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“Then why?—”
“Because you asked me to keep the light on for you, Juliette. Because you… God, you’re everything. You always have been. And love doesn’t stop even if it doesn’t know if it will ever be needed again. Love goes on, like this light. It shines without any expectation that it will serve anyone, yet it shines anyway. Hoping.”
Juliette gulped the heart-wrenching realizations away. She’d atone. She’d atone for every single thing she’d broken and all the mess she’d made.
“I’m a fool, Katarina.”
The exhalation was barely audible in the shadowy hallway.
“So am I.”
“You tried to tell me. You tried to warn me about Foltin, about the KGB, about everyone, and all I heard was your reasons to betray me.”
Katarina shrugged.
“I also accepted taking your roles, Juliette, believing that you were departing to London and leaving me behind. And despite having my freedom here in Paris, I was still afraid?—”
“I didn’t see that part, and I can’t believe that even after everything you told me, I didn’t understand how immense your fear was. How it molded your decisions, your entire life.”
Juliette felt tears threaten again. Katarina did not shrug this time. In fact, she did not move a muscle. When she finally spoke again, her voice had that faraway quality Juliette detested, because it meant some of the fear was worming its way into those notes of perfect English.
“We talked so much, Juliette. And I shared so much of myself with you. And yet, I held so much back too. I suspected you were wary of me at the beginning, but I was so certain you had beaten back those whispers by the time we got together. It almost killed me knowing that I never earned your trust fully.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t start with trust. Everyone was warning me against you, but I fell apart as hard as I did, breaking everything, us, myself, because of how much I wanted to trust you. The weakness was mine all along. I let my own insecurities take over. I was so ready for the one I loved most to betray me, and yet so absolutely convinced that you would never, so when I thought that it had happened? When I saw him put his hands on you, to see you allow it, agree to his schemes, essentially oust me… I allowed the deception and the anger to take over and my tendons to snap underneath me, because I believed you despite everything else I was being made to see and to hear. And I thought it was my worst mistake, to believe you.”
And now Katarina let her tears fall freely too.
“I see you falling every time I close my eyes. I will keep seeing it over and over as long as I live, my love. Gabrielfailing to catch you by just a second and your face as you realized what was happening… The awful sound of your hamstring snapping. I will never forgive myself, Juliette.”
“And that was my own foolishness yet again. Had I stayed, had I made him talk to me, had I exposed him for the fraud that he is… I bet he set it up so I’d be at his office door listening in at the exact time he was getting you to agree to his schemes.”
Juliette almost slapped herself for not seeing so many angles of the entire charade sooner.
“He did. He kept bragging about all of it, how masterfully he dealt with you and how fate gifted him your injury to get rid of you once and for all. Well, he didn’t brag for very long.”
Something in Katarina’s gaze sparkled with brutal satisfaction, and Juliette wished she could close her thighs. Since when had Katarina’s violence become so attractive? Then Juliette laughed.
“Scratched his eyes out, did you? Oh God, blood and ballet and you. Always you. You are completely irresistible to me whenyou are covered in wrath and bloody satin and putting weak, useless men in their place.”
Katarina’s smile was sly. “Only then? I shall see about slapping more people.” They giggled like schoolgirls sharing a dirty joke. “Speaking of weak, useless men. I hear I am not the only one with a propensity to put them in their place.” And now Katarina’s face was all exuberance and not a little schadenfreude. “Foltin ran to my room the minute he could get out of that elevator, my love. He blubbered about you brutalizing him. It was glorious. And led to several confessions. And some decisions.”
Juliette’s curiosity piqued.
“I always thought he was a whiny small man. What did he say?”
Katarina’s fingers played with her hair, and Juliette felt a smile bloom against her temple.
“That you almost blew his cover, but he may salvage it still, since you weren’t certain. So I made sure he knew that if you didn’t go to the French or American authorities, I would. He’s resigning on Monday. I don’t know if he works for the Russian secret police now that the Soviet Union fell, but he was an active agent for the KGB for years. None of the governments he has been in good standing with will like that. The Brits would be made fools for granting him asylum only for him to turn spy, and the French hate being duped, and they invested in him the most.”
“So he’s gone? Katarina, you vanquished him?”
“My love, you’re very easy to impress.” Katarina laughed but did not deny anything, and Juliette felt incredibly proud. She picked up one of the fallen blossoms, the yellow like a ray of sunshine in her hand, and offered it to Katarina.
“No, don’t dismiss this. It’s huge. You faced him. And your fear, and you beat him.”
Katarina took the flower and tucked it behind Juliette’s ear before slowly kissing her forehead. The world was suddenly brighter, the shadows nesting in the corners of the hallway disappearing. Juliette burrowed deeper into the scent and the skin and tried very hard not to cry.
“I should have faced him sooner. I should have faced so many things sooner.” Katarina sighed, the weight of the exhalation palpable in the air. “I went back, you know. The new government allowed me. Welcomed me, even. So strange. But I wanted to go. To see what was left. I visited Tallinn, and it’s beautiful. It’s small and quaint and utterly amazing. It’s my mother’s city. I walked the streets, and I swear I could hear her voice and her steps.”
