-DING!
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and a rush of cool night air washed over Max and Bell.
They had arrived at the thirteenth floor. It was not the highest floor of the building, only the second to last, just as the number on the panel had said. But the moment Bell stepped out, she forgot all about numbers.
Max had led her onto a wide stone terrace, a hidden garden high above the city. A low wall of white marble ran along the edge, and clay pots full of flowers stood in neat rows beside it. Strings of tiny golden lights hung between the lamp posts, and they swayed gently in the wind like a river of stars. There were no guests here and no waiters. There was no music, either. There was only the quiet hum of the city far below.
Bell walked slowly toward the wall, with her mouth slightly open. She rested her hands on the cold marble and looked out.
"Woah," she breathed. "The view here is really beautiful. It's so much better than the place Dad took us to earlier."
The city spread out in front of her like a living map. Massive skyscrapers rose from the ground in tall, glittering rows, and their windows were painted in neon pink, electric blue, and soft green. Tiny cars crawled along the streets like threads of light, red and white, in long glowing lines. A train slid between the towers far away, and its windows flickered like a string of beads.
And above all of it, hanging in the black sky, was the moon.
It was enormous. It sat directly in front of them, low and round and golden-white, so close that Bell felt she could reach out and touch it. Every crater and shadow was clear. Its light poured over the terrace like warm milk, and it turned Bell's blonde hair into a halo.
Bell's eyes began to gleam.
"Woaaaahhhh!!!" she cried. She spun around, grabbed Max's sleeve, and pointed at the sky with her whole arm. "Max, look! Look, look, look! The moon is so big! Woah, this is my first time seeing it like this!"
Max laughed softly.
He knew exactly why the moon looked so huge tonight. It was a trick of the horizon and the season, and perhaps a little of the way the orbit was bending toward the earth. He had the whole explanation ready in his head. But he looked at the pure, shining joy on her face, and he decided to keep it to himself.
'Let her enjoy it,' he thought. 'Nobody needs a lecture on lunar distance at a time like this. I'm not going to be a killjoy.'
"Kyaaaaaaaaa!!!" Bell squealed. She let go of his sleeve and ran along the wall with her arms stretched wide, like a child at a seaside. "It's so beautiful! This is really my first time seeing it like this, Max!"
She ran back to him, out of breath, with her cheeks pink and her eyes shining. Then she smiled at him, a smile so soft and so warm that Max felt his heart skip.
"If this is the surprise," she said, "then I'm already good. I don't need anything else!"
Max shook his head slowly.
"That's not the surprise, Bell," he said. "It does look beautiful, I'll give you that. But no. This isn't it."
"Wait, what?" Bell blinked. Her smile wobbled with confusion. "Really?"
"Really." Max nodded and stepped up beside her. He leaned his elbows on the marble wall and looked up at the moon. "And you know, you really seem to have simple reasons to be happy. Gazing at the moon. Gazing at the stars, I guess."
"Yes!" Bell said at once. She leaned on the wall beside him and nodded firmly. "I do have simple reasons to be happy, and I'm not ashamed of it. And yes, I love stargazing. I used to do it with my parents a long time ago. At least, back when they still gave me attention..."
Her voice faded at the end of the sentence.
Her smile slipped away. The brightness that had filled her face a moment ago dimmed, like a lamp being turned down. She looked at her fingers on the cold marble, and her shoulders dropped.
Max saw it at once.
He did not ask what was wrong. He did not need to. He simply took off his jacket, shook it out, and placed it gently over her shoulders. It was still warm from his body, and it smelled faintly of cedar and rain. He pulled it closed over her chest. Then he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss against her forehead.
"Don't be sad," he said quietly.
Bell did not answer. She kept her eyes lowered.
"I might not know the reason why it seems they don't love you anymore," Max continued. His voice was low and steady. "But Bell..."
He lifted her chin with one finger, so that she had to look at him.
"You're not alone this time. You have me. And you have your Auntie Irmela, too. And if your parents want to completely abandon you, then let them. Let it be. You don't need them. And they don't deserve someone as sweet, as caring, as protective, as obsessive, and as beautiful as you are."
Bell's lips trembled. Her grey eyes became wet and bright, and her fingers tightened on the lapels of his jacket.
"Obsessive?" she asked, with a small, shaky laugh.
"Obsessive," Max said, grinning. "I've seen the way you look at a chemical equation. It's frightening."
She laughed again, and this time a tear spilled over. She did not wipe it away. She only closed her eyes and let him kiss her forehead a second time, then a third, slowly, one gentle press at a time.
"Yeah," she whispered. "Thanks for that, Max."
Max pulled back a little. For a moment, they stood in the moonlight with their faces only a few inches apart. Her hair moved in the wind. His amber eyes were warm.
Then he bent his head and kissed her on the lips.
Bell kissed him back at once. Her hands slid up around his neck, and she rose onto her toes to meet him. It was not a shy kiss. It was the kind of kiss two people give each other when they have been waiting for a very long time, as if they had been starving for it for years, for centuries, for lifetimes. Max's arms wrapped around her waist and drew her tightly against him. The jacket slipped half off her shoulders, and neither of them cared.
-KISS!
-KISS!
The kiss deepened. The golden lights swayed above them. The wind seemed to hold its breath.
"Ahhh," Bell murmured against his mouth, and her voice was soft and trembling. "Max..."
Neither of them counted the time. The city below them went on with its noise, the neon signs flickered, and the cars crawled along their glowing roads. Up on the terrace, there was only the sound of two people breathing, and the rustle of a jacket.
It went on for a long time. Five minutes passed, perhaps more.
Finally, with an enormous effort, Max pulled his head back.
"Ahhh..." he said, breathless. His forehead rested against hers, and his chest was rising and falling. His voice was rough. "Let's stop for now, Bell. It's not the time yet."
Bell's eyes were still half closed. Her lips were red, and her cheeks were flushed to the tips of her ears. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
"Ahhh... yeah," she said at last, and she let out a long, shaky breath. "Yeah, we should stop. Or we won't get to see your surprise."
She tried to smile and licked her lips, and it was clear that she was still very much in the mood to keep going.
Max saw it. He raised his hand and caught her chin gently between two fingers, so that she could not lean in again.
"Ah, ah, ah," he said, shaking his head slowly. His eyes were laughing at her. "It's not the time yet."
"Max..."
"If I hadn't stopped you just now, and if I hadn't stopped you again, you would literally jump me." He tilted his head. "You would drag me into the corner of this garden and try to ruin my reputation. And there are about three hundred windows in those skyscrapers over there, Bell. Three hundred. Someone would see."
He pointed past her shoulder at the tall glass towers across the street. Their windows glowed in the dark like thousands of watching eyes.
Bell turned her head and looked.
Then she looked back at him. Her expression went through several stages, from guilt to embarrassment and then to something like quiet, grumpy surrender.
"Ughh, fine!" she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. "What a bummer."
"I know."
"You're really mean."
"I'm really a gentleman," Max corrected.
"That's the same thing tonight!"
Max let out a long breath of relief, but he was laughing softly. He had been a hitman, a fugitive, and a survivor of thirty thousand lives. Yet nothing had ever been as hard as stopping that kiss. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and shook out his hands, as if he were trying to shake off a very powerful spell.
The wind cooled their faces. Slowly, the pink faded from Bell's cheeks, and her breathing went back to normal. She pulled his jacket tight around her shoulders and stood beside him again at the wall.
Max looked up at the sky.
The stars were out above the moon, scattered in a vast, quiet spray, some brighter, some faint. A thin cloud drifted across the lower part of the sky, lit silver at its edges.
"They really are beautiful," he said softly. "The moon and the stars."
He was silent for a moment. His hands, resting on the marble, slowly curled into fists.
"I really miss stargazing with my mom and my dad," he said. "They used to take me up on the roof of our house at night, with a blanket and a flask of hot chocolate. They tried to teach me the constellations. Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper. Dad could point out every one of them without even looking at a map."
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
"But honestly, I had no interest in any of it. I was a kid. I just wanted to eat the marshmallows. One night, I fell asleep in the middle of Dad's lecture about Andromeda, and Mom gave me a knuckle sandwich. A real one, right on the top of my head. Dad laughed so hard at that, and then Mom hit him too."
His smile faded. His voice grew smaller.
"Sigh... I miss my parents."
Bell listened to every word, and her heart ached. She had been so wrapped up in her own sadness that she had almost forgotten his. Max had lost something much bigger than she had. Her parents were alive and distant, but his were gone forever.
She took a small step toward him and put her hand on his arm.
"If this brings back bad memories," she said carefully, "then we should go downstairs, Max. I don't mind. I don't need the surprise that much."
Max shook his head, without taking his eyes off the sky.
"Nah. There's no need to," he said. "Like I said earlier, we're here for your surprise. It's not a surprise if we leave."
"But..."
"Bell."
She looked up at him. His face was calm, and there was a small, genuine smile on it.
"It's all right," he said. "They're good memories. They just hurt a little. That's how you know they were good."
Bell studied his face for a long moment. Then she sighed, and her shoulders slumped.
"Fine..." she said. "You win."
"Thank you."
"I hate that you always win."
"You'll live."
Max put his left hand behind his back. He slid his right arm around her waist and drew her close against his side, and she squeaked in surprise.
"Woah-!"
He did not answer. His eyes were looking at the sky, but his mind was busy with something else. He had begun to count, silently, in a slow and steady rhythm.
'Ten.'
He glanced at his watch. The second hand was creeping toward the top of the dial.
'Nine.'
Bell looked up at him, and for no reason that she could name, her heart began to beat a little faster.
'Eight.'
'Seven.'
'Six.'
'Five.'
He turned his head and looked at her. She was standing in the moonlight, wrapped in his jacket, with her blonde hair blowing across her face. The golden lights gave her skin a soft glow. She was a chemist, a scientist, and a girl who had been bullied and left behind by everyone she had ever loved. And to him, at that moment, she was the most beautiful thing in the universe.
"You're literally beautiful today, Bell," Max said.
Bell froze.
A hot blush crawled up her neck and flooded her face all at once. She had not been ready for it at all. It came out of nowhere, in the middle of a quiet moment, like a hidden ambush. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and gave it a tug.
"Stop teasing me, goddamnit!" she said, hiding her face against his arm.
"I'm not teasing."
"You always say that!"
"And it's always true."
Max laughed and said sorry, though he did not sound sorry at all. He held her tighter, and his eyes went back to the watch on his wrist.
'Four.'
'Three.'
'Two.'
He lifted his hand and pointed straight up at the sky, at the glowing white circle of the moon.
"Bell," he said. "Look at the moon."
Bell lifted her head and followed his finger, still pink in the face. "What? I've been looking at it all night. What's so special about..."
'One.'
-BOOM!
A deep, thunderous roar shook the air. Bell flinched, and then she saw it.
A single bright streak of light shot up from somewhere far below, tearing a white scar through the darkness. It climbed higher and higher, and then it burst in front of the moon in a huge blooming flower of red and gold.
-BOOM!
Another followed it, blue and silver. And then another, green, and another, violet, and then a whole barrage of them, one after another after another. The sky lit up like the inside of a kaleidoscope. Light poured down over the skyscrapers and turned every glass window into a mirror of color. The air crackled. Bright sparks drifted down in lazy spirals, gold and white, like glittering snow.
"WOAAAAAHHHH!!!" Bell gasped.
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes grew wider and wider, until they seemed to fill her entire face. Her hands came up to her cheeks. Around her, the colors flickered across her skin, red, blue, green, and violet, and in each of them her eyes were shining.
"Max!" she cried. "Max, what is this?! Is this...? Did you...?"
"This is my surprise gift, Bell," Max said, smiling.
Before she could ask anything else, the fireworks began to move.
They were not random anymore. The bursts of light had begun to line up and join together in the dark, and they were drawing something across the sky. Thin lines of shimmering gold stretched out between them, curved and connected, and slowly shaped themselves into letters.
[HAPPY BIRTHDAY BELLATRIX!]
The letters were so big that the whole city could read them. They blazed in gold across the black sky, with the moon shining behind them like a spotlight. Then another line of glowing words appeared underneath.
[FROM BOTH MAX AND IRMELA!]
Bell stood completely still.
She was reading the words again and again, as if she did not trust her eyes. Her lips moved silently. Her hands slowly dropped from her face. Her eyes went wide, wider than they had ever been.
"W-what?" she stammered at last. "H-how... how did you know that today is my birthday?"
Her voice cracked.
"I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even tell you! I only told Auntie. I told her she should be the only one who knows about it. I made her promise!"
Max leaned in and rested his forehead against the side of her head.
"Do you really think I wouldn't know?" he said gently. He grinned. "Also, it seems your auntie is a snitch. Hahahaha! She really can't keep your secrets well."
"Ughh!" Bell groaned. She put both hands over her face. "I'm going to have a talk with Auntie later, after this party! A very long talk! She promised!"
"Be nice to her. She helped me plan it."
"I'll be nice after I scream at her."
Max chuckled. Bell lowered her hands and looked at the sky again. The fireworks were still blooming. A huge cascade of silver sparks fell slowly over the rooftops, and for a moment she forgot to be angry.
"Max," she said. "Seriously. How did you afford something like this? This must have cost a fortune. A whole show, over the whole city?"
Max shrugged. "I got some help from a friend of mine."
He did not say more. In his mind, he was remembering the messages he had sent to the Information Maester two weeks earlier. He remembered how the old man had grumbled and complained that he was busy with a hundred other jobs, and that he had no time for such nonsense. But then Max had begged. He had begged shamelessly, over and over, until the old man had finally sighed and agreed.
He had promised the Maester something in return. He had promised that he would visit his new home soon, because he had broken an earlier promise to visit him at night and had never shown up. Max made a mental note to keep it this time.
"And let's just say," Max added aloud, "that I paid a huge amount for it to happen. Don't worry about it. Also, I'll give credit to your auntie, too. She's the one who gave me the idea. She told me you really love fireworks."
Bell's face crumpled.
She had loved fireworks since she was five years old. The first time she ever saw them was in Germany, on a cold New Year's Eve, from the window of a small bedroom. Her older sister had been given a seat at the party downstairs, and her little brother had been carried around on her father's shoulders. But she, the middle child, had been told to stay upstairs and finish her homework. So she had watched the fireworks alone, with her forehead pressed against the cold glass, whispering the colors to herself as they burst.
Nobody had ever remembered that. Nobody but Irmela, who had sat beside her that night and had held her hand.
"Hic!" Bell said. Her chin trembled. "Hic! Hic!"
"Bell..."
"Max, y-you really didn't need to do something like this," she sobbed. The tears were pouring down her cheeks now, in two long, glittering streams. "I don't... I never... nobody ever..."
She could not finish her sentence. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and shook.
Max took his thumb and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks, one at a time.
"Oh, come on. Don't cry," he said softly. "It's literally your birthday. You should be happy. We should be happy!"
"I-I am happy!" Bell wailed. "That's why I'm crying!"
Max laughed. He could not help it. He pulled her into his chest and held her tight, with one hand on the back of her head, while she shook and sniffled against his shirt.
After a long moment, she lifted her head and wiped her face with both hands. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she nodded, once, firmly.
"Mmm! I should enjoy this," she said, and her voice cracked again. "After all, you worked hard for this. Both you, Max, and my auntie. Hic! Hic!"
She tried to smile, and the effort made her hiccup again.
Max touched her cheek and said it again, softly, and with all the warmth that he had.
"Happy birthday, Bell."
"Thanks, Max," Bell whispered.
They stood together at the edge of the terrace and looked up. The fireworks poured silver and gold over the city, and the sound of the explosions rolled through the air like drums. Far below them, in the streets, people had stopped walking. They were looking up at the sky with their phones in their hands. A thousand windows glowed with faces.
Max turned his head slightly and looked at Bell's face in the changing light. Her eyes were red and wet, her nose was pink, and her hair was a mess. She was smiling so widely that it looked like it hurt.
And as he looked at her, something strange happened inside him.
A memory rose out of the dark. It came from the other world, the one he had been born in before he was dragged into this one, and from the thirty thousand lives he had lived after that. It was the memory of a girl. She had laughed like this, in a place far away from here. She had worn a different face and a different name, but there had been something in the line of her smile that was exactly the same.
His lips moved before he could stop them.
"Happy birthday, Tina," he said.
The words dropped into the air like a stone into a pond.
Max's eyes went wide. He clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The name had already left him.
"Ahh, sorry!" he said at once, speaking through his fingers. "I didn't mean to, Bell. Sorry, sorry, sorry! That just slipped out! I don't even know why I said it. I'm so sorry!"
But Bell was not listening.
She was standing very still. Her smile had frozen, and her eyes had gone distant and glassy. The sparkle had drained out of them, as if someone had blown out a candle behind her pupils. She looked past Max, past the fireworks, past the moon, at something that was not there.
The name echoed in her head.
Tina.
It had a strange, sticky sweetness to it, like the taste of something she had once eaten and forgotten. It was a name she had given Julietta herself, half joking, earlier tonight. But now it did not sound like a joke at all. It sounded old. It sounded like it had been waiting for her for a very long time.
Her eyes widened. A cold shiver ran from the base of her neck to the tips of her fingers.
Max saw her face and stopped talking.
"Bell?" he said. "Hello? Are you still there? Bell?"
She did not answer. He took a step closer and waved a hand in front of her eyes. Nothing. He touched her shoulder. Nothing.
'What's happening?' he thought. A thread of panic slid through his chest. 'What did I do?'
And then, without any warning, the terrace was gone.
The golden lights, the marble wall, and the roaring fireworks all faded away like smoke. In their place there was a long, dim, stone hall, with smoky torches on the walls and a cold wind creeping across the floor. It smelled of old wood and roasted meat. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking.
"What's your name, woman from that disgusting Holy Nation?"
The voice was low and lazy and amused. It belonged to a man.
Bell lifted her head slowly.
A long table stretched out in front of her, covered with dishes. At the far end of it, in a great carved chair, a man was sitting with his chin resting on his hand. He had wolf-cut hair, wild and untidy, the color of deep red wine, with thick streaks of silver running through it. It fell across his forehead in sharp, uneven strands. And his eyes were the most terrible part of him. They were crimson, so dark and so bright that they looked like two drops of fresh blood.
He was watching her with a bored, patient expression. He looked like a cat that was waiting for a mouse to speak.
"What, are you deaf?" he said. He raised one eyebrow. "I'm literally asking you. What's your name?"
Bell tried to open her mouth.
It would not move.
She tried again. Her jaw felt locked, as though someone had pressed a heavy hand against her lips. Panic rose in her throat. Then, without her permission, her mouth opened by itself, and a voice came out. It was her voice, but it was small, and it shook.
"L-Laurentina."
She gasped. She had not decided to say that. It had come out of her like a reflex.
She looked down, and her breath caught.
She was not wearing her gothic dress. She was not wearing Max's jacket, either. Her body was covered in a tattered gray rag, patched in a dozen places and so thin that the cold went straight through it. The sleeves were frayed, and her bare arms were thin and scratched. Her feet were wrapped in strips of dirty cloth.
It was the clothing of a peasant, a commoner from a time that had ended hundreds of years ago.
'W-what the hell is happening?!' she thought. Her mind was spinning in circles. 'Where am I? Why am I wearing this?! This is a commoner's outfit, like from the Middle Ages!!!'
She wanted to scream, but her throat would not let her. She wanted to run, but her legs felt like lead. She was a prisoner inside her own body, like a passenger in a carriage that someone else was driving.
The red-haired man nodded slowly.
He picked up a fork and speared a slice of grilled tuna from the plate in front of him. He lifted it to his mouth, chewed it with perfect calm, and swallowed. Then he set his fork down and looked at her again, with a curious, thoughtful gleam.
"So that's your name, huh?" he said. "Laurentina."
He rolled it over his tongue, as if he were tasting a strange wine.
"Hmm."
Then a slow grin spread across his face. It was the grin of a man who had just thought of a very good joke.
"Then from now on, you will be called Tina," he said. "The same rhymes with tuna!"
He laughed at his own joke. It was a rich, rolling laugh, and it echoed down the long stone hall. The torches flickered, and somewhere in the shadows, a few servants laughed along with him, in the quick, nervous way of people who knew that it was safest to do so.
Bell stood in the middle of the room in her ragged dress and shook from head to toe.
"BELL!"
The hall shattered.
It broke into pieces like a sheet of glass, and the pieces fell away into the dark. A wave of cold air hit her, and the smell of roasted meat vanished, and the fireworks came roaring back into her ears.
-BOOM!
-BOOM!
She was standing on the terrace again. The golden lights were swaying overhead, and the moon was shining in front of her. She was wrapped in Max's jacket. And Max was gripping both of her shoulders with white-knuckled hands, shaking her gently, with his face right in front of hers.
"Bell! Bell, look at me! Come back! Are you all right?!"
Bell blinked. Her lungs dragged in a huge, ragged gasp of air, as if she had been underwater.
"I... I..."
"Are you all right?" Max repeated. His voice was cracked and tight with fear. His amber eyes were wide, and they were searching her face. "You literally lost all the color in your face! You suddenly turned pale, and you weren't moving, and you weren't answering me! I called your name ten times!"
Before she could reply, he threw his arms around her.
He crushed her against his chest so hard that her ribs hurt. His whole body was trembling. His breath was hot against her ear.
"I-I was really scared," he said, and his voice broke. "I thought I would lose you."
Bell stood frozen for a moment, with her arms hanging at her sides. Then, slowly, she lifted them and wrapped them around his back. She felt his heart pounding against hers, fast and heavy and terrified, and it was the realest thing in the world.
"I'm sorry, Max," she said hoarsely.
His arms tightened.
"I'm sorry," she said again, softer this time. She closed her eyes and buried her face in the front of his shirt. "I'm sorry I scared you."
For a long while, they held each other without speaking.
Overhead, the fireworks went on and on. A great golden willow of light spread across the sky and rained down in a thousand trailing sparks. A hundred people on the streets below cheered. The moon shone steadily above it all, calm and white and silent.
Slowly, Bell opened her eyes again. Over Max's shoulder, she looked up at the sky. The letters of her name still hung in the air, glowing gold. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BELLATRIX! They were fading now, one burst at a time, dissolving into smoke and ash.
But she was not watching them. She was staring into the dark space behind them, where the fireworks did not reach.
Her hands were still trembling. She pressed them harder against Max's back, as if to stop the shaking, but it would not go away. Her heart was still racing. And in her mind, as clear as a photograph, one image refused to fade: a pair of crimson eyes, laughing at her over a plate of fish.
'What the hell was that?' she thought.
The words echoed through her head.
'That wasn't a dream. It was too real. I could smell the smoke. I could feel the cold floor under my feet.'
She swallowed hard.
'And that name. Tina. Why did it feel like I had heard it a thousand times before?'
The last firework burst over the city, a single fading flower of silver, and the sky went dark again.
'Who the hell is that guy?!'