—he could do might make it right.

Those were the bleak moments, but there were as many happy moments, too. Aurelian’s favorite place had been their compound on Martha’s Vineyard, where he would walk barefoot on the sand and dart in and out of the foaming surf, his laughter carried down the beach by the wind. Julian would heft his brother onto his back so he could reach the low branches of the pear trees, plucking the just-ripe fruit and scattering the white flowers around them like snow.

But that last night, Aurelian had screamed. Julian still didn’t know exactly what had pushed him to the edge. It could be odd things, small things, like the sudden sensation of his own shirt collar rubbing his neck or the squeaking of someone’s shoes on the floor. Maybe it had been their father, raging as usual, as if his anger could break the parts of Aurelian he didn’t like and draw out a new son from the ruins.