It was his own fault. If he hadn’t gotten captured, if he hadn’t been so hell-bent on killing Kreutzer and Himmler and all the rest, he could have declared his vengeance done. He’d slit plenty of throats; the bloodstains under his nails would never scrub out. He’d never forget the hot stink of fascist blood spurting across his face, cooling far quicker than seemed possible. He’d atomized enough skull and brain matter and fussy little blood vessels with a point-blank bullet from their own guns. Was this what it meant to resist? Was this enough? Surely this was as much as any one man could do.

He could have buried his stolen knife deep in the tainted ground of Germany and fled, seeking better shores in Liam’s arms. Rebeka had been right, just as she always was: at some point it was no longer vengeance, but wasted breath, throwing away his perfectly good life after countless deaths. The best revenge is living well, she’d said, even though he couldn’t imagine there would be any life left for them after this.

The soldiers filed into the chamber, hollow shells of men in uniform, and lined up for Pitr and Kreutzer’s infusions. They merged with the shadows until they were true otherworldly demons—now demons with claws and guns and coal embers for hearts that burned hatred for fuel. The two worlds were merging further still, the shadowscape of forest and mountains and demons’ warrens piling up together like a mudslide inside Wewelsburg. And in the distance, something massive was rumbling awake.

The behemoth. The one that drank his regret and sorrow and bitterness, and reforged it into something even worse.

Daniel felt its magnetic pull as it straightened from its resting place, its dozens of faces dancing with images. They played like a film reel moving at half speed:

Rebeka running to him, telling him—lying to him—about Ari and their parents’ fate as she begged him to run with her.

The stink of burning bodies as their train passed Chełmno, etched like acid in his mind.

Ernst’s forceful laugh, sandpaper shredding up Daniel’s hope, his love, his very skin.

The way it felt to walk down a street in Berlin: not as his own person, but as an avatar, a part of a larger whole, a whole that was hated, feared, judged. To never be seen as Daniel, but as just one of the many faceless enemies.

His fear of losing Rebeka, too—

Of losing himself—

Himself, the self he’d already lost long ago when he became nothing but a number in the Łódź ghetto—

Daniel closed his eyes and choked back a sob.

The worst thing you can do is be afraid, Liam had told him the first time he’d seen the shadow world.