Flossie appeared atop a high cliff. Down below, the wintery North Sea crashed and rolled, booming as it hit the jagged rocks. A fierce wind buffeted the tiny tufts of plant life that could be seen through the snow. Flossie stood steady in the twilight, impervious to it. She stared far out to sea at the white-tipped waves — her father’s domain.

So this was the place it had all happened — those events she’d read about so many times. The Battle of Jutland had been the strangest of battles, with each side claiming victory. The British had lost almost twice as many ships and men as the Germans, but had then controlled the North Sea for the rest of the Great War. However, Flossie saw it only as she saw this war. There were no victories. No winners. Everyone lost. Over and over again, as relentlessly as the waves crashed onto the rocks beneath.

The upcoming confrontation with Viktor Brun looming over her, Flossie could think of nothing she needed more right now than her father’s advice. She had no idea how she was going to defeat Brun, and only the sketchiest promise of help from Hugo Howsham to fall back on. She also knew she didn’t have the power to awaken her father and wouldn’t want to do so even if she were able to. It was wrong for a Turnkey to awaken the dead from rest unless absolutely necessary. She would simply have to wait and hope that he might sense her.

Flossie closed her eyes and began to think of her happiest memories of her father. Their time together had been short. Even before he was taken from her, he had always been torn between his family and the ocean. However, the memories she did have she treasured, and they came to her mind vividly now. Walks in Hyde Park and boating on the Serpentine. An outing to the seaside where their beach chairs kept being blown away — her father cursing the wind and then laughing at the futility of it all. The time a squirrel had somehow found its way into their house and she had seen her father panicked for the only time in her life. Flossie laughed out loud remembering that and opened her eyes.

And there he was.

Resplendent in his dark-blue uniform with its shiny gold buttons — tall and solid and, oh, so very real.

Flossie’s mouth opened, ready to say all the things she hadn’t been able to say for so many years. And then she found she didn’t have any words at all, so she ran into his already open arms instead.

The pair clasped each other tightly. But beneath the happiness of being together once more, Flossie could feel an undercurrent pulling as strong as the North Sea below them. It would have been possible to talk for days about all that had passed since they had last seen each other. But she could feel him being called back to the sea. Back to his men. He might not have been a Turnkey, but he commanded his men even in the twilight world. His men needed him more than Flossie did — they were already asking him to return.

She pulled back then.

“You’re a Turnkey! And taken too young, of course. How beautiful you are,” her father said, smiling down at her, “and how much I have missed you. Though you are always with me, you know.”

“I know,” Flossie said. “I also know you have to go, Papa, but there’s something I need to ask you before you do.”

“Azure,” her father replied, with a laugh. “You came all this way to ask me that?”

Flossie chuckled. As a small child she was always insisting her father tell her his favorite color, and the answer was forever a shade of blue. A shade of the ocean. She was amazed at how many shades there were. He never failed to come up with a new one for her: celeste and cerulean, teal and turquoise, verdigris and viridian.

“I’m a little older now, Papa,” she said. “No, it’s about Viktor Brun.”

A dark shadow instantly passed over her father’s face. “Viktor Brun? What about him?”

“He’s now of the twilight, but he’s found a way to try to win the war by passing messages from the other side.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Her father harrumphed. “That odious man.”

“I have to stop him,” Flossie continued. “I was thinking the more information I have the better, and I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about him. Does he have a particular weakness? Anything that would be useful for me to know? I remember you knew him from your university days.”

“That’s right. From Oxford. You know, I detested him at the time, but the truth was we were very alike in many ways.”

Flossie recalled the fear in the girl’s eyes at the Invalids’ Cemetery, Viktor Brun’s ranting and raving at Wewelsburg Castle. Surely Viktor Brun was nothing like her father.

“You might think he’s not like me, but the fact of the matter is that he’s just a man, like all men. And just like me, his weak point will be easily located.”

Flossie waited for her father to tell her the wise words that would help her defeat this man.

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. Flossie savored the moment. He moved back again and their similar eyes met.

“His weak point, my darling, will be his family.”