The past is our right! Join the Black Cirkus!

It was fascinating to see this place firsthand after hearing about it for so long, but Dorothy was confused. Why had they come here now?

She picked her way through the tents, looking for Roman. There weren’t a lot of people out and about in the rain, and every movement made her start, nerves creeping up her neck. Mostly it was just squirrels and raccoons darting between the tents, their glassy eyes reflected back at her in the darkness.

“Roman?” she called softly, eyes straining. She stepped into a clearing surrounded on all sides by tents. “Where—”

She broke off, walking directly into Roman’s back. His dark hair and clothes had blended easily with the night so that she hadn’t seen him until she was nearly upon him. He stared straight ahead, not seeming to notice that she’d joined him.

Dorothy followed his gaze and saw that they were not alone in the clearing. There, straight ahead, were the two children from their trip to collect the solar panels, the ones who’d been playing in the house next door. They were two years older, but Dorothy immediately recognized the girl’s dark braids, the boy’s skinny frame. And yet something was wrong.

The boy was on his knees in the clearing between the tents, and he was gasping, his eyes dark pits of grief. The girl lay in his arms. Her eyes were open and staring, her limbs already rigid.

She was . . . dead.

A moan came from Roman. He dropped to his knees. The bottle of insulin fell from his fingers, landing in the mud.

Yards away, the boy crouching in the grass echoed the sound. “Hold on, Cassia,” he whispered, patting the little girl’s face. “You have to hold on, okay? Help will be here soon.”

Dorothy went cold. She knew that voice. It sounded younger than she’d ever heard it, but it was still, undoubtedly, Roman. The boy crouching in the mud was Roman himself, two years ago. And the dead girl could only be . . .

“Is that . . . your sister?” Dorothy asked, numb.

She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Roman knew all her secrets, and yet he’d never trusted her with this.

Had he trusted anyone? Or had he held this grief inside for years, suffering alone?

“I thought . . . if I got to her in time.” His voice sounded strangled. “But I was too late.”

His eyes shifted up to Dorothy’s, his face a silent plea. His skin was nearly as pale as the little girl lying in the mud.

Dorothy opened her mouth, and then closed it again, finding that she couldn’t speak. The picture she’d spent the last year forming broke apart inside of her head. All those times Roman had seemed to bite his tongue, all the dark looks and secrets. It had been this. He’d been trying to come up with a plan to save his sister’s life.