“No yelling,” Marshall emphasized. “One shout and the Nationalists will come knocking.”
“Don’t you tell me not to yell,” Rosalind grumbled. “I’ll—”
“Rosalind,” Juliette cut in.
Her cousin fell quiet. There was no running this time. There was nowhere to go. The streets outside were crawling with soldiers, their numbers gathered thickly after the panic that had erupted near the railway station. The attack had happened too close to the International Settlement. One wrong move, and the British would start firing along the borders.
Juliette walked to the window, unwilling to face Rosalind quite yet. She pulled at the boards, peering through the slivers.
“How did they stop the attacks?” she asked.
“They didn’t,” Benedikt answered. “The monsters retreated of their own volition.”
Juliette sucked in a tight breath. Thinned her lips. Crossed her arms—maybe crossed them a bit too tightly and looked as if she was reaching for a weapon, gauging by the way Benedikt made a noise of alarm.
Roma rolled his eyes at his cousin, gesturing for him to step back and get out of the way as Juliette wound around the table, coming to a stop beside Kathleen, in front of Rosalind.
“Was it because of you?” Juliette asked quietly. “Did they retreat because of you?”
“No,” Rosalind replied.
Across the room, Benedikt and Marshall exchanged a nervous glance. Roma leaned into the table, his body inclining in Juliette’s direction. Kathleen bit her lip and shifted to her left until she was against the wall.
“Rosalind,” Juliette said. Her voice cracked. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what you did.”
“Who said I needed help?” Rosalind replied. There was no malice in her tone. Only a faint, faint sense of dread. “I am a lost cause, Junli.”
If the table hadn’t been behind her, Juliette would have staggered back, guts twisting at the sound of her name. The last time Rosalind might have used it was when they were children. When they were barely taller than the rosebushes in the gardens, jumping over each other in a game of leapfrog, diving into the piles of leaves the household staff were trying to sweep and giggling when they messed it all up.
“Oh, don’t try that with me.”
“Juliette!” Kathleen hissed.
Juliette didn’t relent. She plunged her hand into her pocket and dug out the list they had retrieved, unfolding the paper with a brisk snap. “This was on your desk, Rosalind,” she said. “Pierre Moreau, Alfred Delaunay, Edmond Lefeuvre, Gervais Carrell, Simon Clair—five names, and if my guess is correct, five monsters. It is a simple question: Are you the blackmailer?”
Rosalind looked down in lieu of answering. Juliette threw the paper to the floor with a loud curse, her foot stamping on the list.
“Wait, Juliette.” Roma bent over to pick up the piece of paper. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have made much of the curiosity in his voice. Only then Benedikt and Marshall surged forward too, the three of them pale under the hazy bulb light, leaning in to read the list like it was something incomprehensible.
“What is it?” Juliette demanded.
“Simon Clair?” Benedikt muttered.
“Alfred Delaunay,” Marshall added, rocking back on his heels. “Those are . . .”
“Dimitri’s men,” Roma finished. He passed the list back to Juliette, but Kathleen reached over and intercepted it. “Those are all Dimitri Voronin’s men.”
For all Juliette knew, the ground underneath her feet had crumbled to pieces. She was in free fall, her stomach suspended in motion. Rosalind did not deny it, did not offer another explanation. Nor did she do anything to resist when Juliette reached forward and pulled out the chain around her neck. It glimmered under the light, but Juliette paid no attention to hidden jewels. Instead, she flipped over the flat strip of metal at the necklace’s end, running her finger across the engraving on the other side.
Воронин
Juliette choked out a laugh. Half gasping, half guffawing, she was almost struggling to catch her breath when Roma pulled her back gently, easing her grip off Rosalind’s necklace before she could rip the chain off and strangle her cousin with it.
“Don’t judge me,” Rosalind said. Her eyes flickered between Juliette and Roma. “Not when you clearly did the same.”
“The same?” Juliette echoed. She couldn’t stand here anymore. She pushed off the table and marched to the other side of the room, gulping in air.