Chapter Six
Not much later that summer…
The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass jars. Maisie’s pen jerked, spilling ink across her father’s ledger.
Faivish came in half-carrying Alfie. The smell hit before the sight—lamp oil, sweat, and blood.
“Chair,” Faivish ordered, easing him down.
The lamplight showed Alfie’s swollen face, a lip split wide. Maisie’s breath snagged.
“Burschenschaft students,” Alfie muttered. He spat pink into a handkerchief, then darker red. “Von Altenburg. Wittelsbach. Bismarck. Vienna’s finest names.” His grimace twisted toward a grin. “They wanted some sport.”
Faivish lifted the lamp, his hands steady in motion but rigid with control. “Not sport. Envy. My grades.”
Maisie’s brow knit, shaken. “But Father’s exams—”
“Numbers, not names,” Faivish said, laying his instruments in a ruthless line. “Merit, not pedigree. They can’t stomach it. So they took him instead of me.”
Alfie groaned, bloodied but defiant. “And Hofst?tter’s son was with them.”
The lamp’s brass burned against Maisie’s palm.
“They could have killed you,” Alfie groaned. “Would have.”
“They tried.” Faivish’s glance at her was brief, raw when he looked at Maisie. “If Alfie hadn’t stepped in…” He looked back at his tray. “We’ll use porcelain.”
Her breath caught. “That’s forbidden—”
“So is their violence. And yet it goes unpunished.” His voice carried a weight that silenced her. “Porcelain on gold is stronger. He deserves it.”
She moved closer, her shoulder brushing his. “If they find out—”
“They will. But tonight, he’s my patient. And you’ll help me, won’t you?”
Her throat tightened, but she tilted the lamp to where he needed it.
The hiss of flame filled the silence, broken by Alfie’s ragged breathing and the faint clink of tools. He lowered the cloth, showing the jagged break. “What are we waiting for? Until one of us doesn’t get back up?”
Maisie flinched.
“It’s why your father arranged Calcutta,” Alfie said. “It’s a safer escape and a chance…”
The words hit harder than the slam of the door had.
Faivish didn’t deny it. His hands stayed on the instruments, though the muscle in his jaw worked.
Maisie’s stomach dropped. Father knew. Knew this city would devour them. Knew that keeping Faivish in Vienna meant losing him.
“When this is done,” Alfie pressed, “we’re leaving. He’ll take the apprenticeship. I’ll study Ayurveda. We’ll come back stronger.”
Her voice cracked. “So it’s decided for me?”
Faivish finally looked at her. Not the careful composure he showed patients—something stripped bare. “Your father’s condition worsens. You’ve seen it. The tremors. What comes after?”
The unspoken words chilled her: Deena.
Her pulse thundered. “So I stay. You go.” The words didn’t even feel like her own.
“I’m saying,” Faivish said quietly, “that if I vow myself to you, I vow myself to her, too. That means being strong enough to keep you both safe. Not just a wedding, Maisie. A marriage. A lifetime.”
Maisie’s throat ached with the truth she’d stumbled into—that her father had always known their love would demand sacrifice. And that cost would fall, as it always had, on her.
Alfie groaned, pressing the towel harder to his cheek.
Faivish caught Maisie’s eye. She knew that look—it meant there were things he couldn’t say in front of Alfie. He set down the instrument, wiped his hands, and drew her gently into the shadowed hallway.
“When I go,” he said, “it won’t be to run. It’ll be good to come back, the man who can give you a life beyond fear.”
Her breath failed her. “Calcutta?” she whispered. The word tasted like unfathomable distance.
He nodded once. “I’ll learn everything there, everything they’ll never allow me here. And when I return, no one—no arrogant rider, no aristocrat—will be able to deny us.”
Her hand trembled in his. “But it’s so long!”
His grip firmed, anchoring her. “No matter how long or how far, I’ll still find you. Even if you’re on the other side of the world, I’ll walk until I hold you in my arms and make it last forever.”
The air seemed to thicken between the narrow walls. She could hear her own heartbeat above the lamp’s hiss. Instead of words, she moaned. It was protest as much as acceptance.
“I don’t only want a wedding,” he went on, softer now, but edged with something fierce. “I want years with you. Waking beside you, hearing you laugh, growing old with your hand in mine. I want Deena safe, and your father proud to see his daughter loved as she deserves.”
Her vision blurred. She swallowed hard. “Then stay,” she whispered. “Stay, and we can start now.”
His thumb brushed her knuckles—a tender refusal. “If I stay, I can’t protect you. If I go, I come back strong enough to guard you both. That’s why your father sent for the apprenticeship—he knows this city will eat me alive if I don’t leave it.”
The words cut through her, hollow and sharp.
“You’re asking me to wait.”
His voice roughened. “I’m asking you to believe in us. Enough for me to fight for it. Enough to walk away now, so I can return to you for the rest of my life.”
She couldn’t trust her voice. She only nodded, sharp and sure, because anything else might break her.
He touched her cheek, lifted her face, and kissed her.
Not long—just enough to brand her as his, enough to burn the air out of her lungs.
When he drew back, she felt changed, claimed.
“I love you,” she whispered before fear could stop her.
“I think I loved you from the moment you first stepped through this door.”
His mouth curved, a smile worn thin with wonder. “And I loved you when you opened your father’s notes for me in the amphitheatre. You knew the right page. You knew without asking.”
Her laugh escaped as a sob. “You remember that?”
“How could I forget?” His thumb traced the corner of her damp lashes. “You handed out notes to all the students, but I was the only one who gave you his heart in return. Keep it for me.”
Maisie pressed his hand to her cheek. “I’ll keep it safe.”
He lingered one more breath, then stepped back into the lamplight, toward Alfie’s battered form.
“Hold the light steady,” he said, and his voice seemed already composed. “This has to be perfect.”
*
Silence pressed in, thick and close. The lamp hissed faintly, its glow spilling over Faivish’s hands as he steadied the first tool.
The moment the metal touched Alfie’s tooth, he flinched hard, a sound torn out of him—and Faivish’s jaw locked.
It should have been me.
That thought had burned through him since the alley: the glint of steel, the step he’d shifted without thinking, Alfie moving in—taking the blow meant for him. The knife’s iron pommel had cracked across Alfie’s face. Not bone-breaking, but enough to shear the tooth nearly to the root, too.
Faivish had lived his whole life by one rule: keep your head down, keep your body whole. Jews didn’t fight aristocrats; they endured. And when the smoke cleared, it was always the Jews who paid.
He had never forgotten. Not the night his parents were dragged from their shop, nor the stink of lamp oil and scorched cloth clinging to the rafters.
The crowd had called it a riot. But riots ended.
Hatred didn’t. His father was a harmless merchant, his mother gentler than butterflies—and still they were beaten down while the mob walked away untouched.
Aristocrats broke Jews with no repercussions; Jews were punished for breaking or even just thinking about fighting back. That was the unspoken law.
His mother’s voice haunted him still: Keep low. Survive. Don’t throw yourself to justice—the bad men always prevail. By morning, he had nothing left but his books and a grief that threatened to strangle him.
Professor Morgenschein had found him then, sharp-eyed, commanding, and said: Do well, not despite your mourning, but because of it. Achievement was the only revenge allowed him. And then, his beautiful daughter had handed him a syllabus he’d clung to for dear life.
So Faivish had lived by silence, by sidestepping. Survive. Survive. And tonight, Alfie bled for it.
Maisie shifted the lamp, her hand trembling, but her chin high. She hated what Calcutta meant; he could feel it. Yet she nodded. She would not leave him to it alone.
“Hold still,” Faivish murmured, voice steady as stone. “Any other clinic would’ve pulled the tooth before you sat down.”
Alfie’s lips twisted around the gauze. “That’s what they wanted. To mark me. To take the smile first. It’s the smile people remember—take that away, and every door’s already closed.”
Faivish swallowed hard. He knew. For a Jew, scars became proof. Evidence of inferiority. And aristocrats knew it.
“Porcelain on gold,” he said, turning the blade in the lamplight. “Stronger than anything they can break. You’ll keep your immaculate smile.”
Maisie’s hand stilled on the towel. “Why isn’t it used at the university?”
His voice cut sharper than the steel in his hand. “Because porcelain is reserved for men with crests. Their teeth, like their titles, must appear unbroken. We craft perfection for them, but we may never wear it ourselves. Alfie has no title, no crest. He doesn’t count.”
Her breath hitched. “And if they find out?”
“They’ll call it theft.” His tone was calm, almost too calm. “And then they’ll make certain I never practice again in Europe. That’s why your father is sending me away—before they do worse.”
Alfie groaned low, pain thick in his throat. “They tried tonight.”
The truth settled over the room like lead.
Faivish bent forward again, steel probe catching the light. He could hear Maisie’s breathing behind him, the weight of her trust heavy as the lamp she held steady. If he failed, Alfie would lose more than a tooth. Maisie lost the man she loved. Deena lost the brother he had promised to become.
He caught Maisie’s reflection in the polished brass tray. Her eyes, wide, fixed on him—not the instruments, not the wound, but him.
And Faivish thought: Please, let me be enough.