Another wash of shame, but the fear was stronger. She was more terrified than she even knew was possible. Trapped—the word kept running through her brain like a mouse skittering before a stalking cat. Trapped—trapped. No one was coming to help her. She was very possibly going to die here, the moment he tired of giving her pain and decided it was less trouble to shoot her than to turn her in. Her mouth was so dry with terror, it felt like gravel.
“That’s one hand,” René said casually, setting down the bust. His eyes glittered, perhaps with arousal, perhaps with his own brand of shame—the shame of being made a dupe. Either way, there were no more flinches or flared nostrils for the mess of the scene, the blood, the sounds and smells. “You still have your left hand, and that’s enough to get along. I’ll spare the rest of your fingers if you start talking. Tell me who the woman arrested at the station is. Tell me who ran the network. Tell me why you returned to Lille when you had already escaped to Tournai.”
Verdun, Eve thought. At least the message got out. She had to hope it would be worth it, that the message for which she and Lili were captured would save lives.
“Tell me those things, and I will bandage your hand, give you laudanum for the pain, and take you to the Germans. I’ll even request a surgeon to set your fingers.” René reached out, stroking the side of her face. The path of his fingertips carried its own agony, a shiver of revulsion so deep Eve’s bones quivered. “Just talk to me.”
“You won’t believe me even if I—”
“I will, pet, I will. Because I think I’ve broken you. I think you’re finally willing to speak the truth.”
Eve’s eyes blurred. She wanted to tell him, that was the terrible part. The words were on her tongue: I worked for Louise de Bettignies, code name Alice Dubois, and she ran the entire network. Lili, whose name Eve wouldn’t know if they hadn’t run into that German general on the train platform. If only that had never happened.
I worked for Louise de Bettignies, and she ran the network—a woman not five feet tall and brave as a lioness. And if she were here in my place, she would not say a word no matter how many fingers she lost.
Or would she? How did one know what anyone would do when they had fourteen joints systematically smashed?
But Lili wasn’t here in this chair with her hands bound in front of her. Eve was. Who knew what Lili would do; all Eve could be sure of was what Eve Gardiner would do.
“Who is the woman?” René whispered. “Who?”
Eve wished she could smile mockingly. She had no more smiles to give. She wished she could summon a cutting phrase. She had no insults left. So she just spit blood in his face, spattering his immaculately shaved cheek. “Go to hell, you cut-price collaborating cunt.”
His eyes were all fire. “Oh, pet,” he breathed, “thank you.”
He reached tenderly for Eve’s left hand. She curled her fingers into a fist, fighting him, but he wrenched her hand open and flattened it on the table, holding her like a vise as he reached for the little marble bust. Fucking Baudelaire, Eve thought, baring her blood-laced teeth at René. The terror was overwhelming.
“Who is the woman?” René asked, enjoying himself now, bust poised over the little finger of her left hand.
“Even if you would believe me,” Eve said, “I won’t tell you.”
“You have fourteen chances to change your mind,” René replied, and brought the bust down.
Time splintered, after that. There was scarlet-edged pain, and then velvet-black unconsciousness. René’s metallic voice slid through both like a steel needle, stitching together the waking nightmare and the fainting relief. When a cup of water dashed in her face no longer brought her up from unconsciousness, he pressed a thumb precisely against one of her ruined knuckles until Eve woke screaming. Then he took his time wiping his fingertips on a clean handkerchief, and the questions would start again. So would the sound of breaking bones.
The pain came and went, but the terror was constant. Sometimes she cowered with tears sliding down her face, and sometimes she was able to sit upright in her soiled chair and meet René’s eyes. In either state, she had stopped answering his questions. The agony stole her ability to form words, or even a token laugh.
There was a kind of relief when the last of her finger joints shattered. Eve looked down at the carnage that used to be her hands, and it felt like crossing a finish line. I suppose he might move on to my toes, she thought, remote inside her own shaking, sobbing shell. Or my knees . . . But the pain was already so enormous, the thought of more no longer had the power to frighten her. She had come this far; she could continue her silence.
Because René couldn’t hold her here forever, bleeding all over his Aubusson rug as his restaurant remained closed, as his profits died, and as his neighbors began to wonder about the noise coming from his apartments. At some point he had to give up this game. He would either give her to the Germans, or kill her. Eve barely cared which anymore. Either meant that the pain would stop.
Endure, the whisper came. In Lili’s voice; Lili would never leave her. Endure him, little daisy. Enduring the Germans, once they got hold of her, would be a different game—unlike René, they would have the power to cross-check her lies, verify her truths. But she had no strength to worry about what agonies were to come, only the agonies that were here.
Endure. It was simple, really. No more need to pretend, to keep up a cover, to walk the razor’s edge. Eve was off the razor and in among the teeth now, but at least there was no more need to lie. Just endure.
So she did.
She came out of one of her black faints—they were becoming more frequent—not with a shriek of pain but with a trickle of fire down her throat. René stood behind her, tipping her chin back as he held a glass of brandy to her lips. Eve coughed as a trickle went down, then tried to seal her mouth, but he rammed the glass against her teeth. “Drink this, or I will dig your eye out with an absinthe spoon.”
Eve had thought the terror was at its peak, but there were always new summits, new levels of fear, and she went flying up them. She opened her lips and swallowed the brandy down, a hefty dose that burned her stomach. René sat back down opposite, eyes devouring her.
“Eve,” he said, tasting her real name. “Aptly named. What a temptation you were. You never even needed to hand me an apple; I took you empty-handed and made a muse of you. Look at you now. ‘I see reflected in your face horror and madness, icy and silent . . .’”
“More goddamn Baudelaire?” Eve managed to say.