A figure stepped out of the smoke, soot smearing his face. Dark tendrils wisped from his blond hair, his outstretched fingertips, his glowing eyes. He strode across the tile, something dark and wondrous trailing behind him like a veil.

“Liam,” Daniel breathed.

With a ripple of whispers, Liam stomped on Pitr’s wrist and wrenched the dagger from his hand. “Hello, Pitr.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

PHILLIP

“We have to go in,” Rebeka said. “He’ll need us. We have to stop the ritual—”

Simone spat on the cobbles of the alley mouth where they were watching the castle. “If the Nazis caught him, your brother is already dead.”

Phillip shrank back into the shadows as a pair of guards goose-stepped along the castle’s entrance bridge. This was insane, this was all insane. They couldn’t barge through the front door, and if Daniel had been caught sneaking in, the castle was sure to be on high alert. He wanted to help Rebeka, but as far as he could tell, the best thing they could do was send word to Simone’s Resistance contacts—maybe they could even summon military assistance from RAF pilots off in Wherever-the-Fuck-by-the-Sea—and let them handle it.

Let them handle it. Not our fight. His father’s words and Mr. Connolly’s rang in his skull. Just like the German kids they met, who’d gladly endure a death by a thousand smaller cuts if it spared them a larger single discomfort. It was easy to ignore any problem as long as paying attention hurt worse.

Phillip looked at Rebeka, the tears clumped in her dark lashes, the hard set of her jaw.

This girl was going to be the death of him.

No. The determination she set in him was.

“Your brother has a death wish,” Simone pointed out. Softer now. “We may already be too late.”

“I have to fight for him.” Rebeka tilted her head. “Just as you’re fighting, I think, for the person on the radio.”

Simone whirled on her, rifle clenched tight. “What the fuck do you know—”

“Hey! Both of you!” Phillip shouted. “None of this helps us get inside.”

Or that was what he mostly said, before the blast of energy kicked him in the chest like a drunk mule, sending him sprawling deep into the alley. Lightning burned through the sky; when he blinked, he saw the afterimage of Wewelsburg’s main tower split with a bolt that came from inside. He groaned, waiting for his vision to clear. Simone had landed somewhere to his right, and Rebeka landed on top of him.

“Oh,” she said, facing him, her eyes round with shock. He imagined his own expression was something considerably dopier.

“You all right?” he whispered.

She smiled shyly, nodded, and tucked her hair back behind her ear. He raised his hands, overcome with the urge to tuck it back, too—

Then the shards of stone began to rain down on them.