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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

Yes, Luschka called to the others She looked at Daniel Let's go with them No His voice was curt Nervous Luce knew that tone all too well

We'll be safer off the street Isn't this e agreed to meet here?

Daniel turned to look back behind theht past the place where Luce was hiding When the sky lit up with another round of golden-red explosions, Luschka screamed and buried her face in Daniel's chest So Luce was the only one who saw his expression

Soreater than fear of the bombs

Oh no

Daniil! A boy near the building was still holding open the door to the shelter Luschka! Daniil!

Everyone else was already inside

That hen Daniil spun Luschka around, pulled her ear close to his lips In her shadowy hiding place, Luce ached to knohat he hispering If he was saying any of the things Daniel ever told her when she was upset or overwhelmed She wanted to run to the deep inside her would not budge

She fixed on Luschka's expression as if her whole life depended on it

Maybe it did

Luschka nodded as Daniil spoke, and her face changed from terrified to calm, almost peaceful She closed her eyes She nodded one more time Then she tipped back her head, and a smile spread slowly across her lips

A smile?

But why? How? It was almost like she kneas about to happen

Daniil held her in his ar his lips firh her hair, then down her sides, across every inch of her

It was so passionate that Luce blushed, so intieous that she couldn't tear her eyes away Not for a second

Not even when Luschka screa white flame

The cyclone of flahastly way, like a long silk scarf twisting around her pale body It engulfed Luschka, flowed out of her and all around her, lighting up the spectacle of her burning li anyed his clothes, not when he had to support the full weight of her slack, unconscious body, not when the flaly, acrid hiss, not when her skin began to char and blacken

Only when the blaze fizzled out--so fast, in the end, like the snuffing of a single candle--and there was nothing left to hold on to, nothing left but ashes, did Daniil drop his arms to his sides

In all of Luce's wildest daydrea her past lives, she'd never once iined this: her own death The reality was htmares could ever have concocted She stood in the cold snow, paralyzed by the vision, her body bereft of the capacity to ered back froan to weep The tears streah the black soot that was all that was left of her His face contorted His hands shook They looked bare and big and eht ed around Luschka's waist, in her hair, cupping her cheeks What on earth did you do with your hands when the one thing they wanted to hold was suddenly, gruesoone