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So many children who had missed the wonder of imagination in these pages, just because the author had been condemned for his opinions.

Kraus snorted another laugh. “Not these books, I daresay.”

“Certainly not.” He’d removed all the banned titles from his home library, just as he’d been ordered.

But he hadn’t offered them up on the pyres seven years ago.

He’d relocated them all into the university’s archives, claiming they were among the valuable collectibles that needed to be preserved.

He visited them at least once a week, to whisper an assurance that someday, they’d be on his shelves again instead of trapped in suffocating boxes. Someday, they’d be free.

Silly? Probably. But they were all he had left to remind him that once, Germany had embraced ideas. Once, free thought had been valued.

He drifted his way through this first room, into a second, sweeping his gaze over the motley collection of books that were mostly in German, but also in French and English.

He knew and had read nearly all of them, had met many of the authors before they left Germany, when he was just a young member of the intelligentsia eager to be accepted by his literary heroes.

He understood why they’d gathered them all under one roof—a statement, just as surely as the fires had been.

But why had they neglected the library so? Why had they let their statement fade into chaos?

He turned into another room and went utterly still, every sense snapping into alert.

Something was different in this one. It didn’t feel like a room filled only with books—it felt.

..occupied. His nose picked up a hint of fragrance not present elsewhere—lilac?

—and it made his spine stiffen. He flipped the light switch.

“Bonjour?” He kept his voice low, calm, and continued in French, “You can come out. You won’t be harmed. ”

The light caught on something shining like gold, but it wasn’t text stamped onto leather or cloth. It was hair, and it turned into a headful of curls as the young woman who’d been crouching behind an overflowing table stood.

Definitely not one of the exiled German writers he’d been told to locate and question.

She didn’t look abashed at having been caught. She didn’t even look frightened, really. As her gaze landed on him—no, on his uniform—she looked absolutely furious.

Christian leaned into the doorway, mostly to assure her that he was coming no closer—she must be frightened under the anger, mustn’t she? She’d been hiding, after all. And he studied her for two seconds, three.

She was pretty—the sort of pretty that would no doubt have Kraus’s eyes going wide when he heard their voices and came to investigate.

The sort of pretty boasted by the students he was accustomed to seeing at desks in his lecture hall or browsing the stacks in his library, young and fresh and untried by life.

The sort of pretty that made his thirty-five years feel ancient.

Her chin ticked up, the red-painted cupid’s bow of a mouth setting in a firm line. “This is private property,” she said, her tone even and sure.

His brows lifted. “Yours?”

A puff of breath. He could all but see her debate a lie, like countless students had when he pressed them as to why their essay was late.

Like them, she must have decided he’d know it for what it was.

“It’s run by friends of mine. I promised to care for the place in their absence. I...clean for them.”

He lifted a brow and glanced at the teetering stacks, the mess of papers on the table in the center of this room, the poorly folded newspapers in a bin, their German headlines declaring very un-Party thoughts. One of the German-language “freedom” papers run from Paris, no doubt.

She acknowledged his silent question with an almost-smile. “By ‘clean,’ I mean dusting—not tidying. They never let me do that.”

“Ah.” The shelves were in fact free of dust, so he decided to let her think he believed her.

He straightened, moving one step into the room and out of the doorway.

“I am certain the gentlemen of the board appreciated your help, but I’m afraid those services will no longer be required—and in fact, I’ve been ordered to keep all French citizens from this library.

So, if you would?” He held out a hand toward her, palm up.

She frowned at it. “What?”

“Clearly you have a key, given that the door was unlocked. If you would give it to me, please? And then I will escort you out.”

She seemed to be debating something, which spoke either to stupidity or bravery or perhaps a combination of the two.

After a moment, her shoulders sagged. “Fine.” She edged forward and dropped the bronze into his hand, scurrying back as if standing so close might scorch her.

She glanced to the wall, and his gaze followed hers.

A poster hung there, one he’d seen before, though they didn’t last long in Germany before they were ripped down and thrown away. Goebbels standing in front of a pile of burning books, the flames leaping up the side of the paper and igniting the Reichstag.

A clever piece of propaganda that had convinced most of Germany that the Nazi Party was willing to burn more than books it disagreed with—that it had in fact been responsible for the destruction of the old government building, the bastion of Hitler’s opponents.

They’d blamed the destruction on the communists, using it as an excuse to force them all from power and seize complete, uncontested control of every agency and bureaucracy.

Was it true? No one knew. But most, at this point, believed it.

This young Frenchwoman wouldn’t be mourning the loss of the old regime, though. She would simply see that he was wearing the same uniform as Goebbels, and that he’d come to take possession of the very books depicted in the poster.

“Professor?” Kraus moved up behind him, and Christian heard him unholster his weapon.

He held up a hand. “Easy, soldat ,” he said in his most calming tone, in German. “It’s only a local girl who had a key. Which she has turned over.”

He expected, when he glanced over at the young man, to see his eyes flash with appreciation when he spotted the pretty girl. Instead, Kraus glowered. No, he snarled . “This place is for Jews and communists. Which one is she, do you think?”

It was dangerous logic. Popular logic. Logic Christian didn’t dare to refute. All he could do was order Kraus back into the hallway and step out himself, holding an arm out in invitation that the girl would know was a command.

She wasted no time in rushing by. And yet, as she hurried along, she kept looking at particular spots on particular shelves, as if hunting for particular titles. He glanced where she did but didn’t spot any that usually appealed to young women of her age.

Upon reaching the front door, he expected her to dash out and disappear.

Instead, she paused and turned, features set in an expression so neutral it could be nothing but a mask.

“You said you’d been ordered to keep all Parisians from the library.

” At his lifted-brow acknowledgment, she went on.

“What then? You will simply...lock this place up? Or haul all the books out and burn them as you did in Germany?”

She was too brash. Too mocking. With too many of his fellow officers, it would land her in a heap of trouble. Christian drew in a long breath. “Most of Paris’s libraries will be dismantled.”

“What?” The bluster vanished, and her face washed pale. “No!”

He could understand her reaction, but it made Kraus reach for his holster again. Again, Christian had to hold up a hand before the young man and switch to German. “She is only upset about the loss of Paris’s books. It’s understandable.”

Kraus looked dubious. “It’s just books .”

He’d liked Kraus well enough during the drive from Germany, but he suddenly doubted whether he could handle months or even years in such company.

Just books indeed. “If it were so simple, Goebbels wouldn’t have ordered me here, would he have?

If books had no power, they never would have been banned. ”

Kraus granted it with a snort.

The girl gripped the doorknob and turned, slipping out onto the street in the next moment. But not before he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.

Christian sighed and did nothing to stop her. He merely held out the key she’d given him to Kraus.

The young man took it, but his expression remained hard. “I think, Professor,” he said, “we had better just change the locks.”