So then. There was information she—or their superiors—didn’t want him to know. They were willing to trust him far enough to have him discover what he could, but not so much that they’d lay all their cards on the table, lest he decide to take his brother’s side.

He eased out a breath. “I could well have known what he knows by now, if not for the train accident.” Assuming Zivon would have listened to him. Talked to him. Actually told him what he was planning, instead of barreling ahead, thinking he alone knew how to plan their future.

Blast him. No one in the world could infuriate him quite like Zivon.

And he never missed anyone quite like him either. He shook his head. “I tried to tell them that killing Alyona was a mistake. Why did no one listen? Do I not know better than any how my brother will react?”

Her chin lifted, her spine straightened. “He had to be shown how steep the cost is for his allegiances. He had to be taught what pain feels like—what the rest of us suffered under the old Russia, that made us envision the new.”

He wondered, not for the first time, which of his comrades had pulled the trigger that day in Moscow. Had it been her? Another of their friends? He dug his fingers into the stone. “We killed his betrothed, Nadya. We’d have been better to poke a nest of hornets.”

“From what you’ve told me of him, I wouldn’t have thought him the type to lash out.” Her voice was modulated. Cool. The voice of a soldier on a mission, not of the woman who wrapped her arms around him and kissed him until the world fell away.

Sometimes he wished he didn’t love the hard side of her as much as the soft. He could hear Matushka’s voice in his head. “Why can’t you find a nice girl, Evgeni? One who will be content to tend your home and give me grandchildren?”

It had been her argument each and every time he’d rejected the suggestions she and Batya made about potential wives for him. “I’ll find my own wife,” he’d said then. His gaze cut again to Nadya. Or not. She’d made it quite clear she’d never marry, that she considered it a prison to which she wouldn’t submit.

Still, they had plans. They would find an apartment together when they made it back to Petrograd. They’d do what the party told them to do, advance in the ranks. They’d make a difference, build a new Russia. And if ever they felt called away from each other, they’d simply part ways.