Still laughing, the soldier turned and looked out over no-man’s-land.

Frederick curled his pointer finger around the trigger and took a deep breath. He lined the crosshairs of the rifle between the soldier’s eyes. It was the perfect shot. His ticket out of the tunnels. All Frederick had to do was squeeze his finger.

But Frederick was in no danger. The laughing soldier wasn’t aiming a rifle at him. He didn’t even have a weapon in his hands. In that moment, he wasn’t Frederick’s enemy.

Frederick’s finger eased off the trigger, and he backed away from the scope.

“What’s wrong?” William asked.

Frederick climbed down from the fire step. “He ducked.”

“Not to worry,” William said, climbing onto his perch and pressing his face to the scope. “He’ll be back.”

“I better return to my unit,” Frederick said, but William’s full attention was focused on the enemy trenches.

“There you are, thirty-three.”

Frederick did not say goodbye or look back. As he walked away from William and his chance to get out of the tunnels, he slipped his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the white feather. He crushed it until he felt the spine snap.

Behind him, a bullet exploded from William’s rifle.

Across no-man’s-land, a laughing boy died.

TWENTY

TRAPPED IN DARK silence, time lost its form. The only markers of its passage for the young soldier became the gentle pressure of a cup to his chapped lips, which brought a trickle of water on his parched tongue, and the prick of a needle.

Sleep brought little rest and no comfort. The morphine numbed his physical pain, but the nightmares forced him to relive every terrifying second of his time on the Western Front.

He ached with exhaustion but dreaded the morphine injections. He fought back against the hands holding his arm, but his strength had not returned. He had no choice but to surrender to the needle and the nightmares. They were his penance, his punishment for all he had done and all he had failed to do. His deeds on the battlefield were etched in his mind and soul like epitaphs on tombstones. In sleep, he revisited them, carving their lines deeper.

TWENTY-ONE

WHEN GEORGE CALLED Frederick a coward, Thomas had expected Frederick to slap George with a glove and challenge him to a duel. He couldn’t believe the Eton boy’s pride would allow such an insult to stand, but hours after Frederick had stormed from the dugout, he returned without a word. He demanded no apology, nor did he offer one. His head bowed, he took off his muddy boots and, without wiping them clean, tossed them aside. He then lay down on his bunk and scribbled in his notebook until Bagger ordered the boys to the lower galleries for their next shift.

The feud between George and Frederick appeared to have reached a stalemate. Everyone embraced the reprieve, no one more than Charlie. The constant tension between the two boys had strained his already frayed nerves. His frustration over their petty arguments had curdled into anger over the weeks, and when Boomer had carried Thomas’s unconscious body from the tunnels, Charlie had wanted to scream at George and Frederick until his throat bled. He knew which words to use. Which words would stun into silence and which would leave scars so deep they became part of you, as familiar and identifying as your name. But they were Charlie’s secret to keep, passed down from grandfather to father, and from father to son. He refused to continue the cruel tradition. No matter how hot his rage boiled. The secret might someday kill him, but it was a secret he was determined to take to his grave.