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We cut through a narrow alley, empty but for a pair of rusted bicycles leaning against a wall and a laundry line that hadn’t been taken down in years. The air was tighter here. Shadows crept up our legs like vines.
Egret paused at the exit and turned to Thomas. “I don’t like how this feels.”
He shrugged. “When do we ever?”
“That’s not comforting,” Sparrow said.
Thomas turned to stare at her. “It’s not meant to be.”
Sparrow rolled her eyes. “God, you’re exhausting.”
Thomas glanced at me. Something passed between us, a flicker of warmth behind the frost.
“We’re asking a man and a child to walk into hell for a promise they can’t verify, and a hope that’s barely real enough to see,” I said.
Thomas looked away, down at the stones. When he spoke, his voice was so low I wondered if he meant his words for us or only for himself. “And we’re going to make good on that promise.”
We ended the loop near Károlyi Garden, slipping into the park like we were tourists looking for somewhere quiet to eat lunch. We found a bench by the fountain among the ivy—and sat.
Our tails passed on the far side, pretending not to look.
Sparrow peeled a mandarin orange from her coat pocket and split it open in her gloved hands. Egret crouched by a tree, retying the same boot that still didn’t need it.
Thomas sat beside me, silent.
“You really think she’ll make it?” I asked.
He sighed. “Lark says she’s braver than most grown men.”
“She’s thirteen,” I said.
Thomas cocked his head my way. “And you’re holding her hand tomorrow.”
I turned the words over like a coin.
“She’s lucky,” I said. “To have a father who’d risk this.”
“We do what we must for the ones we love.” Thomas’s hand brushed mine on the bench. Barely a touch.
But it was there.
The city moved around us.
The snow hadn’t yet come, but it would. The clouds above were too pregnant with silence for anything else.
We’d walk again. One more loop. One more pass.
And then that night, the girl and her father would board a train that would carry them to freedom—or vanish them forever.
30
Thomas
Theplatformhummed,low,steady, and suspiciously calm, like the held breath before a gunshot. A thin layer of mist crawled across the gravel in which the tracks were embedded. Lights buzzed yellow and low above, spaced too far apart to be comforting, their glow leaving long gaps between pools of illumination.
I walked with purpose—but not too much of it.
Gloved hands in my coat pockets, scarf loose, shoulders easy, I was just another man catching a late train.