Page 89 of Winterveil

All of a sudden, the television flickered on.

She and Giselle both startled. The screen was gray, humming and flickering with static. After a beat, something sharpened out of the fuzz.

IV.iii.62–69

IV.1–10

II.1

Klaudia stared without blinking. It was a more abstruse clue than she’d imagined or hoped for. She glanced at Giselle, whose face looked equally blank.

Her thoughts swirled and raced. Roman numerals and Arabic numbers in conjunction. It was uncommon. Not even the field of mathematics ever used both systems of notation simultaneously. So maybe it wasn’t math.

Realization flared in her like a spark through a wire.

“It’s Shakespearean citation.”

Giselle’s brows drew together. “What?”

“There’s a particular way you’re supposed to cite Shakespeare’s work.” Klaudia had been keeping Shakespeare in the back of her mind ever since she’d seen the name on her cuff, TITANIA. “The act is in capitalized numerals. The scene is in lowercase. And the lines are in Arabic numbers.”

Abruptly everything inside her was alight. She broke away from Giselle and hurried to the library, where she’d seen all the books and board games. The air inside was heavy with dust. Klaudia began to tear the books off the shelves.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Vonnegut’s Complete Stories. The Last Man. Giselle joined her and began searching, too. Their fingers brushed once and Klaudia found the sensation was not entirely unpleasant.

Finally, her gaze landed on the spine of a worn, leather-bound book. Henry V.

Klaudia took it down with shaking hands. She and Giselle returned to the great room and settled back in front of the television, which still hummed and glitched. Klaudia flipped through the pages, pulse racing, until she reached act four, scene three, line sixty-two.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Klaudia met Giselle’s eyes. Though there were still tears on her lashes, her gaze was sharply defiant. Almost angry.

She really was beautiful, even now, with her perky nose and wide blue eyes, half NFL cheerleader and half Hollywood ingenue. It made Klaudia’s chest thump with an embarrassed envy. But it wasn’t quite so simple as that. All the popular, effortlessly beautiful girls at Trinity, while disdainful toward Klaudia, had not provoked a similar unease. They were shallow and catty, sneering and vain. Klaudia wrote them off with a disdain of her own.

But for all her beauty, Giselle had no such vanity. Klaudia could not imagine a cruel word ever falling from her lips. And that was worse. Klaudia had always justified her own coldness as necessary for survival. Giselle, both beautiful and kind, was a nightmarish amalgam of everything Klaudia wished she could be. It was almost painful to be in her presence. She could not stop envisioning how different her own life might have been, had she the fortune of being born beautiful.

Yet in this moment, Klaudia realized she could not afford such resentment, or to be so uneasy in her company. They were bound together now, allies. They could only find their way out of this together.

“Saint Crispin’s day,” Giselle murmured, brushing her finger over the words. “Do you think that means . . .”

Klaudia’s throat bobbed. “I think so.”

She flipped back to the prologue of act four. The lines of the chorus.