Luka wasn’t about to let the lady Wolfe sneak up behind him again. He kept his back to the wall whenever one was available. When it was his turn to shower, he did so with the curtain open, never letting his eyes leave the washroom’s lock as the freezing water trickled in a dozen X’s down his shoulders. He did shave with his back exposed, but that was only because there was a mirror involved. The door’s reflection stayed motionless; the straight blade scraped against Luka’s jaw.
She cut him without trying.
He didn’t notice at first. The cut didn’t hurt, just bled: red and less red as it melded with the lather. Luka cleaned it as best he could, keeping his full attention on the removal of hair from skin thereafter.
Adele Wolfe wasn’t worth his fear. Or his bloody throat.
She was waiting for him in the hallway—in plain sight and every bit as striking as Luka’s memories of her dictated. He halted, unsure if he should approach or lock himself in the bathroom again.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting for you,” she said coolly. “I don’t barge in on people when they’re bathing.”
Their sparring match had begun. This initial jab was aimed at the first time they’d met, when Luka had walked into the washroom at the Rome checkpoint and saw… well… nothing short of everything.
“Got any cigarettes?”
“No.” Luka decided to try stepping around the girl, but the hallway was small enough for Adele to block his path.
Eleven months of his life, nearly one year out of seventeen. That was how much time Luka had dedicated to planning out the moment he’d face Adele Wolfe again. Now that it was here, all he wanted to do was keep walking.
“C’mon.” Her chin tilted up in the same way it had their first night out of Dhaka, when the jungle sang symphonies around their camp, and they smoked nearly an entire pack to keep the mosquitoes at bay. That was the night they shared their first kiss. And second. “You always had a few stashed away. Behind your ear? In the hem of your pants?”
She reached out to search these places. Luka dodged. “I’ve got nothing for you.”
Adele’s eyes narrowed. “Are you still sore about Osaka?”
“Sore? Try scarred.”
“I might’ve hit you a little too zealously,” she admitted, “but don’t pretend you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing if you were in my position. In fact, I already suspect you did. Felix told me all about how he found fake me drugged on the Kaiten.
“So how did you do it?” Adele pressed. “Slip the stuff into her kake udon when she wasn’t looking? Shiv her with a syringe?”
“I don’t sedate and tell.”
“You had no problem doing that when we rode together.”
“Things have changed since then.” The Axis Tour of 1955 was closed off in Luka’s mind, encased like some museum display. When Luka thought of the boy who’d sat in the jungle heat, kissing the girl with a cigarette burning between her knuckles, he did not feel angry or vengeful. He felt…
“Changed.” Adele frowned. “Answer me this, then: Why did you invite her to the Victor’s Ball?”
“Why do you care?”
The girl’s chin tilted higher; she stepped closer. “She was me, wasn’t she?”
No. Not-Adele was not Adele. She’d always ever been Yael—a girl who, when she touched his fingertips, made his heart beat a dozen times faster than it ever had in this fräulein’s arms. Yael, who believed that no person’s life was small. Yael, who made him want to be more, but in a way that mattered. Yael, who was in the main room, waiting for him to return so they could start plotting the Reich’s death blow.
“The two of you could not be more different. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
For spending a month locked in a closet, Adele was surprisingly agile, matching his next side step as well as a shadow. “I know that look. You like her. You more than like her.”
“Is that a crime?” Luka asked.
“Some might think so.” Adele blew her angel hairs out of her face. Once upon a time, Luka thought they were cute: all white and frayed, like some ice-princess crown. Now, magic-less, they just looked like hair.
Luka pushed—gently—past Adele. His shoulder met hers, and it truly was nothing. The vague melody of Yael’s voice from the other end of the hall held more electricity.
“Are you sure you don’t have a smoke?” Adele didn’t try to stop him this time, just watched as he stepped around, away.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” he said.