The soldier’s eyes shifted from me to Irena. When he moved in front of her, she drew back until he pressed his pistol barrel beneath her chin, and she froze while everything in me stopped. He watched her fluttering chest, then whirled and grabbed my shoulders. I gasped, expecting the blow or handcuffs or bullet that would follow.

“Next time, you won’t get a second chance.”

The menacing growl left me unable to give more than a tiny nod. He released me while his companion shoved Irena out of his grasp. With a sharp breath, she caught herself on her hands and knees. The soldiers marched away, and I watched them go until trembling hands latched on to my arm and dragged me down the street, ignoring my stumbling efforts to keep up. Irena’s fury would be next, the anticipation of a reprimand like that of bombs before they are dropped. The distant rumble of an airplane. The piercing whistle as the projectile cut through the sky. Those were the only warnings before the world erupted.

When we rounded the next corner, she pulled me down the nearest alley and transferred her ironlike grip to my shoulders. “What the hell was that, Maria? Why didn’t you go home?”

I took in the frenzied haze in her eyes, her disheveled clothes and bloodied knees, and finally managed to find my voice around my dry throat. “I couldn’t let them arrest you.”

She released me, shaking her head. “I’m not going to thank you for being a fucking idiot. Your concerns should be keeping the work safe and staying alive, and if you don’t get that through your thick head and learn to fend for yourself—”

“Yes, fending for yourself worked so well for you a moment ago,” I replied, glaring at her. “The Gestapo would have interrogated you.”

“That’s not your concern. You would’ve been free to continue working.”

“But since I intervened, we’re both free.”

“And the next time you do that, we both might be arrested.”

“Or we both could be free again.”

“Dammit, Maria, you can’t even recognize your own incompetence.” Rigid with tension, Irena turned and took a few steps away.

Somehow those words struck something within me, something she’d never touched so deeply before. “Is that what you think? That I’m incompetent for helping instead of leaving?” I asked as loudly as I dared. “Well, do you want to know what I think? You say self-preservation is what’s best for the resistance, but that’s your excuse. Self-preservation is what’s best for you, because you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

Irena stiffened even more. Silence surrounded us, thick and suffocating, smoke after an explosion. Chaos one moment, stillness the next.