By dawn, they woke Rebeka and loaded the supplies. She hid in the truck’s bed while Daniel and Liam took the cab. The drive was deceptively easy, despite the black carrion shadows cast by the Luftwaffe planes constantly roaring overhead. Liam kept up a nervous stream of conversation as they went: the principles of energy and matter, mostly, because they were what he knew best and because Daniel asked. After a ten-minute lecture on Pauli’s exclusion principle—two bodies cannot occupy the same quantum state at once—he stopped himself abruptly, a rush of heat taking over his face.

“Why did you stop? You care about your work,” Daniel murmured, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

“I forget sometimes that no one else gives a fuck.”

“They should, though.” Daniel’s fingers pressed a chord against his own thigh and quivered it in a vibrato. “It’s how I feel about music. I don’t even need to play the leading line. Violas never do.” His fingers danced up and down, and Liam wished, briefly, they were dancing on his skin instead. “It is enough to give the melody its scaffold.”

“You don’t want to be the star sometimes?”

Daniel paused, smashed his fingers into a fist. “That makes it harder to hide.”

Liam swallowed his gut response: It’d be a shame to hide you. Clumsy at best. And untrue. If the world were safe for Daniel, they wouldn’t be here. Daniel wouldn’t be shrinking, shrinking down from the windows, tucking knives inside his boot as he whispered what sounded like a vengeful prayer. Liam stayed silent the rest of the way and only stole furtive glances at the dark-eyed, rangy boy beside him.

They reached the outskirts of Siegen sometime around noon, the clusters of wood and whitewashed cottages huddled under a smoky sky that threatened rain. Just beneath the road sign welcoming him to Siegen, a rusted sign warned, JEWS ENTER AT THEIR OWN RISK. He glanced over at Daniel, but he’d fallen asleep, head lolling against Liam’s shoulder.

“Daniel,” Liam murmured. He tried to match the German cadence Daniel had used when he introduced himself, and savored the way it rolled on his tongue. “Daniel. We’re almost there.”

Daniel jerked up, sucking down air like he’d been drowning. He’d half pulled his knife from his belt before he took in his surroundings. “Ach, I’m so sorry. I haven’t slept like that in . . .” He shook his head, collecting himself, then slid open the panel to the cargo hold. “I’ll wake Rebeka and get in position.”