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“I mourned,” Roma said just as softly. “I mourned for months, years outside the gates of the cemetery. Yet I don’t regret choosing you. No matter how cruel you think yourself, your heart beats for your people. That’s why you shot him. That’s why you took the chance. Not because you are merciless. Because you have hope.”
Juliette looked up. If Roma turned, even the slightest, they would be nose
to nose.
“I regret that I was ever put in the position to choose,” Roma continued. His words were faint, whispered into the world while the streets roared with sirens, the building beside them teemed with chaos, and policemen along every street corner screamed for order. But Juliette heard him perfectly. “I hate that the blood feud forced my hand, but I can’t—I did what I had to do and you may think me monstrous for it. The feud keeps taking and hurting and killing and still I couldn’t stop loving you even when I thought I hated you.”
Love. Loved.
Hated. Love.
Juliette pulled away, but only to look Roma in the eye, her pulse beating its crescendo. He did not flinch. He met her gaze, steady, unwavering.
In that moment, all Juliette could think was: Please, please, please.
Please don’t break me again.
“So you,” Roma went on, “cannot fool me any longer. You are the same indomitable girl I would have laid my life down to save. I made my choice to believe in you—now you make yours. Will you keep fighting, or will you crumble?”
She had spent a lifetime doing both. She could hardly tell the difference between the times when she was fighting and the times when she was barely holding herself together, crumbled pieces staggering forward step-by-step. Maybe those two were one and the same.
“Answer me something first,” she responded with a whisper.
Roma seemed to brace. He knew. He knew what she was going to ask.
“Do you still love me?”
Roma’s eyes shuttered closed. A long second passed. It seemed that Juliette had misspoken, had come across a crevasse and misjudged her leap, spiriting down, down an endless dark rip—
“Do you not listen to me when I speak?” he answered shakily, his lip quirking up. “I love you. I have always loved you.”
Juliette had thought her heart hollow, but now it was encased with gold. And it seemed certain then that her heart remained functional after all, because now it was bursting, bursting—
“Roma Montagov,” she said fiercely.
Roma seemed to startle at her tone. His eyes grew wide, bordering on concerned. “What?”
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
And on the patch of grass behind a Communist stronghold, swarmed with police from every settlement, below the crisscrossed telephone wires and bloody glass windows, Juliette reached for Roma. She took his face between her hands and shifted forward to meet his lips, kissing him with all the intensity of their lost years. Roma responded in kind, his arm coming around her waist and holding her—holding her like she was precious, a sprite snagged out of the wind.
“Forgive me,” he breathed when they broke apart. “Forgive me, Juliette.”
She was tired of hatred and blood and vengeance. All she wanted was this.
Juliette twined her arms around him and pressed her chin to his shoulder, holding him as close as she dared. It was a reacquaintance, a homecoming. It was her mind whispering, Oh, we are here again—at last.
“I forgive you,” she said softly. “And when this is over, when the monster is dead and the city is ours again, we’re going to have a proper chat.”
Roma managed a laugh. He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Okay. That’s fine by me.”
“For now”—Juliette released him, extended her hand—“I suppose we have a monster to find.”
Thirty-Four
A light rain starts over the city. The people on the streets run for shelter, hastening to draw their baozi stalls off the pavement. They snap at their children to hurry, to get inside before the skies fall… and before the roar of sound echoes up from the south.
By now everyone has heard the rumors. A Communist revolt plots to stir today in Nanshi. At first they planned a slow uprising, factory after factory, following each other’s example in a precise domino effect. Now they hurry. They have heard about the murder of their Secretary-General. They worry that there is an assassin after the Party. They scream in vengeance and vow to rise with the workers of the city all at once, before any one segment can be cut down.
