Page 64 of The Moonlight Healers

Vogel pushed himself up in bed. “Send her away from here. She’s not to set foot in this hospital again. Or I’ll have her arrested. That’s an order, Sister.”

Cecelia narrowed her eyes, then leaned over Vogel’s bed until her mouth was only inches from his ear. “You are only alive right now by God’s will and my grace. And if you try to tell your superiors, no one will believe you. They will see you as weak, and poisoned in the mind. So, you will say nothing of this.”

Vogel’s jaw twitched at this challenge to his authority.

“And you will not harm her,” Cecelia continued, any trace of subservience gone. “Or you will wonder, every time you go to sleep, for as long as you’re inside these walls, if you will see the morning.”

Cecelia straightened as Vogel’s face became pale.

“Good night.”

Cecelia guided Helene out of the ward. “Don’t say a word.”

Helene let her cousin lead her down the long hospital hallways until they reached the empty chapel. “I have to go back there,” she said immediately. If Cecelia hadn’t stopped her, it would have worked.

Cecelia placed her body directly in front of the chapel door. “No,” she said. She held her head high, in a way that echoed her posture in Dieppe, when she had stood in front of Vogel’s gun to save Thomas.

Helene had to make her understand. “Thomas will die. If I don’t…if I can’t finish what I started back there, what you stopped.”

Cecelia didn’t move. “I know.”

“You have to let me go back there, Cecelia.”

“I can’t do that.”

Helene tried to push past her cousin but she grasped her by the shoulders, towering over her. “It’s over.”

Panic clawed inside her. She couldn’t let Thomas die. Not when she had been so close. “But I can save him.”

Helene struggled against Cecelia’s grasp, but she was surprisingly strong.

“You’d let a man like that live, instead of someone who is good and kind? You’d choose a Nazi over Thomas? Are you that much of a coward?”

Helene struggled harder. She wanted to scream until her throat was raw. She was furious at Cecelia for stopping her, but even more furious at herself for her failure.

Cecelia released Helene’s shoulders and caught her wrists. She placed Helene’s hands on her own chest. “If you have to take a life, take mine. I won’t fight you, Helene. My soul won’t resist. It will be easy.”

Despite her calm demeanor, Cecelia’s heart fluttered like a hummingbird.

“Go on,” Cecelia said, pressing Helene’s hands tighter to her chest. “Save him. Take my life. I’m giving it to you.”

Helene felt horror rise in her throat. “You would really give your life for Vogel’s?”

“Not for his life. No. For yours.”

Helene’s arms shook as Cecelia released her hands. She moved them quickly away from Cecelia’s chest, from her rapidly beating heart.

“I can’t do that.”

“But you could take his life so easily?”

“I wanted to. I tried.”

Cecelia’s eyes shone with a compassion Helene knew she didn’t deserve. She felt the fight leave her body and collapsed into the nearest pew.

“I know what you’re feeling,” Cecelia said as she sat across the narrow aisle.

“How could you?” Helene asked, her voice hollow as Cecelia folded her arms on the bench in front of her.

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