Coldness swept down Juliette’s spine like a lightning strike. Marshall. She let go of the woman so fast that they both stumbled, but then Juliette was moving, her pulse pounding in her chest as she shoved her way through the station.
Maybe it was only a small fire. Maybe it was already well controlled.
With a gasp, Juliette emerged outside, right onto Boundary Road—aptly named given that the Shanghai North railway station sat at the very border of the International Settlement. Juliette needed only to look up, observing the state of the skies above the International Settlement.
The sun was to set within the hour, so there was yet enough light to show great big plumes of smoke, driving those on the streets toward whatever shelter they could find.
“No, no, no,” Juliette mumbled under her breath, throwing her arm over her nose and breaking into a run. She locked her watering eyes on the plumes, diving forward even as civilians fled in the other direction. Once or twice, she heard sirens in the distance, but the sounds were far enough that Juliette knew she would get to the scene first.
Then a terrifying scream echoed into the air: a sharp and unusual piercing that sounded neither human nor animal. She stopped right in her tracks, waving the smoke out of her eyes. The safe house where she had put Marshall was much farther ahead, but the screaming was coming from the next street over, which meant—
“Oh, thank God,” Juliette cried. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her safe house. But then . . . what was burning?
Juliette ran the rest of the distance, cutting through a dark alley. She found herself coming onto a wide road, joining the crowd that was gathered before the spectacle. The people here had not run as those farther away had. They were enraptured by the horrific scene, just as someone experiencing the end of the world would stop and stare.
“I have never before seen such a sight,” an old man beside her croaked.
“It is the work of the blood feud,” his companion replied. “Perhaps they are getting their last hits in before the Nationalists arrive.”
Juliette pressed her knuckles to her lips. The smoke plumes flowed from a building entirely swathed in flames, and standing around it, like soldiers guarding an enemy castle, were Tyler and a flock of Scarlet men.
Tyler was laughing. She was too far away to hear what he was saying, but she could see him, holding a plank of wood swirling with flames. Behind him, the building’s roaring inferno drowned out the screams, drowned out the whole occupancy burning to death. Juliette heard nothing save that they were pleading—women in nightgowns and elderly banging on the closed windows, muffled Russian crying to stop! Please stop!
In the third-floor window, there was a little hand reaching through a hole in the glass. Seconds later, a small face appeared, hollow and ghastly and tear-tracked.
And before anyone could do a thing about it, the hand and the child dropped out of view, succumbing to the smoke.
The screams had sounded so strange from the railway station—almost animal—because they had come from children.
Juliette fell to her knees, a sob building against her throat. There was a shout from behind her: clear Russian, rather than muffled—White Flower forces, arriving for a fight. She couldn’t find it within herself to run. She would be killed if she lingered here, pathetic and brittle on the side of the road, but what did it matter when this whole city was so broken? They deserved to die. They all deserved to die.
Juliette choked on her sudden gasp, caught by surprise when a pair of hands closed around her arms. She almost started to struggle before realizing it was only Marshall Seo yanking her into the nearest alleyway, a cloth covering the lower half of his face. As soon as they were in the alley, Marshall ripped off the cloth and raised a finger to shush her, the two of them keeping quiet as a group of White Flowers moved past the mouth of the alley.
Roma was among the group, his face aghast. Seconds later, Benedikt ran up to him from the other direction, giving Roma’s chest a hard shove as he began to yell.
Roma. Oh God. What was he going to think? Juliette had run off without explanation. Would he suspect that she had a hand in this? Would he think that their trip to Kunshan had been a ploy, an attempt to get him out of the city so the Scarlets could launch their attack? In his shoes, Juliette would jump to the exact same conclusions. She should have been pleased—wasn’t this exactly what she desired? For him to hate her so violently that he wanted nothing to do with her?
Instead, she only burst into tears.
“What has Tyler done?” Juliette rasped. “Who approved this? My father? When has the blood feud ever involved innocent children?”