And then they were standing in the wreckage of the castle tower, only a single black shadowy rift before them, dancing in the air.

Liam looked at Daniel, the strain on his face. Liam forced himself to smile through the bloody haze.

Then he teetered forward and collapsed onto the shattered stone floor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

SIMONE

An unseasonably warm wind gusted in off the Thames, dancing across their faces as they mingled along the roof of 1 Dorset Square, the home of the Free French in London. But nothing warmed Simone like Evangeline’s hand locked in hers, like the kisses they couldn’t stop stealing when the others weren’t looking. Only the occasional roar of RAF bombers punctuated the perfect peace, but even that noise was all too sweet—better them than the Luftwaffe attempting another blitz.

It had started with a goodbye Simone had been all too hasty to make and ended with a pair of Allied planes sweeping over the beaches of Drieborg to extract them. It ended with a girl awaiting them on the military runway, one hand in a sling, a tremor in her chin as her gaze locked with Simone’s.

It ended with the bitter ache in Simone’s belly vanishing all at once, her joints loosening, her heart pushing up into her throat as she wondered if she should forgive, could forgive, if everything that had happened made up for everything that had come before.

It ended with Simone pulling Evangeline into her arms, tears dripping into her blond hair, her breath returning to normal, a normal she hadn’t felt in months.

Their blow to the SS High Command had been more symbolic than they’d hoped; Heinrich Himmler had been at a secret meeting in Berlin when his castle collapsed. But Kreutzer’s mad experiments and his squadron of shadow-imbued soldiers were destroyed. Evangeline and Simone were now working directly for de Gaulle’s Alliance and the British Special Operations Executive, fighting to save the surviving members of Georges-Yves Sauvage’s dismantled network as they forged new ones. Much to Simone’s amusement, Evangeline now wore the Lorraine Cross pinned proudly to her chest.

“And you didn’t even have to steal it,” Simone murmured into Evangeline’s shoulder.

Evangeline tipped Simone’s face up with a finger under her chin. “The Torturer of Troyes might argue that point with you.”

“How unfortunate for him that he cannot.”