Page 124 of Our Violent Ends
Juliette flinched, hearing a shout outside. “So we are never to change?” she asked. “We are forever blood-soaked roses?”
Roma took her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “A rose is a rose, even by another name,” he whispered. “But we choose whether we will offer beauty to the world, or if we will use our thorns to sting.”
They could choose. Love or blood. Hope or hate.
“I love you,” Juliette whispered fiercely. “I need you to know. I love you so much it feels like it could consume me.”
Before Roma could even respond, Juliette lunged for a ball of yarn on the table. Roma watched her in confusion, his brow furrowed as she measured a length of string and pulled a knife from her pocket to slice.
He grew less confused when Juliette took the string and started to wind it around his finger—his right hand, as was customary for Russians. She had remembered. Remembered from their whispered conversations five years ago about a future where they could run away and be together.
“I take you, Roma Montagov,” she said, her voice soft, “to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, until death do us part.” She tied a small, secure knot. “I think I’m missing some vows in between.”
“As well as an officiant and some witnesses”—Roma reached for her knife, cutting his own bit of string—“but at least we have a Bible.”
He took her left hand. Carefully, he wound the string around her fourth finger, making such a delicate effort that Juliette didn’t want to breathe for fear it would distract his task.
“I take you, Juliette Cai,” Roma whispered in concentration, “to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, until...” He looked up as he finished the knot. Paused. When he spoke again, he did not look away. “No, scratch that. To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us. In this life and the next, for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours. Those are my vows to you.”
Juliette closed her fist. The string really did feel like a ring: as heavy on her finger as any band of metal. These vows were as substantial as any made in front of a priest or audience. They didn’t need any of those things. They had always been two mirrored souls, the only ones who understood the other in a city that wanted to consume them whole, and now they were joined, mightier when together.
“Even death cannot part us,” she echoed fiercely.
It was a promise that felt colossal. In this life they had been born enemies. In this life they had blood for miles between them, wide enough to run a river, deep enough to forge a valley. In the next, maybe there would be peace.
Outside, metal clashed against metal, an echo ringing all across the city—again, then again. Here, within these four walls, all they could do was hold each other, waiting for noon to come, waiting for the moment they could be free.
Forty-One
Celia seemed to have ended up a soldier, perusing the battleground from above. All she had ever wanted was a quietly revolving world. And she had slapped her hands over her ears, hoping that silence in her head meant silence outside too.
That would work no longer. The world had grown too loud. The city had come to a crescendo.
“Three Scarlets from the north, likely bringing more,” Celia reported. Immediately, the girl who had been idling by the balcony, in wait for her observations, ran off to report. The message would travel from house to house, building to building.
“Your note has been handled,” an incoming girl reported now, nodding to Celia. “We reached Da Nao.”
Celia nodded back, then turned her focus to the streets again. She never thought she would end up a soldier, and... she supposed she wasn’t. She was not among those gathering below, holding bricks and batons and weapons in wait for the gangsters and Nationalists. When the first of the fight broke out, the people only needed to resist until the city could awaken, until their numbers could pour outward and do what they had always done best: incite chaos, take to the streets, overwhelm all the higher hands trying to control them.
“Get ready,” Celia called down.
On cue, the Scarlets approached, startling upon sighting the workers already waiting outside their apartment blocks. They exchanged a glance, as if asking if they should still proceed. When their eyes lifted, sighting Celia from above, a flash of recognition seemed to register.
Celia stepped inside from the balcony.
Not a soldier, but the watching eyes.
Not a soldier, but the beating heart of resistance.
Benedikt pulled at the band on his arm, shedding it as soon as he was off the main roads. The strip of white fabric soaked into a dirty rain puddle, and he shuddered, a brief chill skating down his back.
They were all wearing it, the Scarlets with their knives and guns. Faces smeared with a bit of dirt as if that disguised them as the masses, their armbands printed with the Chinese character for “labor,” as if this was the workers’ cause firing back upon its leaders. He had wagered that he could blend among them unnoticed, and he had been right. It had only taken a quick change of clothes, and hardly any of the Scarlets on the roads stopped to consider him, even if he was running in the opposite direction.
Benedikt paused now, crouching behind a telephone post when he heard a rumble of commotion in the distance. The Concessions were open. He didn’t know when that had happened, when all the foreign soldiers had been commanded to depart their posts. For whatever reason, Route Ghisi was unguarded, and the roads—formerly blocked with sandbags and makeshift chain fences—were now cleared.
The commotion came nearer. Benedikt ducked just in time to hide from the group of Scarlets as they hurried out of the French Concession.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. The Scarlets and Nationalists had come into an agreement with the foreigners, then. The foreigners had allowed this, had known about the purge and warned their people to stay indoors. No matter how much the Nationalists proclaimed their need to retake the country, too much of this city was under the foreigners. Too many Nationalist offices and Nationalist headquarters sat on French land to risk upsetting them.
