by Chloe Gong
Juliette stopped midsentence, her eyebrows lifting so high they disappeared into her bangs. There was a blade held to her heart. Roma was holding a blade to her heart, his arm straight and long.
A beat passed. Juliette waited to see what he would do.
But Roma only shook his head. He suddenly felt so much like his old self again. Like the boy who had kissed her for the first time on the rooftop of a jazz club. Like the boy who didn’t believe in violence, who swore he would rule his half of the city one day with fairness and justice.
“You’re not even afraid,” Roma breathed, his voice hitching, “and do you know why? Because you know I cannot push this knife in—you have always known, and even if you doubted my mercy upon returning, you discovered what the truth was pretty soon, didn’t you?”
The tip of the blade was ice-cold even through her dress, almost soothing against the hot flush emanating from her body.
“If you know that I will not be afraid,” Juliette asked, “then why hold your blade out?”
“Because this—” Roma closed his eyes. Tears. Tears were falling down his face. “This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did.”
He pulled away then, removing the tip of the blade from her heart and letting the cold air rush to fill the space. Without warning, Roma turned and threw his knife; it sank to the hilt, the whole blade embedded into the opposite wall. Juliette watched it all numbly, like she was some specter floating high above. She supposed she had expected this. Roma was right. She could not be afraid even when her life was in his hands. After all, she had been the one to walk her life into White Flower territory, to place it upon waiting palms.
“Then why?” Juliette asked. Her words came out a rasp. “Why did you do it?”
“It was a compromise.” Roma scrubbed at his face harshly. His eyes slid to the mouth of the alleyway, checking for threats, checking that they were uninterrupted, unwatched. “My father wanted me to kill you outright, and I refused.”
Juliette remembered the white flower lying on the path of her house, the note written from Lord Montagov. It had been dripping with mockery.
“Why not?”
A hard laugh. Roma shook his head. “Must you ask? I loved you.”
Juliette bit down on her tongue. There was that word again. Love. Loved. He spoke as though all that had happened between them was real up until push came to shove, and Juliette could not comprehend this, could hardly accept this when she had spent so long convincing herself that their whole past was a lie, nothing save a spectacular act on Roma’s part to fulfill his ultimate deed.
She had to convince herself. How could she bear to think that he had loved her and yet destroyed her anyway? How could she bear to face the truth that she had loved him too, so deeply that remnants yet remained, and if it hadn’t been some grand master plan to sink his claws into her mind… then the pull in her fingertips now could be attributed to nothing save the weakness of her own heart.
The taste of metal flooded her mouth. With a wince of pain, Juliette eased her jaw loose, but she remained quiet still, the broken skin under her tongue throbbing.
“You can believe what you want to believe,” Roma went on, noting the look on her face. “But you wanted the truth, so here it is. My father found out, Juliette. Some spy reported to him that we were lovers, and to rid the Montagov name of the insult, he gave me a knife”—Roma pointed to the knife in the wall—“to sink into your heart.”
She remembered how deeply Roma had feared his own father, had feared the feats that the White Flowers were capable of. She remembered how Roma used to ponder day in and day out the ways he would change things when the White Flowers came under his hand. And she remembered her own fondness for such ambition, that spark of hope flaring in her chest every time Roma said that the future was theirs, that the city would be theirs one day, united as one, as long as they had each other.
Juliette stared at the knife in the wall. She whispered, “But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” Roma echoed. “I told him I’d rather take my own life, and he threatened exactly that. My father has been waiting for me to screw up since I was born, and it finally happened. He said he could launch a hit on you—”
“He couldn’t have,” Juliette interrupted. “He doesn’t have the power—”
“You don’t know that!” Roma’s voice cracked, splitting apart into fragments. He turned away again; he spoke while facing the mouth of the alleyway. “And I didn’t know that, either. My father… It may not seem like it because he does not act on it often, but he has eyes everywhere. He has always had eyes everywhere. If he made up his mind to kill you as he promised, if he wanted to set the scene to look as if we had both killed each other in the middle of Shanghai and kick off the blood feud to new heights, then he could do it. I had no doubt.”
“We could have fought him.” Juliette did not know why she bothered offering solutions to a situation long passed. It was instinct at this point, a way of protecting herself from the possibility that Roma had—perhaps—made the correct decision. “Lord Montagov is still human. He could have taken a bullet to the head.”
Roma choked out another laugh, utterly, utterly devoid of humor. “I was fifteen, Juliette. I couldn’t even defend myself against Dimitri’s aggressive shoulder slaps. You think I could put a bullet through my father’s head?”
I could have done it, Juliette wanted to say. But she didn’t know if it was wishful thinking, if she would truly have been capable enough before anger turned her skin from fire to hardened rock. Back then she had believed just as Roma did, believed that this divided city could be sewn back together. She believed it when they sat under the velvet night and looked out at the haze of lights in the distance, when Roma said he would defy everything, everything, even the stars, to change their fate in this city.
“Astra inclinant,” he would whisper into the wind, so heartachingly sincere even when quoting in Latin, “sed non obligant.”
The stars incline us, they do not bind us.
Juliette breathed in shallowly. She felt something inside her unravel.
“What happened?” she managed. “What happened to change his mind?”
Roma started rolling up his sleeves. He was looking for something to do with his hands, something to occupy his restless energy because he could not stand there as Juliette did—a soldier turned to stone.
“My father wanted you dead because he felt insulted. He wanted me dead because I dared rebel.” A long pause. “So I went to him and gave him a better plan. One that would cause more loss to the Scarlets. One that would put me back on his side.” And Roma finally glanced at Juliette again, finally looked her eye to eye. “It would hurt you more than death, but at least you would be alive.”
“You—” Juliette raised her hand, but she didn’t know what she was trying to do. She ended up pointing a finger at Roma instead, like this was nothing but a small scolding. “You—”
You didn’t have the right to make that choice.
But she couldn’t even articulate herself.
Roma reached out, smoothed a palm over her hand so she was making a fist instead. His hands were steady. Juliette’s were shaking. Repenting.
“I can’t be sorry if you’re looking for an apology,” Roma whispered. “And… I suppose I am sorry that I am not more sorry. But given the choice between your life and your Scarlets…” Roma let go of her hand. “I chose you. Are you satisfied?”
Juliette squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t care anymore that that was dangerous, that she was breaking apart in the middle of White Flower territory. She pressed her fist to her forehead, feeling the sharpness of her rings dig into her skin, and breathed, “Indeed, I never shall be satisfied.”
He chose me. She had believed him callous, believed him to have performed the greatest possible betrayal when she had offered him love.
Instead, the truth was that he had gone against everything h
e stood for. He had stained his own hands with the lives of dozens of innocents, placed razor blades in his own heart just to keep Juliette alive and safe, far from the threats of his father. He hadn’t used the information he gleaned from his time with her as a tool of power. He had used it as a tool of weakness.
Juliette almost laughed out loud—in deliriousness, in sheer disbelief. This was what this city did to lovers. It tossed blame around like a slick coat of blood, mixing and merging with everything else until it had left its stain. This was why he hadn’t wanted to tell her. He’d known that she would reach this conclusion—this realization that, in a roundabout way, Nurse’s blood was now on her hands too. If Roma had not truly loved her, her life would have been the one the blood feud took instead—a simple, clean exchange.
She opened her eyes and looked to the skies. Gray, dreary skies of the first day of October. Down here, in the shadows of the cold alleyway, she could remain a lurker in the dark, could reach out and brush away the teardrop hovering at Roma’s jaw and know that nobody could act a witness. She resisted. Somewhere above, past those low clouds and brisk winds, the north star was spinning, spinning atop the world with no regard for anything else.
Her city, her gang, her family. Her family, her gang, her city.
“Very well.”
Roma blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Juliette returned her hands to her sides, smoothing down her dress. She tried for a smile, but she was sure that she merely looked to be in pain.
“Very well,” she repeated. “We hardly have time to be wasting on our personal dramas, do we? Mystery solved.”
She walked over to the knife and pulled it out from the alleyway. It was beautiful. The handle was etched with a lily, the blade shiny, sharp, golden.
This city was on their shoulders. They could not collapse now, no matter how badly Juliette wanted to lie down in the grass and become still for the next millennia. And no matter how much it pained her, she glanced over her shoulder and looked to Roma, looked upon him right as he settled his mask back on, as he turned from mournful to cold once more.
You chose me four years ago. Would you choose me still? Would you choose this version of me—these sharp edges and hands far bloodier than yours?
Her city, her gang, her family. The better thing to do now would be to walk away, walk away from anything that would distract her from what was important. But she couldn’t. She… hoped. And hope was dangerous. Hope was the most vicious evil of them all, the thing that had managed to thrive in Pandora’s box among misery, and disease, and sadness—and what could endure alongside others with such teeth if it didn’t have ghastly claws of its own?
“We still have a monster to catch,” Juliette said firmly, even knowing, knowing better. “Chenghuangmiao is White Flower territory. Let’s go.”
She feared Roma would say no. That he would walk away even if she couldn’t. There were so many people bustling about Chenghuangmiao on the daily—Chinese or otherwise—that it would be impossible to keep the Scarlet Gang out. She did not need Roma’s help to find the Larkspur at this stage. They did not have to keep cooperating. He knew this.
Roma’s eyes were blank. His posture was easy, spine straight.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Thirty-One
Tyler Cai was the first to receive news of rumblings within the city. He prided himself on keeping an ear on the grapevine, face turned outward for whispers that flowed downwind of any burning source, eyes pinned on those who needed them. Average civilians were fickle little creatures. They could not be trusted to go about their lives sensibly. They needed overseeing, a gentle, kind hand to prod them around and move the strings that held their fates as necessity dictated, else the strings became entangled and people choked to death on their own bumbling foolishness.
“Mr. Cai.” The news came from a messenger named Andong, whom Tyler had taken especially under his wing, trained with the express directive of coming to him first, before anybody else. “It’s really bad.”
Tyler straightened up at his desk, setting down his calligraphy pen. “What happened?”
“A strike at a factory in Nanshi,” Andong said, breathless. He had run in, barely avoiding a collision with the doorjamb in his hurry. “Casualties. There are casualties this time.”
“Casualties?” Tyler echoed, his whole brow furrowing. “They are merely workers making up a fuss—how did they manage casualties? Did the madness strike at the same time?”
“No, it’s the Communists,” came the harried reply. “There were people from the worker’s union planted inside the factory, instructing the workers and smuggling in weapons. The foreman is dead. Found with a meat cleaver in his head.”
Tyler frowned deeply. He cast his memory back to the rallies on the streets, to the political parties that the Scarlet Gang had been trying to keep under control. Perhaps they had aligned themselves wrongly with the Nationalists. Perhaps it was the Communists they should have been watching more closely.
“With what do they take issue?” Tyler sneered. “How dare they revolt against those who give them safety!”
“They do not view it as such,” Andong replied. “The workers who are not dying from the madness are dying from starvation. They’re lining up en masse for that stupid vaccine, and instead of blaming this blasted Larkspur for overcharging, they worship him for the safety of his magical vials and blame the Scarlet factories for not paying enough to let them have both the vaccine and food.”
Tyler shook his head. He hissed, “Ridiculous.”
“Yet the Communists are thriving in this climate.”
They were. They were taking full advantage of the chaos to turn the people of Shanghai against their rulers, to tear down the reign the gangsters had built. But it was not a big deal. The Scarlet Gang still held the crown. If they couldn’t get the Communists in line eventually, they would simply destroy them.
“It is not an isolated incident,” Andong warned when Tyler remained silent. “It may be an uprising. The Communists are planning something today. The factories all through Nanshi are starting to mutter unhappily. There will be more murders before the day is done.”
Off with their heads and down with the rich. The workers were hungry enough that they would cut down the gangsters and use the sound of screaming to insulate the spaces between their ribs.
“Send warnings to our Scarlet affiliations,” Tyler instructed. “Immediately.”
The messenger nodded. He seemed to start back in the direction he came, but paused before he could move, stilling. “There’s… another thing.”
“More?” Tyler said. He threw his hands behind his head, rocking back on his chair.
“I did not see this with my own eyes, but”—Andong stepped farther into the room, then lowered his head. Instinctively his voice grew quiet, as if matters of death and revolution could be discussed at a normal speaking tone but petty gossip required reverence—“Cansun said he witnessed Miss Juliette in White Flower territory. He said he saw her…” Andong trailed off.
“Spit it out,” Tyler snapped.
“He saw her with Roma Montagov.”
Tyler lowered his hands slowly. “Oh?”
“It was a mere glimpse,” Andong continued. “But he thought it suspicious. He thought you may like to know.”
“Indeed, I do like to know.” Tyler stood. “Thank you, Andong. If you would excuse me now, I must find my dear cousin.”
* * *
Roma and Juliette had reached a peculiar sort of peace. It felt almost as if they were no longer enemies, and yet they were colder with each other than they had been before Mantua—far more stiff, more reserved. Juliette snuck a glance at Roma while they pushed their way through Chenghuangmiao, eyeing the way his hands were curled, the way he kept his elbows close to his core.
She hadn’t realized that they had gotten comfortable around each other until they were uncomfortable again.
“I’m not remembering wrong, am I?” sh
e asked aloud, aching to break the tension. “The Long Fa Teahouse is what Archibald Welch said?”
Juliette paused to inspect the shops they were passing, and in those few seconds, three shoppers rammed into her, one after the other. She wrinkled her nose, almost hissing out an exclamation before she stopped herself. Being invisible was better than being recognized, she supposed. It didn’t mean she enjoyed it, even if blending in with the bustling crowd in her drab coat and drabber hairstyle was doing her a huge favor.
“I cannot imagine why you would ask me for confirmation,” Roma replied. “I was on the floor.”
“Nothing wrong with scrubbing the floor once in a while. It shows your humility.”
Roma did not laugh. She hadn’t expected him to. Silently she gestured for them to proceed before the shoppers here could bowl them over and recognize their faces.
“Come on, floor-scrubber.”
Juliette set off, her stride purposeful. They passed the cream sellers and the puppet shows, then walked by the whole row of xiǎolóngbāo stores without once pausing to inhale the steam that smelled like delicious meats. They wound their way around the yelling performers and ducked beneath the archway leading into the central hustle and bustle of Chenghuangmiao, and there, Roma stopped suddenly, squinting ahead.
“Juliette,” Roma said. “It’s that one.”
She nodded, gesturing for them to hurry that way. The Long Fa Teahouse sat near the ponds and to the left of the zigzag Jiuqu Bridge, a five-floor construction with an extravagant roof curving at its gold-lined edges. The building had probably been standing since China was first ruled by emperors in the Forbidden City.
Roma and Juliette stepped through the open doors of the teahouse, lifting their feet over the raised section framing the doorway. They paused.
“Up?” Roma asked, peering around the ground level, empty save for one stool tucked in the corner.