The itching in his chest made it nearly impossible not to cough, but he couldn’t give in to that. Not now. It was the smoke, or the pneumonia. But it wouldn’t win. He would win. That was what mattered. “Do not pretend you care.”

“Why do you assume I don’t?” She paused and lifted her brows. “I learned long ago that being on opposites sides of a war didn’t make a man my enemy. I don’t wish you harm. I just wish you stopped.”

No, she’d never been his enemy. Just his opponent. A clever one, deserving of respect. But cleverness wasn’t enough. And respect didn’t mean he could spare her. “You are out of moves. I told you that already. Aji keshi.”

The corners of her lips actually turned up in a smile. “You had to cheat to be able to say that. It isn’t true victory.”

“It will have the same result.” He had to anchor the gun with his side to be able to cock it.

“No. It won’t.”

He pulled the trigger, but she was already moving. Lunging to the side. Not away, but toward him. As she’d done on the street, when she’d stolen Der Vampir from him. He tried to yell, but it turned into a cough that made his whole body convulse.

And then the gun wasn’t in his hand anymore and spots danced before his eyes, and instead of a knee finding his groin, an arm came around his shoulders.

“Would you get him water?”

He didn’t know of whom she asked it, and he couldn’t look up to see. The spasm kept his head down, his body curled forward into a useless mockery, his lungs on fire.

“Easy. Breathe, Dieter.”

She knew his name. How did she know his name? “I will win.” He could barely gasp it between spasms, but it had to be said. It had to be.

“You nearly did. And perhaps you could have outsmarted Drake. Outsmarted me—even though I’m not a secretary. But you cannot outsmart God.”

Was it He who had struck him down? No. It was the damp and the cold and lungs already weakened by pneumonia from his near drowning. It was too many nights waiting in the park for her to make a play at Go and traveling all over the city in search of targets. It was the uncompromising commands of his superiors and his own need to see to retribution above himself.

Would he die? Here, now, of this wracking cough, with his hand black with bruising and his opponent’s arm around him?

Had he thought he couldn’t die? Or that it wouldn’t matter if he did? Perhaps it didn’t. He had no one to mourn him, not like they would mourn Heinrich. He had never been the hero in the stories.