She pulled the lid open. It was as she had remembered. The items remained the same.
A poster, an old train ticket, and a grenade.
The box had sat untouched for so long, a keepsake of knickknacks Juliette had once pulled from the attic because the items looked too glamorous to rot among the broken lampshades and discarded bullet casings. She wondered if the Scarlets had not removed this from her room because they had not thought to open the box, or if it was so absurd to think that she would use a grenade to do damage that they did not bother.
Juliette closed her palm around it. To her left, the reflection in the vanity mimicked her movements, the glass capturing her fretful expression when she glanced up.
“How would the war proceed if I killed them right now?” Juliette asked, speaking to herself, to the mirror, to the city itself as it ground to a halt in this cold, hollow room. “They mingle beneath me, prominent Nationalists and war generals. Maybe Chiang Kai-shek himself has stepped in. I would be a hero. I would save lives.”
A burst of laughter echoed up from the floorboards. Glasses clinked together, toasts given to celebrate mass slaughter. The blood feud had been bad enough, but it was something Juliette believed she could change. Now it had grown to unrecognizable proportions, split bigger than it ever needed to be. Scarlet against White Flower, Nationalist against Communist. Dissolving a blood feud was one thing, but a civil war? She was too small—far too small—to meddle with a war that spanned across the country, that spanned across their whole forsaken history as a nation.
Another burst of laughter, louder this time. Let her drop an explosive to her bedroom floor, and it would send down a direct blast, strike all the people in the living room. Juliette felt the rush of loathing take root in her. She condemned the city for its hate. She condemned her parents, her gang. . . . But she was equally terrible. One final act of violence to end it all. She was angry enough to do it. No more Scarlet legacy. No more Scarlet Gang. If she was dead too, she didn’t need to live with the pain of her terrible act—herself and her parents, in exchange for bringing down everyone else in the house.
“Let the city weep,” she hissed. “We are past hope, past cure, past help.”
She pulled the pin.
“Juliette!”
Juliette whirled around, her hand tight around the grenade. For a fleeting second, she thought it was Roma on her balcony, perching on the railing once again. Then her vision sharpened, and she realized her ears were playing tricks on her, for it was not Roma sliding open her glass doors but Benedikt.
“What are you doing?” Benedikt hissed, striding in.
Juliette, on instinct, took a step back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You have to go—”
“Why? So you can blow yourself up?” Benedikt asked. “Roma is still alive. I need your help.”
The rush of relief almost caused Juliette to drop the grenade, but she tightened her hold just in time, keeping the lever pressed down. When she closed her eyes—overwhelmed by the sheer knowledge of this one little thing that the universe had granted her—she was so grateful that tears sprang up immediately.
“I’m glad you evaded capture,” Juliette said, her voice quiet. “Of all people, you will be able to get him out.”
“Oh, please.”
Juliette’s eyes snapped open, so shocked by Benedikt’s tone that her tears receded. He pointed at the grenade in her hand. “Do you think that’s worth it? What will it do to blow up a few Nationalists? They will build their ranks again! They will pick a new leader from Beijing, from Wuhan, from wherever else there are people. The war will still be fought. The conflict will go on.”
“I have a duty here,” Juliette managed shakily. “If I can do one thing—”
“You want to do one thing?” Benedikt asked. “Let’s go blow up the monsters. Let’s stop Dimitri. But this?” He jammed a thumb in the direction of her door. The sounds of the party outside continued to filter through. “This is inevitable, Juliette. This is civil war, and you cannot disrupt it.”
Juliette did not know what to say. She closed both hands around the grenade and stared at it. Benedikt let her stand like that for a long moment, let her roil in her conflicting emotions, before turning on his heel and cursing under his breath, muttering, “First Marshall, then you. Everyone is just dying to self-sacrifice themselves.”
“Marshall?”
Benedikt grimaced. As if remembering that he had broken onto enemy ground, he wandered out to the balcony again and peered around, watching for movement. “Dimitri intercepted the Scarlets and took Roma and Alisa. Marshall got looped in too when he was trying to rescue them. Now it’s just me and you. We really do not have long, Juliette.”