She glanced over her shoulder again. But where his brother was missing and perhaps injured, her sister was happy, laughing, and so very present. “I would do anything to protect her. Even though she seldom needs it.”

“Evgeni is arguably the one of us better able to survive an attack. He is a soldier like our father, even before the war. Very strong. Capable. Charming. He will make a way.”

Lily heard the words he didn’t say. He must.

He reached for her elbow then, tugged her a step to the left. Which she found utterly confusing until she became aware of quick steps coming from a path that joined theirs. A dog came bounding along, his leash trailing behind him, followed by a child panting just as hard as the canine. They would have bowled Lily over had Zivon not pulled her out of the way.

Clearly, he’d been paying more attention to their surroundings than she had.

She smiled her thanks. And then returned her mind to the conversation. “Evgeni.” She echoed the name softly, its syllables feeling strange on her tongue. As would Zivon, she knew, if she ever said it aloud. She’d try it later just to see. When she was alone, in her darkroom, film and plates and negatives before her. “I will pray for him. And for you.”

He swallowed hard. “Thank you. He would say he does not need prayers, but he needs them all the more for thinking so.”

“Mama always said something similar about her father. ‘The more you tell me not to pray, the more I know you need me to.’”

He didn’t quite smile in reply. But he looked as though he could at any moment. “You have a lovely family. It is good to see.”

She certainly couldn’t argue with that. She couldn’t quite imagine a world where her sister wasn’t on the other side of her bedroom wall, tapping out secret messages to her; where her mother wasn’t teaching her how to bring beauty to life with pen and paint and pictures; where her father wasn’t prepared to move heaven and earth to see them happy and well.

Maybe that, too, was why she’d never been interested in a courtship with any of the young men Daddy brought home. None of them had ever made her think they were worth the change from what she knew and loved. “Family is the most important thing,” she said quietly.