Read Chapter 35: The Last Stand

The rain had stopped by the time they reached the northern barricade, leaving the cobblestones slick and gleaming under the half-moon. Élise's lungs burned as she ran alongside Marcel, his arm looped over her shoulder, blood soaking through the rough bandage she'd tied an hour ago in a safehouse that smelled of mice and old wine.

"His cars will come this way," Marcel said through gritted teeth. "The Boulevard Périphérique is watched. He'll try the Rue d'Aubervilliers."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's what I would do." He managed a grim smile that was more pain than humor. "And because Jean's been watching the warehouses since we got out. Duras is packing. He knows what's coming."

What's coming. Élise felt the weight of those words. Three days of chaos had taught her that the war wasn't won by grand gestures but by small, terrible choices. The choice to trust. The choice to lie. The choice to kill.

They found the others at the corner of the Rue de la Chapelle—a handful of resistants Jean had scraped together from the shattered remnants of the network. Antoine stood among them, his left arm in a makeshift sling, his face pale but his eyes hard. When he saw Élise, something in his expression cracked open, and she felt the same fracture in her own chest.

"You're alive," she said. It came out stupid and small.

"Last I checked." He stepped forward, and Marcel's hand tightened on her shoulder. Antoine's gaze flicked to Marcel, then back to Élise. "The Architect. Your brother. I heard."

"Later," Marcel said. "We have minutes, not hours."

They had less than that. Duras's convoy arrived before they finished setting the barricade—two black Citroëns and a truck, moving fast down the empty boulevard, headlights cutting through the dark like knives. Jean's men scattered to their positions behind the overturned cart and the abandoned market stalls, their rifles old and mismatched, their faces young and terrified.

Élise pressed herself against the wall of a shuttered butcher shop, her father's pistol cold in her hand. Beside her, Antoine breathed shallowly, his shoulder wound bleeding through the sling.

"You shouldn't be here," she whispered.

"Neither should you."

The lead Citroën slowed as it approached the barricade. A man in a long coat got out—not Duras, but one of his lieutenants, scanning the street with the practiced caution of a man who'd survived too many ambushes to trust a clear road.

"Nothing here," she heard him call back. "Just debris from the fighting."

The truck engine revved. The lieutenant waved them forward.

Marcel's whistle cut through the night like a bird's cry—the signal. And then the world exploded into noise.

Gunfire cracked from a dozen positions. The lieutenant crumpled before he could reach his door. The lead Citroën swerved, tires screaming, slamming into the barricade with a crunch of metal and wood. The second car tried to reverse, but Jean's men had already rolled a burning barrel into the road behind it, cutting off escape.

Élise ran. Not away from the fight, but toward it, her pistol raised, her heart hammering against her ribs. She'd seen Duras's face in the second car's window before the glass spiderwebbed with bullet holes. He was there. And he was trying to get out.

The truck's canvas flap tore open, and men poured out—not Gestapo, Élise realized with a jolt of horror, but Wehrmacht soldiers, their field gray uniforms unmistakable even in the firelight. Duras had German soldiers. Of course he did. He'd been working for them all along.

Marcel was shouting something she couldn't hear over the gunfire. Antoine was beside her, moving strangely, his injured arm hanging useless as he fired one-handed from behind a market stall. A bullet whined past Élise's ear and embedded itself in the wall behind her.

Then she saw Duras. He'd escaped the second Citroën and was running toward the truck, using it as cover. He had a briefcase in one hand and a pistol in the other, and he moved with a purpose that made her blood run cold.

He was going to get away.

No.

Élise broke from cover, running low across the open street. Antoine shouted her name, but she didn't stop. Her father had died for this city. Michel had died. Marcel had been shot twice and still stood. She would not let Duras walk away from the ashes he'd made of their lives.

Duras saw her coming. He raised his pistol, and she saw his face clearly for the first time—not a monster's face, but a man's. Terrified and cruel, fighting for survival with the same desperate fury she felt.

The shot came from beside her. Antoine. His bullet caught Duras in the shoulder, spinning him half around, and his own shot went wide, pinging off the cobblestones at Élise's feet.

She was on him before he could recover. Her pistol was in her hand, pressed against his chest, and she could feel his heart beating through the fabric of his coat.

"Please," Duras said. "Please, I have information. Names. Locations. I can give you—"

"Give it to the dead." Élise fired.

Duras crumpled, his briefcase spilling papers across the wet cobblestones. Élise stood over him, her hand shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She waited for the relief that didn't come. Only emptiness, and the sound of sirens rising in the distance.

Not German sirens. Allied.

Somewhere in the west, the city was waking to a different kind of morning.

The remaining Germans threw down their weapons one by one, their hands raised, their faces blank with exhausted surrender. The resistants moved among them, disarming and binding them with rope from the market stalls. Marcel stood at the edge of the fight, one hand pressed to his side, and when he caught Élise's eye, he nodded—a small, almost imperceptible gesture of acknowledgment.

She walked toward him, through the smoke and the silence, past Antoine who was leaning against the wall, his face ashen but alive, past the bodies she didn't want to count.

"They're coming," she said. "The Allies are coming."

Marcel nodded again. His hand came away from his side, wet and dark. "They're too late," he said softly. "The war's already over."

Élise didn't understand. Not until she saw the light leave his eyes, until his knees buckled and he fell forward into her arms, his blood soaking her dress, his breath growing shallow and slow.

She held him. The sirens grew louder. The sky turned gray with dawn.

And in the distance, somewhere beyond the barricade she'd built with her own hands, Paris was being freed.