Luciana pursed her lips and braced herself, like forming words was an exercise in torture. “I need to tell you something.”

“Not now—”

“No, please,” Luciana cut her off, now on the precipice of tears. “Last year, when we parted on bad terms, I promised myself I’d make things right when I saw you again, and those two weeks you had disappeared . . . I honestly . . . I really, genuinely thought if you turned up dead, I couldn’t survive that. And when they found you, I just wanted to make things right but . . . I never did. And I’m afraid if I don’t tell you this now, what if the next time we part might be our last?”

Cora wanted to tell her, Then I guess we’ll never have it, but held back.

“When I told you that I didn’t have anything to do with leaking the Fremda Memo to Nils, that was the truth. When I told you that I don’t know how he knew to go digging for it, that was also true. I didn’t know, because I didn’t remember. But to be honest, this isn’t even about coming clean. I didn’t lie. I didn’t realize that I did know the truth, that I had forgotten it. You were right. It was me that did it. I was the one who told Nils about the Fremda group.”

Cora’s anger was starting to burn itself out, to fade to numbness. But she wanted it back, anything, anything to keep her from slipping into grief. She couldn’t handle it.

Ampersand couldn’t handle it.

She’d been so consumed with anger over the loss of Kaveh, she’d forgotten the loss of Ampersand. He was on a precipice of his own, she sensed it. He wasn’t sharing her anger, wherever he was; he was mired in his own grief. And she knew, the second she slipped into her own grief, became consumed by it . . .

It would be too much. That would be the moment he decided, enough. I’m tired. I don’t want to run anymore.

And with that, she remembered Nikola’s decree, the very first thing he had said to Cora, the reason he was here on Earth at all: And he will join me in death.