Page 150 of Winterveil

“Nothing,” said Mikhail. “But we, uh . . . sort of assumed you were dead.”

“Dead?”

Jane’s gaze dropped to the floor. Mikhail nodded grimly.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because,” Jane said. She looked up at him, and abruptly tears leaped to her eyes. “You disappeared the same time as Klaudia.”

Julian’s pulse raced. “What happened to Klaudia?”

Jane just shook her head and looked away. Mikhail put an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder comfortingly. When he met Julian’s gaze, his face was both weary and pained.

“Klaudia tried to kill herself,” he said.

Forty-Eight

Spring 2037

Rural Virginia

Curled on the floor of the lab, Giselle managed to fall asleep. Her arms were braced over her head, tattered dress fanned out around her. Nadiya’s blood had dried and turned it a dim shade of red.

When she slept, she dreamed. She dreamed she was in the tunnel again, staring down Deckard’s men. During the simulation their faces had been hidden behind masks, but in her dream, they were exposed. They were the faces of people she knew: a man in line at the grocery store, a fellow student in the hall, the neighbor who sat on the porch in his rocking chair.

In her dream, their mouths opened wide with horror and they screamed. Their flesh dissolved and their bones burned to ash.

And then she woke, body aching, breath coming in gasps. Giselle pushed herself into a sitting position. The lab was still empty. No one had come for her—yet. She was not hopeful enough to believe she might be left there to starve to death.

I deserve it. I’m a murderer.

Those six men—nameless, faceless—had probably already been buried. Their families had wept over their coffins and the priests had spoken over their graves. Giselle could see it in her mind, as clear as a memory.

She raised a hand to wipe the tears from her cheek. That was when she saw the locks of auburn hair strewn across the lab floor. A part of her couldn’t believe she had really done it. Her mother had always loved her hair.

With a hiss of steam, the door opened. Giselle stumbled to her feet.

Dr. Iver and Professor Blanchard entered, the latter nursing a bruise on his cheek, which pleased her perversely to see. And, behind them, leaning heavily on a pair of crutches, was Nadiya.

Giselle ran to her. What was the point of hiding it now? Deckard had seen everything, seen their kiss, which hadn’t even been real. At least, not in the physical world. The fairy-tale feel of Traumstadt took on an even greater significance now. The whole time they’d thought they were kissing under the moonlight, chasing each other through the snow, really they had been asleep in glass coffins.

And if Deckard and Dr. Iver and Professor Blanchard wanted to, they could chip their way into her brain as if with ice picks, and see any secret she still had left.

Gathering Nadiya into her arms, Giselle choked out, “You’re all right.”

Nadiya nodded. When Giselle pulled away, she took a long look at Nadiya’s face: pale, almost sallow, her lashes daggered with tears.

“Your hair,” Nadiya said.

Giselle reached up to touch the ends—slightly ragged, since it was far from a professional cut. It was still strange to feel nothing lying against her throat or resting heavily on her shoulders. She had chopped it all the way to her chin, the longest strands feathering her jawline.

“I told you I wanted a makeover,” Giselle said, a little shakily. “What do you think?”

“I think you look like safety,” Nadiya whispered, “and feel like peace.”

Immediately Giselle’s chest tightened. Nadiya would find out soon enough that she was a murderer, and then what would she feel when she looked at her? Hatred. Revulsion. Fear.

Before she could speak, Professor Blanchard cleared his throat.