“But they aren’t, which means they are still in there.” Simone twisted her neck from side to side, earning a satisfying crack. She was stomach-down on the roof of the furniture shop, rifle propped on the roof’s lip, aimed toward the church. A handful of military trucks and a single officer’s Mercedes were parked on the town square. “Do you want to walk into a Kino full of Nazis? I’m not so sure you could avoid notice as convincingly as Liam.”

Phillip scowled at her, but they both knew she had a point. Not that she would fare much better. Sometimes she wanted to laugh with how mad this whole journey was, traveling hundreds of kilometers into the heart of Nazi Germany to find a boy who’d dropped out of the sky. And get them both safely back out again—not that Georges-Yves or the US Army had been too forthcoming about how they’d manage that. A frequency, a preassigned code. That was her only hope of ever escaping this nightmare land.

Part of her didn’t care about escaping. Part of her wanted to cling to the feeling of the rifle firing in her hands, deafening her frantic thoughts and puncturing the pain she kept bottled inside of her. She hated Evangeline, hated her for her cowardice. She hated France and the narrowed stares other Parisians gave her, their muttering about immigrants, as if they weren’t the ones who’d claimed Algeria for their own. But she loved Evangeline, too; her ambition barreled through nearly every no that stood in her way. Loved that it was almost too plausible to believe that maybe, despite everything, she just might really be aiding the Magpie.

She loved France and its colors and chaos and opportunity, woven loosely and brightly like a Berber rug. She missed her mother holding fast to the deen, reciting a du’a into silence, into nighttime, into the ear of a god who knew what lay before them and behind. She missed the feeling of wood melting under her fingertips, shrinking and shaping itself into whatever she dreamed.

And yet like a dream, it crumbled in the light of day. She could try to hold on to it, but she could never go back. Also like woodworking: a wrong cut could never be uncarved.

Simone checked the rifle sights once more. Her gun wasn’t really made for long-distance work—the scope’s magnification was minimal—but it was the best trade-off she had, not knowing from day to day whether she’d find herself perched in a tree or face-to-face with the enemy. A few men stood guard under the Kino’s marquee, waiting with nervous energy. It didn’t look like they were smoking, or on any sort of break, but they weren’t directly acting on orders, either. They looked . . . listless. Wrong.

Simone tightened her grip and leaned forward.