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The girl was running downhill toward the river Luce started running, too

They ran at precisely the same pace When Luce ducked at the sound of an explosion, Luschka ducked, too--in a weird echo of Luce's own movement And when they reached the riverbank, and the city caid stance as Luce herself

Fifty yards in front of Luce, her an to sob

Soleveled Luce tried to fathoht, but they felt distant and unreachable, like soirl was on the ht her if she'd wanted to They ran around giant craters cut into the cobblestone road They ran past burning buildings, crackling with the awful racket a fire et They ran past s out at the sides

Then Luschka hooked left down a street and Luce couldn't see her anymore

Adrenaline kicked in Luce pressed forward, her feet pounding harder, faster on the snowy street People only ran this fast when they were desperate When soer than the toward one thing

Luschka--

His voice

Where was he? For a irl whose life was in danger of ending at any ot that this Daniel wasn't her Daniel, but then--

Of course he was

He never died He had always been there He was always hers and she was always his All she wanted was to find his arrasp He would knohat she should be doing; he would be able to help her Why had she doubted him before?

She ran, pulled in the direction of his voice But she couldn't see Daniel anywhere Nor Luschka A block away from the river, Luce stopped short in a barren intersection

Her breath felt strangled in her frozen lungs A cold, throbbing pain tunneled deep inside her ears, and the icy pinpricks stabbing her feetstill unbearable

But which way should she go?

Before her was a vast and empty lot, filled with rubble and cordoned off fro and an iron fence But even in the darkness, Luce could tell that this was an older de destroyed by a bomb in the air raids

It didn't look like ly, abandoned sinkhole She didn't knohy she was still standing in front of it Why she'd stopped running after Daniel's voice--

Until she gripped the fence, blinked, and saw a flash of so brilliant

A church A e triptych of olden spires extending high into the sky And inside: rows of waxed wooden pews as far as the eye could see An altar at the top of a white flight of stairs And all the walls and high arched ceilings covered with gorgeously ornate frescoes Angels everywhere

The Church of Christ the Savior

How did Luce know that? Why would she feel with every fiber of her being that this nothingness had once been a formidable white church?

Because she had been there moments before She saw someone else's handprints in the ash on the azed at the ruins of the church and felt soain and saw herself--or Luschka--as a girl

She was seated inside on one of the pews in a white lace dress An organ played as people filed in before a service The handsome man to her left must have been her father, and the worandmother Luce had just er, better fed Luce re that both her parents were dead But here they looked so alive They see their pew Luce studied her past self watching her father as he shook hands with a good-looking young blondman leaned down over the pew and smiled at her He had the ain and the vision disappeared The lot was once again littleAnd alone Another bomb went off across the river, and the shock of it dropped Luce to her knees She covered her face with her hands--

Until she heard so She lifted her head and squinted into the deeper darkness of the ruins, and she saw him

Daniel, she whispered He looked just the sa darkness The blond hair she never wanted to stop running her fingers through, the violet-gray eyes that seemed to have been h cheekbones, those lips Her heart pounded and she had to tighten her grip on the iron fence to keep fro to him

Because he wasn't alone

He ith Luschka Consoling her, stroking her cheek and kissing her tears away Their arms rapped around one another, their heads tipped forward in a never-ending kiss They were so lost in their e with another explosion They looked like all there was in the world was just the two of them

There was no space between their bodies It was too dian

Lucinda got to her feet and crept forward,fro to be closer to hiht I'd never find you, Luce heard her past self say

We will always find each other, Daniel answered, lifting her off the ground and squeezing her closer Always

Hey, you two! A voice shouted fro?

Across the square fro herded into a solid stone building by a guy whose face Luce couldn't make out That here Luschka and Daniel were headed It , to take shelter froether