A man was dead, slumped against the far wall with his throat blown out. His blood splattered the wall in a grim tracery of jagged lace. I recoiled.
I crept, more cautiously, to the second room. There were three prisoners here. They might have been sleeping, but the dark stains spreading across their clothes suggested otherwise. I recognized a friend of Mátyás’s who had laughed with me and told me I was pretty. I had not believed it possible for my heart to ache so much, pain piled upon pain.
Noémi caught my sleeve. “I smell blood.”
“Someone is killing the prisoners.”
“But why?”
I had no answer. Perhaps the Circle had planned for this all along, deciding to carry out the death sentences before any rebellion could free the prisoners. Or perhaps the killer acted alone, spurred by misplaced loyalty to Vienna. My legs trembled, and I put one hand against the wall to steady myself. God could not be so cruel, to let me break the Binding and send Hunger’s army just in time, only to see us fail.
A distant roar from the street reached us, human screams mingled with inhuman screeching.
A third and fourth cell, on the opposite side of the hall, revealed only more dead. But the blood from some of the wounds still flowed, and one of the men shifted, groaning with pain. Whoever had done this had acted recently.
I hesitated. The need to hurry overwhelmed me—but I could not simply abandon Noémi.
“Go, Anna,” Noémi said, reading my reluctance. “I will follow as I can.”
The hallway before us was empty. I picked up my skirts, and sprinted back the way we’d come and up a flight of stairs, ignoring the sharp pain in my side as the stays of my corset pressed into me.
I paused on the landing. There—halfway down the hall. A shadowed figure aimed a small handgun through the bars and fired. The report was almost lost in the greater din outside.
I did not let myself consider the madness of facing a man carrying a gun, armed with only my small knife. I padded down the hallway toward the soldier-assassin. He heard me before I reached him and whirled, his teeth bared in a horrible grimace. When he saw me, he laughed.
“And this is the last hope of the resistance? A girl?” His German was precise and clipped.
I closed my fingers around my knife. Words boiled up in my mouth: I am not any girl. I am chimera. But I clamped my lips down around them. This was not tea in some fine drawing room. I was not obligated to answer him.
“Fly true,” I whispered, and launched the dagger.
I am not sure who was more startled when the blade hit: me or the soldier, who staggered back, his hand coming up to grasp the hilt. He yanked it out of his shoulder. A hit—but not a killing blow. He stalked toward me, a dully gleaming gun in one hand and a bloody knife in the other.
Now I thought of the madness of meeting a gun with a knife.
I fell back a pace, fear drying my mouth.
Behind me, Noémi cried out. Light crackled along the walls of the hall, accompanied by a shouted incantation. The man dropped to the ground, the gun sliding along the floor.
I whirled. Noémi stood at the top of the stairs, one hand tight on the railing.
I did not ask her what she’d done.
Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself. My hands shook. I did not want to approach the corpse, but I needed keys. A hasty patdown of the dead man’s pockets revealed nothing, so I picked up the gun, holding it between two fingers.
“Here, lady!” Hands thrust through the bars of the door nearest me. “Hála Istennek!” Thank God. “We are saved!”
“Stand back!” I aimed the gun at the lock and pulled the trigger. The recoil sent shock waves racing up my arm, and I dropped the gun, shaking my stinging fingers. The first prisoner pushed out, pausing only to press a kiss onto my cheek, before scooping up the gun and racing down the hallway, releasing the others.
I followed him, my heart thumping. Noémi trailed behind me.
Bodies surged past us, eager for release.
“Wait!” I cried. “There’s fighting in the streets!”
A few of the passing faces turned to me with wide grins, promising vengeance on the soldiers who’d held them. Others seemed scarcely to have heard me. Still others paused long enough to catch my hands and squeeze them, or kiss my cheek as the first soldier had done. They smelled of sweat and urine and sickness, but I found them beautiful.
Noémi slid her arm through mine, and we pressed against the wall to let the prisoners stream past us. A few of the faces were familiar from Café Pilvax, but none of the faces were the ones I sought. Was Gábor one of the slumped bodies on the floor below me? I would not believe it, not until I had to.
My eyes flickered from face to face with increasing worry. Then—
“Anna!” William struggled toward me. “I thought I dreamed you.” His gaze slipped past me and lit like torches. “Noémi!”
His eyes trailed over her burn scars, but he said nothing, only pulled her to him in a tight embrace. “Forgive me?” he whispered.
I did not hear Noémi’s response. A memory flashed through my mind: not Gábor in Tabán, but Mátyás wrapping me in his arms inside the Binding. Mátyás is dead, justice is gone.
A wave of grief tore through me, bending me in half and compressing my lungs so I could not breathe. And then warm hands were on my shoulders, a gentle voice saying, “Anna?”
Gábor stood before me, one of the last of the released prisoners. Though the grief did not recede entirely, its grip lessened. I could breathe again. My eyes devoured his face: his large, dark eyes, his sharp cheekbones, and the strong, lean line of his throat. There were bruises on his cheeks. What had they done to him?
I flung myself forward. Gábor caught me and groaned, one leg buckling beneath him. I stepped back, frowning. He was hurt.
“It’s all right,” he said, gasping a little. “It’s an old wound.” And he folded his arms around me. For the first time in days, weeks, months, I felt safe.
Some small part of me knew the differences between us had not disappeared—but I shut that part away. It was enough, for now, that he was alive. That we were together. That outside in the streets the last of the Austrian army and the Circle’s soldiers were being driven away by Hungarian patriots and otherworldly creatures.
Gábor’s fingers traced my brow, the tips of my ears, my lips. “I thought I would die without seeing you again.”
My hands slid up his arms, my fingers tangled in the curls at the back of his neck. “So did I.”
Then he set his lips to mine, and the warmth of that kiss spread through my body like the balmy comfort of tea. Against all the darkness and death and turmoil of the last few days, his kiss was everything light, everything good. His kiss was life, springing up around me. His kiss was hope, radiating out from this still, perfect center of a new world.
I kissed him back.