The door flung open. Maybe two or three men, from the sound of it. Her heart pounded heavy as the bell’s iron clapper; she was amazed they couldn’t hear it ringing out halfway across the village. This wasn’t like all the times she’d lain in wait while Daniel was off on one of his stupid missions, leaving her to wring her hands and sweat, or at worst, leaving her with a gun and ample warning time. All she had were the crumbs she’d scraped together for the meal and the old horse blanket they’d eaten on, which she’d stashed away in the tower cupboard before scrambling up here. And their family mezuzah in her pocket, a prayer tucked inside. It dug into her hipbone, bony where it had once been soft.

The men beneath her circled around the bell, but were oddly silent. It wasn’t comforting. It figured that now, when she could use the visions most, none came. No, her curse was only good for ruining things. Like the fleeting, quivering chance she’d had to pull Daniel back from the brink.

Rebeka bit the inside of her cheek to stop the rush of tears. There was no going back. She’d made her choice—it hadn’t even been a choice, just a matter of happenstance that Daniel had been the one she found just after the vision struck. Maybe if she’d saved Ari, they’d be at a café in London now, preparing for their Yom Kippur fast under the last of a summer sun, the Royal Air Force buzzing overhead on its way south. Maybe if she’d saved Papa, they could have lived off the land until the war ended one way or another. If she’d saved Mama, they could have melted into the anonymous cities of southern Europe, donned new lives, worn new faces.

Or they all could have died. And she’d have saved no one at all.

There was no changing it. There was no forgiveness. No atonement. Only this moment, right here, the rotted rafter pressing into her gut. Her breath a flood she was trying desperately to hold back. The wooden box in her pocket hot as an ember with everything she’d done, all the mistakes she could never correct.

Pain lanced through her head, between her eyes. She stopped just short of sucking in her breath, shocked at the suddenness of an impending vision. Her heartbeat nailed her in place while, below her, the soldiers shuffled around, poking into the various corners of the tower.

The soldiers—

Rebeka’s vision warped and took flight, startled like a moth shaken from a curtain. She saw the bell tower from beneath her—looked up toward the rafter where she hid—