“Has Dimitri recruited the workers?” Juliette asked, her heart pounding in her ears.
“Yes,” Benedikt confirmed. “At this point I don’t even know if Dimitri is still intent on taking the White Flowers. With just about every gangster either dead or imprisoned or having fled the city, he’s far more concerned with building a base of power among the Communists.”
“Then why did he take Roma? If not to end the Montagov line—”
“It’s symbolic, I suspect. Kill the gangsters. Kill the imperialists. Kill foreign influence in the city. A public execution as a last-ditch war cry for the workers in the city before Nationalists stomp them out. And then Dimitri and his monsters will flee south with the rest of the Communists, and the war will rage on.”
Juliette sucked in a ragged inhale. Was that how this would end? Lourens could sneak a vaccine into the city’s water supply, but the whole country? The whole world? If Dimitri fled with the Communists, high off the power that his acquired arms and money and monsters gave him, what was the limit? Where would it stop?
“Look,” Benedikt said, cutting into Juliette’s panic, his voice floating in from the balcony. “Either way, I think we can rescue them. Roma, Marshall, and Alisa—we can get them away from Dimitri and leave the city for good. But you need to help me.”
The immediate agreement was on her tongue. And yet Juliette was having such trouble making the move to go.
We punish traitors. And if Juliette wishes to defect to the White Flowers’ cause, then she may die along with them.
It wasn’t a new development. She had turned traitor five years ago, that windy day on the Bund when she befriended Roma Montagov. She had turned traitor all those times refusing to push her knife into him. She had turned traitor long before she put her bullet in her own cousin, because if loyalty meant being cruel to a fault, then she could not do it.
Her parents would mourn. They would be mourning a version of her that did not exist.
“I love you both so much,” she murmured, “but you are killing me.”
Benedikt’s head popped back into the room. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Juliette said, snapping into action. “I’ll come.”
“Oh.” Benedikt almost seemed surprised by Juliette’s turn in attitude. He eyed her as she eyed her room, allowing herself one last look around. “You’re still holding . . . um—”
Juliette reached for the pin and slid it back into the grenade. Gently, she returned the weapon to her shoebox and tucked it into her wardrobe once more. Before she closed the doors again, she pulled out one of her flapper dresses.
“Let me change first. I’ll be fast.”
Benedikt frowned as if to advise against such a flashy choice, but then Juliette pulled out a coat too, her brow raised in challenge, and Benedikt nodded. “I’ll wait on the balcony.”
Enough time had passed for Juliette’s hair to dry, but it had been a downpour outside, and her clothes were still sticking to her. In her effort to yank off her dress, it seemed she might have yanked a bit too hard, because as she shed it, there came a plink! of something hitting the carpet. Had she broken off a button? A sequin?
She squinted at the floor. No—it was something blue. It was . . . a small pill, its color as shiny as a gem. Beside it lay a slip of paper, slightly damp as it fluttered to a stop.
“Oh my God,” Juliette muttered, unfolding the note. Bai Tasa’s hand on her back. The quick swipe against her when he removed it. He had put these items into her dress pocket.
Use wisely. —Lourens
Bai Tasa was an undercover White Flower.
A disbelieving laugh burst through her throat, but Juliette choked it down fast, not wanting to concern Benedikt, who already seemed to think she was a moment away from leaping off the deep end. Juliette picked up the pill, examining it carefully. When she slipped on her new dress, she put it snugly into her new pocket, dry and clean, then transferred over the rest of what had not fallen out—her little lighter, a single hairpin. That was all. She had no weapons, no valuables, nothing save the clothes on her back and a warm coat, tightened around her waist with a sash.
She hurried to the balcony. When Benedikt turned around, his hair was ruffling in the wind, expression earnest and in such resemblance to Roma that it hurt her chest to look at him.
“Let’s go.”
Forty-Six
Dimitri announced the execution to be at nightfall, so I gather we do not have much time left.”
Juliette looked up at the gray clouds, clutching her fists tight. “Yes, but for your plan to work, we must know exactly how the monsters transform. We cannot just pin our chances of success on sheer hope. Now!”