Page 135 of Shadowfox

Will stopped.

His hand pressed into my back, gently, the warmth of it bleeding through the fabric like sunlight through frost. “Just a few more meters.”

I nodded, though I didn’t speak. I couldn’t, not while gritting my teeth and trying to mask it with a forced smile.

Inside the chapel, the others were already settling. Sparrow had found Eszter and Farkas a corner with a blanket and a crust of bread. Egret leaned against a pew, one shoe and sock discarded nearby, as he rubbed at a blister.

I stumbled once on the threshold—just once—and Will caught me so fast I barely registered the ground shifting. His arm came around my waist, holding me up as we staggered to a patch of straw near a wall. He lowered me slowly, carefully, like I might break—or had already broken.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered.

“I’m not,” he said, already digging through the pack we shared, the pack that held the codeine. We both knew it was empty. “I’m just counting how many ways I’ll murder you if you try walking before tomorrow.”

I managed another weak smile, but it didn’t reach my eyes. “Nothing left, is there?”

He shook his head. “Not even a cough drop.”

I looked up at the cracked beams above us, listened to the murmur of prayers, of sleep settling in around the room like fog.

“I’m okay,” I lied.

“You’re not,” he said, kneeling beside me, brushing hair from my forehead. We were surrounded by deeply religious folk in a country whose views on our relationship were far from accepting, yet he couldn’t—wouldn’tresist offering me comfort.

His fingers came away damp. “You’re burning up.”

I closed my eyes. “It’s the robes. They trap heat like a stone oven.”

He didn’t laugh.

I opened my eyes again and saw it in his—the panic behind the patience, the fear trying so hard to stay quiet, and I hated that I was the one putting it there.

“I’ll be fine,” I whispered again, this time just for him.

He leaned forward to press his forehead against mine, then remembered our surroundings and pulled back.

“Then stop pretending. Just . . . let me worry. You don’t have to be . . . you-know-what tonight. Just rest and be mine.”

I let out a breath and let him pull the blanket over me, let the world fade a little as the pain turned dull and heavy.

He wanted me to forget our job, forget that we’d just smuggled a vital inventor out from beneath the watchful gaze of the Soviets, forget that I was an American spy in a Red state, and just what? Fall into his arms and sleep?

I didn’t answer him. I didn’t need to.

Instead, I followed part of his instructions and drifted off.

Hours later—I had no idea how many—I woke to near total darkness.

The chapel creaked as it breathed.

The walls held in the warmth of too many bodies pressed against each other, layered with straw and threadbare blankets. Someone near the altar snored lightly. An ancient woman stretched out by the lectern whispered a rosary with cracked lips, the sound just low enough to feel like breath.

We were tucked into the corner farthest from the main aisle. The darkness wrapped us in fragile privacy. I blinked a few times, then struggled to sit up, to press my back to the cold stone wall and prop myself into a less painful position. Will sat to my right, his shoulder close enough to brush against mine. Sparrow kneeled across from us with her legs folded beneath her. Egret lounged beside her like a priest waiting for his day’s last confession, his arms crossed behind his head.

“How many more days?” Sparrow asked, her voice so low it barely disturbed the air.

“Two,” I said. “We slip off when the group stops for evening prayers in Szentgyörgyvölgy. It’s close enough to the Rába. Quiet enough.”

She nodded, not looking at me. “And you’ll be ready?”

---