“A night like that could kill a man,” he says. And I doubt he’s feigning his fatigue.

The proprietor’s wife, a plump woman in her sixties, emerges a few minutes later with sugar and a pitcher of thick cream. She’s still in her dressing gown. Piotrek murmurs at her, catches her hand and kisses it. She blushes, and then laughs like a girl.

“I miss surfing in Hvar.” Claudia sighs. “A splinter of the court used to meet near the coast about a year and a half ago. We’d drop clothes on the way to the beach. Swim until dawn. Go surfing in the morning.”

“We surfed?” I say.

“You didn’t. We did,” Claudia says. “You were a miserable surfer.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Pio, didn’t you have to give her mouth-to-mouth at least once?”

“She loved it,” he says, sliding a lazy smile my way.

“Hey. We never saw Tibor,” I say belatedly, a weird languor like fatigue taking over my limbs.

“No. But he saw us,” Claudia says.

“Everyone was costumed. How could he know I was there?”

She leans in, her eyes shining.

“Audra. Everyone knows you were there.”

*  *  *

Luka and I stagger into Claudia’s flat just before dawn, shed shoes, jewelry, masks. Claudia and Piotrek arrive a short time later, having taken a different route home.

Claudia chatters in incoherent exhaustion before disappearing down the hall, the two cups of espresso she’s just made forgotten on the counter. I swear I hear her bump into the door of the bedroom.

“Good night,” Piotrek says as he retrieves the espresso, a tiny cup in each hand. He pauses just long enough that I think he might say something, but then tilts his head and strides down the hall after Claudia.

I am by now more spent than I can ever remember being. And though I know I will be sore tomorrow, I am, for the first time in weeks—possibly years—at peace.

Luka peels off his jacket, loosens his tie.

He’s obviously exhausted, but I know he is acutely aware of my slightest movement, the breath I have yet to exhale. I have felt his eyes on me all night.

In three strides I’m across the room. My mouth finds his. His arms tighten around my waist.

“I think,” he murmurs, lifting me off my feet, “that you’re going to kill me.”

*  *  *

We return to court that night. And then the next, and the next. I wake every afternoon to a ringing in my ears, the echo of electronic music still drumming in my veins, and rise in anticipation of the frenetic melee.