to meet you…”
En Route to Berlin, Germany
July 29, 1872
XIII
The glasses rattle faintly on the table as the train rolls through the German countryside. Addie sits in the dining car, sipping her coffee and staring out the window, marveling at the speed with which the world goes past.
Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention. She will think this again and again over the years, when bombs are dropped, and buildings felled, when terror consumes whole countries. But also when the first images are impressed on film, when planes rise into the air, when movies go from black-and-white to color.
She is amazed.
She will always be amazed.
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t hear the conductor until he is beside her, one hand coming to rest lightly on her shoulder.
“Fräulein,” he says, “your ticket, please.”
Addie smiles. “Of course.”
She looks down at the table, pretends to shuffle through her purse.
“I’m sorry,” she says, rising, “I must have left it in my room.”
It is not the first time they have done this dance, but it is the first time the porter has decided to follow her, trailing like a shadow as she makes her way toward a car she does not have, for a ticket that she never bought.
Addie quickens her pace, hoping to put a door between them, but it is no use, the conductor is with her every step, and so she slows, and stops before a door that leads to a room that is certainly not hers, hoping that at least it will be empty.
It is not.
As she reaches for the handle, it escapes, sliding open onto a dim compartment, an elegant man leaning in the doorway, black curls drawn like ink against his temples.
Relief rolls through her.
“Herr Wald,” says the conductor, straightening, as if the man in the door were a duke, and not the darkness.
Luc smiles. “There you are, Adeline,” he says in a voice as smooth and rich as summer honey. His green eyes slide from her to the conductor. “She has a way of running off, my wife. Now,” he says, a sly smile on his lips, “what’s brought you back to me?”
Addie manages a smile of her own, cloyingly sweet.
“My love,” she says. “I forgot my ticket.”
He chuckles, drawing a slip of paper from the pocket of his coat. Luc draws Addie close. “What a forgetful thing you are, my dear.”
She bristles, but holds her tongue, leans instead into the weight of him.
The conductor surveys the slip, and wishes them a pleasant night, and the moment he is gone she pulls away from Luc.
“My Adeline.” He clicks his tongue. “That is no way to treat a husband.”
“I am not yours,” she says. “And I did not need your help.”
“Of course not,” he answers dryly. “Come, let’s not quarrel in the hall.”
Luc draws her into the compartment, or at least, that is what she thinks he is doing, but instead of stepping into the familiar confines of the cabin, she finds only the darkness, vast and deep. Her heart catches on the missed step, the sudden drop, as the train falls away, the world falls away, and they are back in the nothing, the hollow space between, and she knows she will never fully know it, never be able to wrap her mind around the nature of the dark. Because she realizes now, what it is, this place.
It is him.
It is the truth of him, the vast and savage night, the darkness, full of promise, and violence, fear, and freedom.
And when the night shudders back into shape around them, they are no longer on the German train, but on a street, in the center of a city she does not yet know is Munich.
And she should be mad at the abduction, the sudden change in the direction of her night, but she cannot stifle the curiosity blossoming in the wake of her confusion. The sudden flush of something new. The thrill of adventure.
Her heart quickens, but she resolves not to let him see her marvel.
She suspects he does anyway.
There is a pleased glint in those eyes, a thread of darker green.
They are standing on the steps of a pillared opera house, her traveling clothes gone, replaced by a far finer dress, and Addie wonders if the gown is real, as far as anything is real, or simply the conjurings of smoke and shadow. Luc stands beside her, a gray scarf around his collar, green eyes dancing beneath the brim of