Chapter Seven
The next night, Faivish cemented the porcelain crown. When Alfie leaned toward the looking glass, it was almost as though nothing had happened at all. The tooth gleamed—whole, unmarred—as if pain, panic, and the attack meant for Faivish had been erased.
Almost.
The purpling shadow along Alfie’s cheekbone still told the truth.
He touched it with two fingers, thoughtful, then dabbed the corner of his mouth with the towel Maisie offered.
His swagger began to seep back—slow as sap rising after winter, steady but not yet certain.
“You two,” Alfie said, gaze flicking between them, “are remarkable. Truly. Thank you—for saving my smile.”
From the tool table, Faivish felt the words land deeper than he’d expected. “No, thank you, Alfie. You stood in the way when it should have been me.”
Alfie shrugged one shoulder into his coat sleeve as if it cost him nothing.
“I stand by good people. You’re my friends.
That’s all that matters. And if science has taught us anything, it’s that every vein carries the same blood, there’s no way to distinguish people by color or religion, only by their hearts. ”
The truth of it weighed between them. Science knew it, but Vienna’s laws did not. Faivish pressed his lips flat, catching Maisie’s mirrored gesture at the edge of his sight—an unspoken pact sparking like a wire touched by flame.
“I have to go to India,” he said at last. “If I’m to be known, let it be for the work of my hands, not for the syllables of my name.”
Alfie’s mouth twitched. “I’ll stand by you.” He winced when his cheek strained under the attempted smile, then forced a grin softened with sincerity. His glance shifted to Maisie. “You were right to trust him with your heart. I trust him with my life.”
Color rose to her cheeks, though she held his look without blinking.
Alfie nodded toward the curtained window, where a draft stirred the velvet folds. “And now, I’ll slip out the back. Fewer eyes.”
Faivish followed him into the vestibule. His steps were quiet but heavy, carrying more than his friend’s coat. The lamplight caught Alfie’s bruise, gilding the damage into something almost noble. Faivish clasped his hand and wrinkled the coat but he was instantly sorry when he gave it to Alfie.
Finally, at the threshold, Alfie paused, his eyes catching the light. “You’re both good—good enough to believe you can mend the world, one tooth at a time. I hope you’ll always be happy together, no matter what.”
The night took him, bruise and all.
Faivish lingered. The streetlamp’s glow cut a line across his brow, picking out the sheen of sweat and strain. “That could have gone terribly wrong.”
From behind him, Maisie’s voice was quiet, steady. “But it didn’t. Because you were brilliant.”
His mouth tilted in a small, private smile. “You held the lamp steady.”
“You held justice in your hands.”
Something passed between them, unspoken, fragile as spun glass. When her fingertips brushed his sleeve, her voice was almost a plea: “Don’t go yet.”
He couldn’t have left, even if he’d wanted to.
He stepped closer, drawn by a pull as certain as a tide to the moon. A wild curl brushed her cheek; the lamplight burnished her hair into bronze. He lifted his hand, feeling the air shift, as if her soft and supple skin had been waiting all this time.
“I haven’t told you in words,” he said quietly, “what you’ve become to me.
You’ve stood with me when it would have been easier to turn away.
You’ve given me more than I thought I could hold.
If your father would only allow it… I’d spend my life proving myself worthy of you.
Every part of me already belongs to you. ”
Her lashes dipped; her lips softened, not with surprise but with a quiet, aching acceptance. He turned her hand palm-up, pressed his mouth to it gently, as though afraid the dream might vanish. Her fingers trembled, then closed around his, sure as a vow.
The kiss that followed was quieter than breath, warmer than flame.
The last days—the secrecy, the fear—dissolved in that hush.
She leaned into him, her body fitting his as though it had always known the way.
His hand slid to her nape, holding her as if the world might tear them apart if he loosened his grip.
He drew back just enough for their foreheads to rest together, breath mingling.
“You hold my heart,” he whispered.
“And you mine,” she sighed against him, her fingers fisting gently in his coat. In that small hold, he felt something greater than longing: a bone-deep rightness.
“Thank you,” he said roughly. “For trusting me with your father’s instruments. For standing with me.”
“You’ve been his hands longer than he admits,” she murmured.
He looked toward the treatment room. “Let me clear everything—no trace left.”
She shook her head. “You’ve done enough. Rest. And if we are healers, then let us heal. Care should never be hidden behind rules that wound more than they mend.”
Her words sank deep. But before he could answer, the patter of bare feet overhead made them both still.
“Maisie?”
Deena stood on the landing, hair rumpled, nightgown slipped at one shoulder.
Maisie went to her, smoothing the child’s hair, whispering words Faivish couldn’t hear. The girl lingered, then disappeared into her room, the door clicking shut, leaving behind a silence too delicate to break.
Faivish let out the breath he’d been holding. “That was close,” he murmured, the words more relief than sound.
Maisie stepped toward him, her smile quick, wry, and edged with weariness. “Everything is.”
He reached for the doorknob—
—but never touched it.
The latch snapped with a sharp, metallic click. The door swung wide.
Two men filled the frame of the winter night. Professor Morgenschein—her father—stood first, his face pale yet thunderous, two storms wrestled behind his eyes as if he’d met a lynching man. Beside him loomed Rector Hofst?tter.
Her father’s gaze swept toward the treatment room, where the air still carried the bitter tang of heated porcelain and dental cement, faint smoke of the kiln clinging like guilt. His mouth thinned to a line that cut deeper than words.
“You’ve been busy.”
The syllables dropped like stones, and the cold from the open door seemed to flood the room until even their breathing felt dangerous.
Rector Hofst?tter stepped past, chin angled high, his gait deliberate, proprietary. Clearing his throat, he let the silence stretch before saying, “So, so, so. The nightly use of university resources.”
In that suspended moment, with Maisie’s kiss still lingering on his lips, Faivish understood with perfect clarity: We’re caught.
*
The knock never came.
The latch snapped instead—sharp, metallic, final. The door swung wide, letting in the night.
Maisie’s breath hitched. Her father stood there, frost still clinging to his coat, his face drained and thunderous at once—as if two storms wrestled for dominion beneath his skin. Beside him, Rector Hofst?tter’s folder glinted like a seal of judgment—a weapon already drawn.
The cold rushed in with them. She could still smell porcelain and cement in the air, hot and faintly acrid, the unmistakable scent of what they had done. Her father’s gaze swept the room, landed on the instruments, and his mouth pinched tight.
The air shifted. Maisie caught the faint, bitter tang of porcelain still cooling in the back room. Her father’s gaze went straight there. His mouth thinned. “You’ve been busy.”
Rector Hofst?tter strode in without waiting for an answer. “So. The nightly use of university resources. Porcelain. Cement. A crown, then.” His lip curled. “For whom?”
Faivish didn’t flinch. “For a man attacked in the street. Beaten by the Burschenschaft. By your son among them.”
The words landed like a stone in still water. Hofst?tter’s pause was brief—deliberate. “My son,” he said smoothly, “is a devoted scholar. He carries honor into our halls.”
“He carries a knife pommel,” Faivish shot back. “I saw it.”
“Oh please. Boys scuffle.” Hofst?tter’s voice carried the lazy dismissal of a man too accustomed to being obeyed. His lip curled in disdain. “Better they learn their duty early—Vienna must be kept clear of vermin.”
The word landed hard, as if the air itself recoiled. Maisie’s father flinched, his voice cracking. “Vermin?”
Faivish stepped forward, every line of him taut with anger. “Your son was among them. You condone their violence?”
The Rector’s smile was slow, deliberate, teeth catching the lamplight. “I applaud it. They understand what must be done to preserve Vienna.” His gaze slid to the cooling porcelain crown on the tray. “And now it is my duty to preserve the university as well.”
The lamp trembled in her father’s grip, glass chiming faintly. Maisie had not seen him like this since the night her mother died—fragile, unmoored, as if the flame he carried might gutter out and take him with it.
“Tomorrow.” Hofst?tter’s tone dropped lower, gaining weight.
“Nine o’clock. You will present yourselves before the Faculty Council of Medicine.
Every senior professor will sit in judgment.
” He savored the silence before striking.
“And there we strip away the illusion you’ve built.
We return the place you’ve stolen to better men. Not Jews.”
“Faivish Blattner earned his place as the best in his class.” Her father lifted his chin, voice thin but steady. “Examinations are anonymous. Numbers, not names. My pupil’s work speaks for itself.”
“Spare me your sermons on fairness,” Hofst?tter cut in, folder snapping open with a sound like a blade leaving its sheath. “Life is not fair. Life is a position. My son studies until dawn, yet you let him be discredited by this boy? Enough.”
The lamp shook again, the flame dancing wildly. Her father’s eyes flicked to hers—pleading, helpless—and Maisie felt the world tilt. For the first time, she saw him not as the master craftsman of gold and porcelain, but as a man hollowed by fear.
She swallowed words that clawed her throat. All she could do was lock eyes with Faivish. The warmth of his kiss still lingered, but what she saw in him now was clear: Hofst?tter meant to break him.
Faivish’s voice cut the silence. “He wasn’t discredited. He escaped while Alfie was beaten. They came at night because I surpassed them on merit.”
Hofst?tter turned the folder in his hand, as if testing its weight. “Still this slander. My son doesn’t dirty himself in alleys. He prepares to inherit his station.”
Maisie’s fists curled into her skirts. Her voice broke free before she could stop it. “I held the lamp. I saw the wound. Without the crown, infection would have spread. He’d have lost more than a tooth.”
The Rector looked at her, not truly at her—through her, as though she were nothing more than a shadow that dared to speak. “And this,” he said to her father, “is the rot you permit. A nurse with opinions. You’ve forgotten your place, Morgenschein.”
The ivory knob of her father’s cane creaked under his grip. His reply was quiet but unyielding. “Do not speak to my daughter.”
Hofst?tter’s smile dropped away. What replaced it was colder. “You tremble, old man. Then hear me plainly. Your anarchy ends tonight. Keys to the kiln. Now.”
Her father’s hand moved slowly, reluctant. The key scraped against metal, then fell into Hofst?tter’s palm.
“You will not light it again. You will not let this boy claim what he has not earned. And tomorrow morning, you face the wrath of the entire academic committee.”
“Under oath?” Faivish asked, his voice iron.
“Under mercy,” Hofst?tter said, almost lightly. “If any remains.”
Maisie thought of Deena asleep upstairs, of the house worn soft by her mother’s steps. She thought of Faivish’s hand on her jaw only an hour ago—and how this man could twist that tenderness into danger.
At the threshold, Hofst?tter paused, eyes drilling into her father. “Position, Professor. Learn it—or I will teach it.”
The door slammed shut, rattling the shelves.
Her father sank into a chair, a tremor running up his arm. When he looked at Maisie, it was with the same broken calculation she remembered from years ago: how to shield a child when there was no shield left.