made light of it. “The surgeon will lance the thing, and it will be done.” The surgery was scheduled for four in the afternoon. Not long now.
“They’re bringing a surgeon from Bonn?” Eve tried to quell her apprehension. Lancing an abscess was surely minor surgery. But in this understaffed hellhole, on a half-starved woman . . .
Lili is not afraid, Eve reminded herself. Don’t you be either.
But perhaps Lili was afraid, because she fixed Eve with an unusually sober gaze. Her lively eyes were sunk into a face that was little more than a skull. “Take care of Violette for me, if . . .” An expressive shrug.
“You’re going to be fine.” Eve cut her off before she could go further. “You have to be.”
It was what she’d clung to for more than two years. Evelyn Gardiner had betrayed her friends, had broken down and brought them to this foul place. If she could bring them out again safely, some part of that betrayal could be forgotten, if not ever forgiven. It was what she thought every day when she pushed half her bread ration into Lili’s hands, when she tried to give her blankets to Violette even though Violette still looked at her with stony eyes. Bring them out safely, and you will have atoned.
And she’d almost done it—surely the war could not go on much longer. We are almost there. Almost home.
Perhaps Lili saw some of that desperation in Eve’s eyes, because she reached out and laid her emaciated fingers over Eve’s misshapen ones. “Take care of yourself, little daisy. If I’m not here to haul you out of trouble—”
“Don’t say that.” Eve gripped Lili’s hand, panic choking her. She was not going to lose Lili, not over an abscess. Not now. Not after more than two years of imprisonment, not so close to the end. “It’s just a lance-and-drain operation. Of course you’ll survive!”
Lili’s voice was steady. “But the Germans have no interest in my survival, ma petite.”
Eve’s eyes welled, because she couldn’t deny it: the officials of Siegburg hated every bone in Lili’s troublemaking body, and made no secret of it. “You shouldn’t have led that strike, or—”
Or what? Caused strife from the day she walked through Siegburg’s doors? Planned elaborate escapes, kept spirits high with jokes and stories? If Lili had been the sort to keep her head low, she would not have led the most efficient spy network in France.
“You are going to be fine,” Eve repeated stubbornly, and would have said more, but two orderlies appeared.
“Up, Bettignies. The surgeon has arrived.”
Lili could barely stand. Eve slid an arm around her shoulder, lifting her to her feet. She wore a shapeless dishrag-colored smock, and she made a face at it. “Quelle horreur. What I’d give for something in pink moiré!”
“And a morally questionable hat?” Eve managed to say.
“I’d settle for some morally questionable soap. My hair is filthy.”
Eve’s throat caught. “Lili—”
“Pray for me when I go in there?” Gesturing with her sharp little chin in the direction of the surgery. “I need people praying for me. I wrote a letter to my old Mother Prioress in Anderlecht, but I’ll take your prayers any day, Evelyn Gardiner.”
It was the first time Lili used Eve’s real name. Even after the trial, they went on using the old code names. The ones that felt true. “I cannot pray for you,” Eve whispered. “I do not believe in God anymore.”
“But I do.” Lili kissed the rosary knotted through her fingers, even as the orderlies took her by the elbows.
So Eve jerked out a nod. “Then I’ll pray,” she said. “And I’ll see you in a few hours. I will.”
They hauled Lili out of the infirmary, Eve following behind. A nurse came out of the surgery at the end of the corridor, and for a moment Eve had a glimpse of the surgeon from Bonn smoking a cigarette. There was no bustle, Eve saw—no one was sterilizing instruments, no one was making preparations with ether or chloroform . . .
Lili, she thought in a wash of dread. Lili, don’t go in there—
Ahead she heard Lili’s clear voice reciting her rosary. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths . . .”
The corridor outside was thronged with women. Louise Thuliez, the Princesse de Croy, Violette—as many of the fleurs du mal who could steal away from their work shifts, all anxious glances and murmured prayers for the queen of spies. The two orderlies picked up their