“You have trusted me. Maybe not on purpose at first. But in the end, you trusted me with your dearest secrets. Now I am trusting you with two of mine.” She brushed her hair away from her face with the back of her hand. “Trust cannot be a single-sided affair, not when you may one day ask the impossible of each other. If we are going to be…partners moving forward, I think that this is something that I need to do.”

Estelle stared down at the photos. “Are these really personal photos?”

“Yes.”

She looked up at Sophie accusingly. You can’t have these was on the tip of her tongue but then she thought back to the photo she had sewn into Aviva’s coat and the denunciation died unspoken. And, in truth, the battered photos revealed nothing. They could have been taken anywhere between here and Berlin.

Sophie tapped the photo of the house with her finger. “You want to know how I know that my brother is still alive? This is how.”

Estelle frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“The house is called Millbrook. Every Saturday morning, for as long as I can remember, Millbrook hosted a market on the lawns. People from the nearby towns would come to buy or sell their wares. My brother, from the time he was eight or nine, until he enlisted, had a booth there from which he sold his paintings.” She shook her head. “And he never sold one. Not once. The ones my mother bought don’t count.”

Estelle waited, baffled.

“It didn’t matter though. He set up every weekend, rain or shine, smiled and laughed and made the best of it all. He saw his lack of sales as a challenge, not a failure. I mean, really, after a year, even the most optimistic of souls would have accepted their limitations and quietly withdrawn. But Will refused to accept defeat, and wherever he is now, he’ll be doing the same. I have to believe that.” She looked up at Estelle. “And so do you.”

Estelle finally understood. The ice princess wasn’t talking about her brother anymore.

“After this war is over, I will find those lost to me, and you will find those lost to you. I will help you do it.” Sophie looked up from the rifle, her eyes steady. “And in the meantime, we will help each other.”

Estelle nodded, her throat thick with emotion. “What’s this one?” she asked, reaching for the second photo, needing the distraction.

“That’s a picture of me the first time my husband took me riding,” Sophie said quietly. “He wasn’t my husband at the time. Not yet. But it was the day that he kissed me for the first time.”

Estelle closed her eyes, wishing for her question back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”