the river, and the shock of it dropped Luce to her knees. She covered her face with her hands--
Until she heard someone softly crying. She lifted her head and squinted into the deeper darkness of the ruins, and she saw him.
Daniel, she whispered. He looked just the same. Almost radiating light, even in the freezing darkness. The blond hair she never wanted to stop running her fingers through, the violet-gray eyes that seemed to have been made to lock with hers. That formidable face, the high cheekbones, those lips. Her heart pounded and she had to tighten her grip on the iron fence to keep from running to him.
Because he wasn't alone.
He was with Luschka. Consoling her, stroking her cheek and kissing her tears away. Their arms were wrapped around one another, their heads tipped forward in a never-ending kiss. They were so lost in their embrace they didn't seem to feel the street rolling and quaking with another explosion. They looked like all there was in the world was just the two of them.
There was no space between their bodies. It was too dim to see where one of them ended and the other one began.
Lucinda got to her feet and crept forward, moving from one pile of rubble in the dark to the next, just longing to be closer to him.
I thought I'd never find you, Luce heard her past self say.
We will always find each other, Daniel answered, lifting her off the ground and squeezing her closer. Always.
Hey, you two! A voice shouted from a doorway in a neighboring building. Are you coming?
Across the square from the empty lot, a small group of people were being herded into a solid stone building by a guy whose face Luce couldn't make out. That was where Luschka and Daniel were headed. It must have been their plan all along, to take shelter from the bombs together.
Yes, Luschka called to the others. She looked at Daniel. Let's go with them. No. His voice was curt. Nervous. Luce knew that tone all too well.
We'll be safer off the street. Isn't this why we agreed to meet here?
Daniel turned to look back behind them, his eyes sweeping right past the place where Luce was hiding. When the sky lit up with another round of golden-red explosions, Luschka screamed and buried her face in Daniel's chest. So Luce was the only one who saw his expression.
Something was weighing on him. Something greater than fear of the bombs.
Oh no.
Daniil! A boy near the building was still holding open the door to the shelter. Luschka! Daniil!
Everyone else was already inside.
That was when Daniil spun Luschka around, pulled her ear close to his lips. In her shadowy hiding place, Luce ached to know what he was whispering. If he was saying any of the things Daniel ever told her when she was upset or overwhelmed. She wanted to run to them, to pull Luschka away--but she couldn't. Something deep inside her would not budge.
She fixed on Luschka's expression as if her whole life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
Luschka nodded as Daniil spoke, and her face changed from terrified to calm, almost peaceful. She closed her eyes. She nodded one more time. Then she tipped back her head, and a smile spread slowly across her lips.
A smile?
But why? How? It was almost like she knew what was about to happen.
Daniil held her in his arms and dipped her low. He leaned in for another kiss, pressing his lips firmly against hers, running his hands through her hair, then down her sides, across every inch of her.
It was so passionate that Luce blushed, so intimate she couldn't breathe, so gorgeous that she couldn't tear her eyes away. Not for a second.
Not even when Luschka screamed.
And burst into a column of searing white flame.
The cyclone of flames was otherworldly, fluid and almost elegant in a ghastly way, like a long silk scarf twisting around her pale body. It engulfed Luschka, flowed out of her and all around her, lighting up the spectacle of her burning limbs flailing, and flailing--and then not flailing anymore. Daniil didn't let go, not when the fire singed his clothes, not when he had to support the full weight of her slack, unconscious body, not when the flames burned away her flesh with an ugly, acrid hiss, not when her skin began to char and blacken.
Only when the blaze fizzled out--so fast, in the end, like the snuffing of a single candle--and there was nothing