Liam allowed himself to imagine a world where he could be powerful enough to save this boy. Tear apart the Third Reich—not just because he had to, but because it was what Daniel, his family, deserved. He could almost believe it—that he could claim the book and the power he’d sought for so long.

He could taste it, the juicy steak after months of broth. The smile he thought would never cross his mother’s face again. The power of two worlds in his veins, thumping, burning, searing—not Kreutzer’s, not the Nazis’, but his alone. He had uncovered this. He had tamed this. And he’d control how it could be used—not by Nazis, but by those who’d fight them off.

Liam regarded Daniel’s face, this fighter’s face, this boy who survived against the odds. They both deserved this.

“Well. We do this right, maybe we can find a way home.”

“Maybe,” Daniel said, but neither of them believed he meant it.

The shower was downright sinful, stripping off the top layer of Liam’s skin, all of the grime and anger and failure that coated him like a film. Phillip and Simone had slunk off on their hush-hush mission elsewhere in town, while Daniel and Rebeka broke bread in the bell tower above and Helene went about her daily chores. Liam had offered to help her, but after a short quiz in German, she deemed him too much of a risk in case her customers got nosy.

So Liam helped himself to the selection in the film vault as he waited for nightfall to head out once more.

He tried The Great Love Helene had mentioned the night before, but his stomach was churning after only a few minutes in. A Nazi officer wooing a cabaret singer, and yet somehow it wasn’t a horror show. He spooled the film back up and tossed it back in the heap.

Next up he found a stack of tins for an old silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—two different editions, oddly, the older-looking one buried at the bottom of the stack. Both told the story of a world gone increasingly mad. A man was investigating the murderer Caligari and his sleepwalking, unwitting accomplice, only to find that Caligari is the director of an insane asylum and not one of its residents, like he should’ve been. A perfect parable for their time, Liam thought bitterly; that power was not to be trusted, not to be taken as an absolute.