“Roma,” she said. She finally caught up to him, yanking off one of her gloves and grabbing his wrist. “Roma!”
He whirled around, eyeing the hand she had clasped around his wrist like it was a live wire.
Juliette swallowed hard. “For what it’s worth . . . ,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why should you be?” Roma replied, like the words had already been waiting on his tongue. “You returned the hurt I gave you, after all. We are the faces of two sides in a blood feud, so why not revel in the death and the misery—”
“Stop,” Juliette spat. She was shaking. Her whole body had started trembling without her noticing, and she didn’t know if it was anger toward Roma, or anger toward his accusation.
Roma made a noise of disbelief. “Why do you react like this?” he asked harshly. He scanned her up and down, at her barely contained outrage. “It was false to you. I mean nothing to you. Marshall meant nothing to you.”
This was a test. He was goading her. For as long as Roma was Roma, there would be a part of him that could not fully believe Juliette would betray him, and he was right, but he could not know. She could not be a foolish girl, and though she was, though that was exactly what she was and what she wanted to be, she needed to be something bigger. Everything that unfolded between the two of them was bigger than them, bigger than two children trying to fight a war with their bare hands.
Juliette smoothed her expression over, choked back the emotion that soured her throat to the point of pain.
“I understand if you want your revenge,” Juliette said. Her voice had leveled, sounding almost fatigued. “But do so after our city is safe. I am what this city made me. If we are to cooperate once more, you cannot hate me while we’re on a task. Our people will be the sacrifice of such carelessness.”
Do not do this to me, she wanted to say instead. I cannot stand seeing you like this. It will break me faster than the city ever could if it tried to cut us down together.
Roma yanked his wrist away. With everything and nothing hidden in his cold gaze, he only said, “I know,” and walked away. It was not forgiveness. It was far from it. But at least it wasn’t open, unadulterated hatred.
Juliette turned and started to move in the other direction, her ears faintly ringing. These past few months, she might have thought herself to be living in a dream if it weren’t for the heaviness that constantly dragged in her chest. She put her hand there now and imagined reaching in and tearing out whatever was weighing her down: the feeling of tenderness blossoming as physical flowers in her lungs, her relentless love curling in and out of her rib cage like climbing vines.
She could not succumb to it. She could not let it grow so thickly inside her that she knew of nothing else. She was a girl of stone, unfeeling—that was who she had always been.
Juliette scrubbed at her eyes. When her sight was clear again, Nanjing Road was half-swathed in the falling dark, its neon signs flickering to life and bathing her in red, red, red.
“These violent delights have violent ends,” Juliette whispered to herself. She tilted her head up to the clouds, to the light sea breeze blowing in from the Bund and stinging her nose with salt. “You have always known this.”
Twelve
Benedikt was tiring of the city’s talk, tiring of the fear that a new madness had erupted.
It had. There was a new madness—that was already certain. What good was jabbering on about it, as if discussing the matter would increase one’s immunity? If it was supposed to be a coping mechanism, then Benedikt supposed he had never been much good at taking advantage of coping mechanisms anyway. He only knew how to swallow, and swallow, and swallow, until a black hole had grown in his stomach to suck everything away. Until it was all pushed somewhere else, and then he could forget that he never knew what to do with himself in the daylight hours anymore. He could forget the argument with Roma this morning, about the rumors that he was working with Juliette Cai, and then his confirmation that they were not mere rumors but truth, that Lord Montagov had set them to become allies.
Benedikt wanted to break something. He hadn’t touched his art supplies in months, but recently he had been entertaining the urge to destroy it all. Stab his paintbrush right through his canvas and hope that the damage would be enough to make him feel better.
For all that they had done, the Scarlet Gang didn’t deserve clemency even in the face of a new madness. But then who was Benedikt to have any say in this?
“Benedikt Ivanovich.”