I held her tighter.
I thought about Otto telling us about his wife and daughter, about the camps, about the Baronessappearing in the chaos of an ambush and pulling him from the wreckage, about decades of devotion and service and love expressed through loyalty so absolute it had become its own kind of religion.
“She is the reason I am alive,” he had said.
And now he was dead.
Because he couldn’t bear to let her face her enemies alone.
“I should have been faster,” the Baroness whispered. “I should have fought harder. If I had not let them take me—”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“Then whose fault is it?” She pulled back and looked up at me, her good eye red and swollen and filled with a grief so vast it seemed to swallow everything. “He died for me, Thomas. He died because I was careless, because I walked into a trap, because I trusted the wrong people.”
“He died because evil men killed him. That’s whose fault it is—the people who built that fortress and filled it with horrors.” I gripped her shoulders, made her look at me. “Otto knew the risks. He chose to come anyway because that’s what love does. It makes us do stupid, brave, impossible things.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then something shifted in her face. The grief was still there, would probably always be there, but beneath it I saw something harder emerge.
Something colder.
“I want them dead, Thomas,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but there was steel in it now. “Every one of them—the Shadow, the ministers, whoever is behind this—I want them to pay for what they have taken from me.”
“They will.”
“Promise me.” Her hands found my arms and gripped with surprising strength. “Promise me, Thomas. Promise me you will help me make them pay.”
“I promise,” I said without hesitation. “Whatever it takes, however long it takes, I will help you burn them all to the ground.”
We buried Otto that evening.
There was no time for a proper funeral or a priest to say the words. There was no cemetery to receive him, just a grave in the woods behind the farmhouse dug by Bisch and Will while I kept watch and the Baroness sat inside staring out the window.
When the grave was deep enough, they wrapped Otto in a clean sheet and carried him out. The Baroness insisted on being there, leaning on me for support, her face pale and set like carved marble.
As we lowered him into the ground, the Baroness stepped forward, swaying slightly, and looked down at the white-wrapped shape that had been her friend, her protector, and her family.
“He saved my life in 1940,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I pulled him from that truck, yes, but he saved me just as surely. He gave me something to fight for, someone to protect. Without him, I would have become . . .” She searched for the words. “Cold and empty, little more than a machine in service of a cause with nothing human left inside.”
She kneeled—painfully, awkwardly, her injuries making every movement an ordeal—and placed her bandaged hand on the sheet.
“You were the best of us, old friend,” she whispered. “The kindest, the truest. Whatever comes after this life, I hope you find your wife and daughter there. I hope you find peace.” Her voice cracked. “I hope you know how much you were loved.”
She stayed like that for a long moment, her hand on his chest, her head bowed. Will helped her to her feet, and we began to fill in the grave.
The dirt fell like drumbeats, like a heart slowly stopping.
When it was done, Bisch found a stone—a large, flat rock from the edge of the woods—and carried it to the head of the grave. He didn’t carve a name or a date. There was no time, and besides, Otto deserved better than a hurried epitaph scratched into stone.
But Bisch did one thing.
He took off his coat and removed something from his inner pocket. It was a small photograph, creased and faded, of a woman and a young girl.
Otto’s wife and daughter. The family he had lost to the camps.
Bisch placed the photograph beneath the stone, weighing it down against the wind.
“Now they are together,” he said quietly. “As they should be.”
