Page 17 of Across Eternity

SARAH

I work tirelessly over the next few days. Morning til night, I am the new Mathilde. I do all the cooking and cleaning while she lounges, watching me. It’s not without its benefits, however—I get undrugged food, snippets of information. I also make one potentially valuable discovery: inside the pantry is a ladder and a trap door. Perhaps it just leads to a tiny loft, but it could be another floor, one with windows that aren’t blacked out, where I could call for help.

Toward the end of the week, Mathilde tells me to dish up breakfast for the pregnant woman and take it to her.

“Only one?” I know one of the pregnant women gave birth last week. We were told she died in childbirth, though I have serious doubts. But there should still be two left.

“The other died in childbirth last night,” replies Mathilde, not meeting my eye. “Child died too.”

It was certainly not unheard of to die in childbirth in 1918, but I’m suspicious nonetheless. I’d assume Monsieur Coron would pull out all the stops to save the child...unless it turned out the child couldn’t time travel.

“Was it a boy?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” she says. “Big one too.” I hear a hint of sadness in her voice for the first time, and I file that fact away. She doesn’t care what she’s doing to the adults, but the infants…that bothers her.

I follow a guard down the long hall to get to the pregnant woman’s room. He has to unlock the door to let me in. Katrin was right. If they’d known she was pregnant she’d never have escaped.

I try to meet the woman’s eye, to let her know she isn’t alone and that I’d help her if I could. She snatches the bowl from my hands and glares at me. She sees me as a traitor to our kind, like my aunt, and for the first time I have to wonder if she’s right.

* * *

It’s just over a week later when Mathilde gives me a different tablet for everyone’s stew. I glance at her when I notice the difference, and she arches a brow, daring me to challenge her. My hand trembles as I continue to drop them in. It’s probably nothing, I tell myself. But what if it isn’t? If I refuse, they’ll kill me, and all these women will still receive the tablet—all these women who are going to die anyway. They are already dead, in my time. But I don’t want to be the one who did it. It’s probably nothing, I tell myself again.

And then the next morning, the guard bangs on the metal pipe to wake us, and I’m the only one who rises.

He and I both look at each other, wide-eyed, an odd moment of kinship between enemies. Holding my breath, I lean over the woman nearest me. She has a bluish cast, and is ice cold when I touch her.

I poisoned them. I questioned what I was doing and wanted to live so badly that I accepted the situation and moved forward. Coldly. Like Iris and Coron might.

The guard grabs my arm and pulls me from the room without a word.

“Did you know?” I ask Mathilde when I reach the kitchen.

She turns away. I can’t tell if she’s ashamed or ambivalent. “There was nothing to be done for it,” she says. “From now on, you’ll help with the meals for the staff and take care of the baby. Her highness feels it’s beneath her station.”

I hate her for her lack of shame, though I’m hardly better. I knew something was wrong and followed orders to save my skin. But my aunt and Coron actually planned this, and though I’d expected nothing more of them, my hands shake as I finish cleaning and go to the nursery where Iris waits. We haven’t spoken since she told me she was giving me a job, but when she sees me she smiles, as if we are friends.

With my jaw broken, it’s difficult to return her smile, but I try. Something comes over me as I do it. I taste metal in my mouth, feel it sliding through my veins, and the lie becomes easier. I will kill you and I will make sure you know it’s happening, I think as my mouth moves upward.

“You’ll sleep here from now on,” she says, thrusting a swaddled child in my arms. “Keep her healthy and I’ll let you live when this is all done.”

I nod, as if I’m stupid enough to believe that, and she walks out of the room, locking it behind her.

I take the room’s only chair, holding the tiny bundle to my chest. Her eyes are closed, her rosebud mouth pursed in sleep. She may survive being raised by a monster like Coron, but who will she become as a result? What kind of power will that give him, having two time travelers under his command?

I want to save her for her own sake, but that vengefulness inside me wants it for another reason: I want to make sure Coron gets nothing when this is through.

I need to get her out, this baby and the one who is due any day now, and I can think of just one way: Mathilde. She’s the only one who still gets to leave. But what would convince someone who happily killed twelve women to help? It’s a question I can answer with ease, since I too just helped kill twelve people. What would motivate me?

If I was helping myself.

11

HENRI

My head rests on a bar. I don’t know how I got here. I remember checking Marie into a hotel somewhere, and then I was heading out, looking for anything to dull the pain.

How am I going to continue? How am I going to keep taking care of my sister, when all I want to do is end it?