Zelda stood in front of the mirror, staring at herself. She adjusted her hat, tugging gently at the square of netting that half-covered her face, the delicate veil adding a touch of mystery to her reflection. The hat was a flat pillbox, placed slightly forward and slanted, an elegant piece that’d once belonged to their mother. It was one of the few items Emma had stashed in that single, long-ago suitcase along with her own mother’s pearls, which Zelda now wore as her something borrowed.

The girl staring back at her looked beautiful, but she was a stranger. Her dress was a far cry from the flamboyant fantasies of Zelda’s childhood, filled with countless hours cutting and pinning and sewing and kicking her tailor’s mannequin in frustration. The ivory satin, with its boatneck and capped sleeves, highlighted her collarbones and flared just enough to give her the illusion of hips. Quiet and austere, this doppelganger might’ve almost been a novice contemplating different vows. She’d go downstairs to take them soon, exchanging dreams for pragmatism and a beatnik’s carefree life for the duties of a housewife.

Her fingers brushed over the single strand of perfect orbs, which were actually Charlotte’s now; she’d never wanted anything so dull, but it suited August. He was waiting for her, along with the handful of near strangers who’d witness her pledge her life to him, completing the transformation that’d begun when he’d appeared inside The Green Dragon. Charlotte, watching her from a few paces distant, had done her best to beautify the living room, but she couldn’t lighten the mood up here. She frowned, concerned, then opened her mouth to speak and didn’t; neither of them were who they’d been in the spring.

Charlotte’s big bash was set for midwinter, with a guest list stretching into the hundreds and the press clambering for access. Zelda would stand with her, and Heinz would stand with Klaus, undoubtedly not fantasizing about stabbing him as much as Zelda—but who knew? Then the next morning, as Klaus’s closest and possibly only friend within the SS, Heinz would welcome Charlotte into the order. He’d present her with her new husband’s Julteller, his Jul plate. Within SS families, each son received one at his naming. Men new to the cult received one upon joining and it was used, after that point, at all of his life’s most important occasions—up to and including his funeral. A candle was lit on it as part of his family’s mourning ritual.

Zelda would receive hers tomorrow morning, from Theo Lauchert. In accepting it, she’d be pledging to live by August’s oath—and she wouldn’t truly be married, not according to the SS, until she did. She barely knew Theo, and he hadn’t been able to come tonight for reasons no one had seen fit to disclose, but he was August’s good friend and seemed nice enough. This expectation that she’d simply go along with whatever was asked of her served as just one more reminder that, from tonight on, she belonged to August.

He could’ve insisted on a full SS wedding, she consoled herself; that’d been too much paganism for a man who, at one point, had seriously considered the priesthood. Her gaze drifted to the wall, where Charlotte had hung a series of pictures she’d scrounged up from their old attic. In their place, she saw a glazed porcelain plate with its Sonnenrad, torch, Hagal runes, and hearts. Nur aus Opfern steigt groß das Reich, ran the circular inscription, only from great sacrifice will the Reich rise. Some families had dozens, all in a row, representing men of whom nothing real remained.

Charlotte handed her a shoebox. “You’re sure you don’t want the other pair?”

Zelda turned, brightening at the suggestion. “Those green ones August threatened to burn?” A soft, rueful chuckle escaped her. “I considered the idea, but we’re all having so much fun already.”

The door opened and Klaus appeared. “At last,” he grumbled, “we agree on something.”

“You’re interrupting,” Charlotte remarked, adjusting the corsage on her wrist.

Crossing his arms, Klaus fixed her with a look. “I’m here to inform you that the wedding should start soon, while all of our guests are still with us. Because if Marie-France collapses on one of my rugs, she’d better hope she dies of alcohol poisoning. Otherwise, I’ll kill her.”

Charlotte nodded, a faint smile playing on her lips. “That’s nice, darling.”

“You appear to be suggesting that I’m difficult,” Klaus complained, his tone wounded.

Zelda watched in the mirror as, behind her, Charlotte reared back in mock astonishment. “Difficult? You, Klaus Martin Dassel, are the most easygoing man in the world. As for Marie-France, she’s undoubtedly trying to forget where she is. Her own wedding wasn’t exactly…an occasion to remember.”

Klaus arched an eyebrow. “You still haven’t told me what she said.”

“I told you that it was more of her usual drivel,” Charlotte replied tartly.

“Which justifies her drinking a mortgage payment’s worth of Hibiki?” Klaus countered, scandalized. “That noxious shrew has expensive taste in alcohol!” Sliding his arm around Charlotte’s shoulders, his expression softened. “Not to mention, we both know I’m terrible at playing host. You need to come downstairs and rescue me, from our guests and from myself.”

Standing on her tiptoes, Charlotte kissed his cheek. “She’s not a fan of marriage, that’s all.”

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Despite the warmth in Charlotte’s voice, she clearly wasn’t about to discuss the matter further. Klaus, refusing to be mollified, issued a rather un-aristocratic snort. Zelda wondered if he knew that Charlotte was lying or, at the very least, withholding something. After that last session with Marie-France, she’d come inside and gone straight upstairs, and Zelda hadn’t seen her until the next morning. A migraine, she’d claimed, but she’d put Zelda’s questions off just the same.

Klaus knit his brows together in consternation as he considered the upsetting implications. “Her marriage,” he asked, “ours, or Zelda’s?”

Charlotte forced a laugh. “Anyone’s!”

Zelda slipped into her entirely appropriate bridal pumps, her movements slow and deliberate. Klaus watched her, his gaze inscrutable. “You’re a beautiful bride,” he murmured.

She looked up sharply. “Thanks.”

The trace of a smile flitted across his face and was gone. Turning back to Charlotte, he adopted the pained expression that Jesus had undoubtedly worn on His march to Calvary. “I at least should rejoin our guests before anyone else starts stealing things. Or before my father and August do something terrible to Fred. We really are lucky that Theo’s still up in Vermont, or Fred would be hunched at the kitchen table, sobbing as he ate his own toenail clippings.”

Charlotte dismissed this suggestion with a wave. “No one wants your shrunken heads.”

“You don’t know that!” Klaus protested, his tone a mix of indignation and amusement. “They’re quite valuable.”

Listening to the exchange, a knot of discomfort tightened in Zelda’s chest. It was a bit hypocritical of her, she knew, objecting to violent men; but August fit his actions into a moral framework that Klaus simply didn’t possess. He’d suggested murdering the Reichskommissar’s wife with the same casual enthusiasm she might express for Chinese food. Charlotte took it in stride, playing her part with practiced ease, but Zelda still remembered her sobbing when the goldfish she’d gotten at someone’s birthday party hadn’t survived the car ride home.

Klaus turned on his heel, girding his loins for more social interaction.

As he left the room, the door closing softly behind him, Zelda faced her sister. Charlotte’s smile wavered, revealing the cracks in her cheerful façade. Zelda couldn’t help but worry about the roles they’d been forced into, the expectations that seemed to be swallowing them whole. “It’s funny,” she ventured, “how we end up with people we’d never have imagined.”

Charlotte’s expression grew thoughtful. “Funny, or sad?”

Zelda shrugged, trying to make light of the heaviness in her chest. “Depends on the day, I suppose.”

Walking over to the window, Charlotte stared down Ash Street. They’d grown up in the smallish first-period colonial where her gaze was fixed, roaming freely through a neighborhood that’d once felt as warm and familiar as one of Oma Jeanette’s hugs. Now, navigating its byzantine twists and turns felt like getting lost in a funhouse, each new corner promising a new and pulse-pounding threat. “I imagined marrying someone whose most objectionable trait was doing the New York Times crossword in pen,” she confessed, sagging a little with the weight of her admission.

“Another artist?” Zelda prompted.

“Maybe,” Charlotte offered. “Someone gentle, who’d understand my love for painting and poetry. We’d have a little hut somewhere, live off bread and wine, and make art together.”

At that, Zelda couldn’t help but laugh. “I imagined marrying someone slightly more exciting. His most objectionable trait would be his overly liberal politics. We’d argue about the myth of the Founding Fathers, how George Washington stole his slaves’ teeth to make dentures and Thomas Jefferson—

“You’re describing a good quarter of the conversations you have with August,” Charlotte interjected, the humor returning to her voice. “When you’re not disputing the minutiae of American history, you’re debating the role and purpose of women’s liberation, or which of the Five Good Emperors was actually good, or something else that puts everyone else in the room to sleep.”

Zelda’s lips curved into a small smile; Charlotte was right. She’d found her kindred spirit, too, and they did create beautiful things together—her in her studio, and him with his violin. He’d just come in a different package, was all. What made a person Mr. or Ms. Right, it turned out, wasn’t set in stone but something that evolved with time and in response to circumstance. The sensitive new age man Charlotte had described might’ve been the best match for her, once, but he wasn’t now; she was too good, too kind. She couldn’t survive in this brave new world with someone else who clapped for joy at grasshoppers.

Silently, Zelda joined her sister.

Charlotte said nothing, but her hand found Zelda’s and, for a long time, neither of them spoke. Outside, the world was dark, but it didn’t feel so alien anymore—not when she remembered that she had a partner. August was a check on what would otherwise have been some ridiculous path of self-destruction or, if not self-destruction, then some kind of pointless manic crusade. Which, she supposed, would’ve amounted to the same thing. She would’ve gone out in a blaze of glory, blowing up Longfellow House or making some other and equally pointless gesture. And she’d have pretended it meant something, so she wouldn’t have to grow up and face the fact that real life—and real progress—required understanding that her enemy was human, too.

But growing up had value; helping herself, so she could help the people she loved, that was enough. When a handful of men survived a submarine disaster, no one had castigated the lieutenant in charge for not saving the entire boat or for not saving all submariners, everywhere; five men had lived, who should’ve died, and the world had called it a miracle. Because the choice wasn’t, and had never been, conquer all evil everywhere or give up. Mistaking that defeatism for courage on the HMS Bulldog wouldn’t have brought 137 men back; it would’ve killed five more.

True courage was saving the world in microcosm.

She gave her sister’s hand a decisive squeeze. “Let’s do this.”