Maisie’s hand tightened imperceptibly on her skirts. Her lips lifted in a faint smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thank you, Deena,” she said quietly.
The moment stretched between them until Deena gave a nod and extended her hand to the boy. She led him away while Maisie leaned back against the seat, her fingers tracing the window frame.
Outside, London moved as it always did—but Maisie didn’t seem to play any part of it. Not withouthim.
Without Faivish, time ticked forward, but life itself remained still.
She waited until they had gone inside, then tapped the roof for the driver. As the carriage pulled away, the tune Deena had hummed—Tumbalalaika—rose again, softly, from Maisie’s lips.
A single note, then another—no words, only the song. Like a fragment of a life that had once been hers.
The pain in her soul flared sharp and hot, but she let it burn through, steadying her chin as she breathed into the rhythm of the wheels:“Tumbala, tumbala, tumbalalaika.”
Vienna lay far behind her, but Faivish’s smile still glowed in memory—bright, clever, unforgettable.
She did not look back. She did not falter.
She sang not to soothe, but to steel herself. A vow carried on melody.
And she would keep singing until she found the man who could mend what had broken in her—just as he had once mended others.
Chapter Fifteen
Oh, that boy’steeth.
The thought came as Wendy bustled out with her usual efficiency, leaving Felix alone to ready the instruments. Gold foil, burnishers, hours of work. His fingers flexed in anticipation of the ache. The tray already gleamed, but he wiped it again, habit more than need.
The boy had shuffled in with an air of obligation, not fear, his hands folded loosely across his middle. Felix liked that—it meant less trembling, fewer flinches. But it wasn’t the boy who unsettled him.
It was the girl.
Fifteen, perhaps sixteen. She moved with the watchful care of someone older, as though every step had been measured in advance. And she was humming.
Felix kept his eyes on the instruments, but the sound threaded through the room, soft, persistent. Not quite a tune for a child, not quite a prayer. Something else. Something that reached under his ribs.
Maisie.
He tried to ignore the thought, jaw tightening as he arranged the mirror just so. The boy’s molars. That was what mattered. The work.
But the girl hummed again, and the lilt of it snagged him. That rise, that fall. He knew it too well.
It can’t be. She isn’t here.
He hadn’t slept the night before—hadn’t in years when her dreams came too vividly. Vienna bled into London in those hours, and he woke with her name lodged in his throat. Perhaps this was the echo of another sleepless night. Perhaps he was losing his mind.
He set down the last tool, aligning it with meticulous care. Everything in order. Everything ready.
And then he glanced up.
Just a profile, caught in the slant of afternoon light. The line of a cheek. The neat tuck of hair.
His breath hitched.
For one raw second, he saw her. Maisie, standing where she always had—steadying the light, watching him work, the air between them charged with everything they hadn’t dared speak.
He blinked, and the illusion broke. Only a girl remained, a stranger with careful hands and a humming voice.
Felix turned back to the gold, his face blank, his chest aching. He told himself it was absurd—sad, even—that he saw her everywhere. In shop windows, in shadows, in the reflection of his own glass. But that was his life now.
