Page 137 of Shadowfox

Farkas had said he couldn’t carry the prototype, that it was too large and too fragile. We’d accepted that, because we had Eszter, because he was terrified, because I was bleeding.

But it wasn’t acceptable, not by a long shot.

“We have to go back,” Egret said.

“No,” Will snapped. “We’re barely holding together as it is.”

“I’m not saying we all go, but someone has to. Or . . . we could leave something behind. I don’t know, a trap, a fire. A goddamned pipe bomb—”

“Enough,” I said, more breath than voice.

They fell silent again.

I closed my eyes and saw the thing—whatever it was—still humming in that warehouse, still ticking toward the Soviets’ hands. The future Farkas feared, where every whisper could be cracked, every rebellion crushed before it could spark.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Will turned to me so fast I felt the air shift. “The hell you will.”

“I’m already half dead. If anyone’s expendable—”

“You’renotexpendable,” he said, fierce and too loud.

We both froze.

A couple sleeping across the aisle stirred.

“I’m going,” Will said, quieter now. “If anyone goes back, it’s me. You’re getting him out. Sparrow, too. Egret and I’ll handle the rest.”

Sparrow put her hand on his arm. “Not alone, and not yet. Let’s get them to the river first. Then we can decide.”

Outside, an owl called once.

The wind scraped against the old church walls.

Inside, four spies stared at each other in the dark, finally remembering what they were.

52

Will

Westoppedjustasthe sun spilled gold across the low hills, flattening the fields with long shadows that looked like fingers reaching for something they couldn’t quite grasp.

The church was small. They all were in the countryside. It was a chapel, really, with a cracked bell tower slumped against a crumbling roof. There were no windows, just slats in the stone where light passed through. The whole structure leaned like it was tired of standing, tired of bearing witness.

I knew that feeling well.

Thomas sat on the slope outside the chapel with his back pressed to the trunk of a tree that had outlived three wars and probably a dozen regimes. His eyes were closed, his breathing even—the kind of evenness that only came when you were faking it. He hadn’t said a word about how much it hurt today, but I saw it in the way he winced when he thought no one was looking, the way he held his arm like it might betray him if he let go.

The painkillers were gone. They had been for a couple of days.

While he claimed his pain level had ebbed, I could tell from the tightness around his eyes that it remained persistent, if slightly lessened.

Worse, the last of the antibiotics had vanished the day before the painkillers ran out, and Sparrow had used the final clean bandage to re-wrap his wound at sunrise. The rest of the gauze we’d washed in river water and dried over fire like old clothes.

I crouched beside him and opened the canvas roll of our pack. Inside were handfuls of dried bread, a flask of water, a map, and our worn identities. The last were now meaningless but still folded neatly like scripture.

“Once everyone settles,” I murmured, “we’ll slip off, just before they call for evening prayers.”

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