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But it was a longer journey than that. A journey that had started four years ago, on a warm winter afternoon, when a kind German officer with sky-blue eyes first gazed down at Feliciano in the sunlight. A journey Feliciano had remembered and recreated so many times it seemed almost fantastical. Speeches of flying and lavender and loyalty; words spoken in too-lyrical German and too-strong Italian. Stolen glances and songs of resistance, language lessons and soccer games beneath a gnarled old oak tree. Falling against Ludwig's military jacket in a narrow alley that echoed with gunshots; wearing that very same jacket, studded with green leaves and rosemary, during a simple, calm, beautiful walk into the hills. Every day of waiting, every hour of not knowing, every endless second of being without the person Feliciano needed more than anything else in the entire world. All of it had led him here. Every step Feliciano had taken for the last four years had led him here.
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