Read Online Passion by Lauren Kate - Free Book Online

“The girls tel me that’s you.”
    “No,” Luce said. “I’m not—”
    “Doesn’t mat er. It’s what he believes.” The nurse pointed toward the door. “Let’s go.” Luce rose from Daniel’s bed. He was looking away from her, out the window. She sighed. “I have to talk to you,” she whispered, though he didn’t meet her gaze. “I’l be right back.”
    The surgery wasn’t as awful as it could have been. Al Luce had to do was hold Giovanni’s smal , soft hand and whisper things, pass a few instruments to the doctor and try not to look when he reached into the dark red mass of Giovanni’s exposed gut and extracted the bits of blood-sheathed shrapnel. If the doctor wondered about her evident lack of experience, he didn’t say anything. She wasn’t gone more than an hour.
    Just long enough to come back to Daniel’s bed and find it empty.
    Lucia was changing the sheets. She rushed toward Luce, and Luce thought she was going to hug her. Instead she col apsed at her feet.
    “What happened?” Luce asked. “Where did he go?”
    “I don’t know.” The girl began to weep. “He left. He just left. I don’t know where.” She looked up at Luce, tears l ing her hazel eyes. “He said to tel you goodbye.”
    “He can’t be gone,” Luce said under her breath. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk—
    Of course they hadn’t. Daniel had known exactly what he was doing when he left. He didn’t want to tel her the whole truth. He was hiding something. What were the rules he’d mentioned? And what loophole?
    Lucia’s face was ushed. Her speech was broken up by hiccups. “I know I shouldn’t be crying, but I can’t explain it.… I feel like someone has died.”
    Luce recognized the feeling. They had that in common: When Daniel left, both girls were inconsolable. Luce bal ed up her sts, feeling angry and despondent. “Don’t be childish.”
    Luce blinked, thinking at rst that the girl was speaking to her, but then she realized Lucia was chiding herself. Luce straightened, holding her trembling shoulders high again, as if she were trying to recover the calm poise the nurses had shown.
    “Lucia.” Luce reached for the girl, moving to embrace her.
    But the girl inched away, turning from Luce to face Daniel’s empty bed. “I’m ne.” She went back to stripping the sheets. “The only thing we can control is the work we do. Nurse Fiero always says that. The rest is out of our hands.” No. Lucia was wrong, but Luce couldn’t see how to correct her. Luce didn’t understand much, but she understood that—her life didn’t have to be out of her hands. She could shape her own destiny. Somehow. She didn’t have it al gured out yet, but she could feel a solution drawing nearer. How else would she have found herself here in the rst place? How else would she have known now that it was time to move on?
    In the late-morning light, a shadow stretched out from the supply closet in the corner. It looked like one she could use, but she wasn’t entirely confident of her abilities to summon. She focused on it for a moment and waited to see the place where it wobbled.
    There. She watched it twitch. Fighting the disgust she stil felt, she grabbed hold of it.
    Across the room, Lucia’s focus was on bundling the bedsheets, on trying hard not to show that she was stil crying.
    Luce worked fast, drawing the Announcer into a sphere, then working it out with her fingers more quickly than she ever had before.
    She held her breath, made a wish, and disappeared.
    FOUR

    FOUR
    TIME WOUNDS ALL HEELS
    MILAN, ITALY • MAY 25, 1918
    Daniel felt guarded and on edge as he pushed out of the Announcer.
    He was unpracticed at how to quickly make sense of the new time and place, not knowing exactly where he was or what he should do.
    Knowing that at least one version of Luce was bound to be nearby, bound to need him.
    The room was white. White sheets on the bed in front of him, white-framed window in the corner, bright white