Chapter one

The newspaper crumpled in Elizabeta Hedervary's hand. Soft brown paper, now crippled, fluttered down through her shaking fingers and onto the first step. The woman sat perched on the doorstep of her husband's grand house, trying to digest the news. The Hampsburg line had been captured by the allies, and defeat seemed imminent, to her, at least. She knew that her husband, Roderich Edelstein, would think otherwise. "We can still pull through," he would state, in his flat, soft, voice. "They haven't quite defeated us."

But what did he know? He was merely a banker, although an important one, and Elizabeta had been a soldier. She knew very well that such a loss would result in defeat, and those that thought otherwise would merely lead thousands more men into an impossible battle. A lesser woman would have cried, however Eliza simply held back her tears. Crying is for little girls, she reckoned. Not for a grown woman with a family to support.

Despite this, when she reached up to touch her cheek, it was wet from tears.

The sun set slowly, its watery orange flame lighting the clouds on fire. Many writers would affiliate such an occurence with passion, however they would be misguided. There was no passion in the bleak life of Eliza.

Her husband's cautious footsteps resonated from behind her. His breathing was slow and steady, in contrast to his wife's stunted, rough one. Once upon a time, Eliza would have been delighted upon his arrival, would have ran up the steps, taken his round face in her hands, cleared away his dark hair and kissed him. However, her feet remained planted on the colld stone of the step, her back to the five-storey house. The love between them had faded long ago.

Still the man wrapped his slender arms around his lover's waist, and buried his face in her hair. She let him do this, let him twiddle her long, tough brown hair, let him call her Lizzy, let him kiss her neck after doing so. And still her green eyes remained fixed on the horizon, her hands clasped firmly in her lap, barely breathing, unmoving.

It was as if in return for Eliza's lack of love, Roderich loved her too much.

"My dear Lizzy," he murmered softly. Despite herself, Eliza felt a tingle. He was one of only two people to ever call her Lizzy. "It will be all right. We won't lose so easily." His words of comfort were so blissfully ignorant, yet still blissful. Eliza chose to believe them, if just for this moment.

Yet that moment was soon over, and a feeling of dread resumed within her. Trying to stem the flow, to quell it, Eliza fixed her eyes even more strikingly upon the Vienna skyline. Yet the sensation continued, joined by the low, rumbling sound of an approaching motor vehicle. This made her even more nervous. Why was the vehicle coning this way? Why was it coming so slowly? Barely anybody could afford a car, so the roads were clear. Why wouldn't it speed up? Soon, every part of Ekuza was on edge.

A horrible realisation dawned upon the woman as she quivered in anticipation. The rumbling seemed familiar. It was so reminiscent of a particular young man, twenty-eight years of age, with such striking eyes.. Soon Eliza was in such a state of anxiety as foreboding washed over her in waves. Couldn't Roderich sense anything? But of course he couldn't; he had never been in that car, never ridden it during the night, never-

She couldn't take it anymore. Wriggling free from her husband's iron clasp, Elizabeta ran, filled with an unexplained feeling of desperation, to the front gate. A heel snagged on the bottom step, ripping a shoe off, yet still she ran. Roderich's shouts were audible, yelling for her to come back, his leather-clad feet thudding against the grass, yet still she ran. She only stopped when a car coated in thick black paint swerved drunkenly towards the house, then stopped abruptly, inches away from Eliza.

It had been just as she dreaded.

Confusion passed over Roderich's pale face. "Isn't that Gilbert's car?" his wife didn't answer. She tried, desperately, to push down every emotion that she had hidden for the past four years, to the point where it physically hurt. "I-" she was cut off as the door swung open. A man clambered out, his eyes just as red as they were all those years ago, his hair the same shade of white. Yet something was different. His skin looked unhealthily cold, his eyes devoid of the flame that they used to possess.

Elizabeta barely had time to scream before Gilbert Beilschmidt, her friend who was supposed to be dead, toppled into her arms.

A faint word passed from his blue-tinted lips.

"Lizzy."