“You can’t join them, Simone.” Evangeline grazed fingertips against her face. “It’s too dangerous. Their eyes are everywhere, and I couldn’t bear it if anything . . .”

Simone blinked. “But you would stop it. You’d find a way to protect me. Wouldn’t you?”

Wasn’t that the point of working with those monsters? To temper what they did. Evangeline had spoken that way once. But maybe it was only a lie she’d told herself.

“I don’t have that kind of power. No one does. The best I can do is—is watch them. Understand the way they work. Anything more is too great a risk, it would do more harm than good.”

Evangeline turned a winsome smile on her, those green eyes glittering like the sea. Appeasement. Simone no longer felt guilty for not telling her the truth. She was her father’s daughter above all else: a diplomat. A collaborator. A conniver and a schemer, selling out Paris and her own heart to keep a soft pillow beneath her head. Simone had worked herself into knots trying to justify all that Evangeline did or didn’t do, but she could no longer ignore it.

“Things will get better,” Evangeline said softly. She kissed the corner of Simone’s mouth, but Simone didn’t respond. “If we can endure it for a little longer . . . wait them out . . .”

Simone stepped out of her grasp. “Oh, yes. It’s been a terrible hardship for you.”

Evangeline sucked in her breath; it never took long for her offense to turn into cold anger. She narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t a clue.”

“You still live in that golden prison of a mansion, do you not? You eat three meals a day?”

“Don’t, Simone.”

“And all those days in the government offices, helping your father manage the bigger prison that is occupied France now.”

“Better me than the Nazis—”

“What about those dinners at Place Vendôme? Has he found a sweet little Unterführer for you to wed?”

Evangeline lunged forward. “I would never—”

Distant shouts in German silenced them both. They shrank back into the shadows, and Evangeline reached for her hand, but Simone yanked it away. A car engine rumbled, and light swept over the mouth of the alley as a Hotchkiss drove past. Gestapo on the hunt, perhaps.

Simone had spent all her life as a stranger in someone else’s land—Paris, the carpenters’ ateliers, Evangeline’s glittering diplomat world, with parquet wooden floors and lectures at the Sorbonne and waiting on the occupiers with a smile. It could never be Simone’s world. She was done being an unwelcome guest, shrinking into the corner as if she were prey. She needed a purpose. She needed to hunt.

“Perhaps you’re right. It is better if we aren’t seen together,” Simone said. “Perhaps we shouldn’t see each other at all.”