A couple of pages later comes the wedding photo. Without a huge commercialized bridal industry to egg them on, brides and grooms keep things simpler here: Paul is wearing a regular suit, and I’ve got on a knee-length dress with only a couple of flowers in my hair. But there’s no mistaking the joy shining from our faces.

I look up from the photo album when Paul walks in carrying Valentina, who is now wrapped in a soft yellow blanket. She yawns, which is insanely cute—her tiny mouth opened wide, her teeny fists. When Paul sees what I’m looking at, he raises his eyebrows—the question he can’t ask while his hands are busy holding our daughter. Why have you pulled that out?

“I’m feeling sentimental,” I tell him.

He sits down in the big chair, cradling Valentina against his chest. At first I think he’s talking to her, but as I walk across the room to place the photo album back on the bookshelf, I realize that he’s singing.

To my surprise, I haven’t actually missed being able to hear since those first few seconds of confusion. Right now, though, I wish I could listen to Paul’s lullaby. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s enough to watch the expression on his face, the complete tenderness, as he sings our daughter to sleep. No song could be sweeter than that.

Then he jumps slightly, enough to startle Valentina for a moment before she yawns again. Paul’s eyes widen, and so do mine, when I see the Firebird around his neck. My Paul has caught up with me at last.

He looks at the baby, then up to me, then at the baby again. I pick up a pen and notebook on the table and write one word in huge letters before holding the page up for him to read: Surprise.

My world’s Paul Markov knows only a handful of signs. The Moscowverse’s Paul, despite his fluency, must have learned later in life, because his knowledge isn’t ingrained deeply enough for my Paul to access it. I can speak—my voice wasn’t affected by the meningitis, and although it’s weird to have to deliberately think about how to shape my mouth for each sound and syllable, I can do it. But he can reply only in writing, and the back and forth between his notes and my unheard speech makes the conversation awkward, so it’s not long before I stop trying to talk at all. We wind up communicating via a sheet of paper.

Paul writes, Do you have any idea what your parents do for a living here? What kind of science they specialize in?

We’re sitting on the kitchen floor while Paul sifts through the various cleaning products and medicines, trying to assemble the ingredients for Nightthief. Although being a perfect traveler has involved a lot of danger and drama, I admit I’m not sorry I don’t have to inject into my veins any substance more commonly used for unclogging drains. I jot down, I haven’t checked, but if you go through the books on the wall, you’ll probably be able to put it together. I pause before writing the next. We met when we were lots younger here, so you must have studied with Mom and Dad from an early age.

Paul stops his chemistry experiment for his next lines. Do you know where they live?

Josie and I didn’t go to their place, I reply. You and I have an address book, though, so we can find them in the morning. Once we explain what’s going on, they can help us get started. He nods without ever looking me in the eye. I quickly add, Why don’t you just use the reminders?

I nearly ran out of charge in the Egyptverse, he replies. If he had, he would’ve wound up marooned there, unable to awaken or escape. Not worth the risk. Will we have to call in sick to work, wherever it is we have jobs? Or is tomorrow Saturday? By this point, my concept of time has been thrown completely out of whack. Probably not a big deal, but even the little complications can sometimes trip things up.

When Paul pours another couple of fluids together, the mixture finally turns the telltale emerald green of Nightthief. Sometimes the hardest part is finding a needle, he writes. It’s the first thing he’s said that is more than strictly necessary. The Triadverse and Home Office actually build small injectors inside their Firebirds. We should do the same.

Don’t you feel weird using Nightthief, given how bad it is for people? I write back.

No, Paul writes. This is a lot like arsenic. People can take small doses without it being toxic. But if you keep exposing the body to arsenic over and over again, eventually it builds up and it becomes deadly. Two or three doses of Nightthief won’t have any effects worse than maybe some temporary short-term memory loss because of the inability to dream while on the drug. And those doses are more than enough for what we have to do.

Two or three doses. Triadverse Theo stayed in our Theo for months. But he gave his life to atone for those sins, so somehow I have to learn to let them go.

Paul puts the bottle of green stuff on the counter as he gets up and heads back to the bathroom, hoping no doubt to search the medicine cabinet. Maybe he says something to me as he walks out, forgetting I can’t hear, but the feeling of being left behind is too clear. He even had me put Valentina to bed by myself, although I managed it pretty easily, since she’d already been sung half to sleep.

Enough, I decide. I’m not going on like this anymore. I can’t make Paul believe—but I can make him listen, even without my voice.

Paul returns with an actual syringe. I walk out of the kitchen as he prepares to inject the stuff, and I take my seat on the sofa with a couple of fresh pieces of paper. Only the slightest tension in his shoulders betrays the moment the needle enters his skin, and he’s done with the shot in an instant. Almost as soon as he puts the syringe down, though, he starts to shiver.

I pull him onto the sofa, fearing another full-fledged overdose like Theo had in the Londonverse. But it doesn’t get to Paul that badly. He only trembles for a few moments, his pupils dilated, as he attempts to shake it off. I rub his shoulders, stroke his hair.

When the reaction passes, Paul tries to stand up again—but I grip his shoulders and force him back onto the couch beside me. He gives me a look, then writes, I’m all right now.

I write back, I know. But we have to talk. You keep avoiding me, but now you’re in a world where we share a home and a bed, so it’s time.

There’s nothing else to say. We don’t share a destiny. By now we’ve proved that. One world like this, where we’re . . . Paul’s hand stills, and I see him glance back toward Valentina’s room. Then he starts over again. One world is only one outcome. It doesn’t mean we’re fated to be together.