Amid the Blitz, Charlotte wanders the shuttered Covent Garden stalls searching for discarded flowers, overwhelmed by the city’s fear and grief that she cannot shut out. She resents Sabine’s composure and flippant complaints about rationing making blood taste bland, and recalls how Sabine once embodied freedom and joy. Earlier that night, when Charlotte proposed they hunt together, Sabine, distracted and restless, chose to walk alone, and Charlotte secretly felt relieved.

As an air-raid siren sounds, Charlotte hurries home to their commandeered London flat. She finds blood on the door, stairs, and walls, leading to the bedroom where Sabine stands soaked in red, dreamy and dissociated, describing her victims as if they were torn “like Christmas paper.” Charlotte suppresses the urge to flee and instead cleans Sabine, bathing and tending her until Sabine grows drowsy, remarking that she cannot hear Charlotte’s thoughts and asking if Charlotte keeps secrets.

Once Sabine sleeps, Charlotte retrieves a blunted blade and kneels over her, intent on ending the danger and their spiral. At the last moment the blade halts above Sabine’s heart, not by force of metal or air but by Charlotte’s own inability to act, bound by the words she once spoke: a promise to Sabine, made decades earlier, never to hurt her.

A crimson tear from Charlotte falls onto Sabine’s cheek, and Sabine wakes, eyes still black, taking in the sight of the frozen blade. She shows no shock or anger, only amusement, and invites Charlotte back to bed. Realizing there is no return from this point, Charlotte drops the knife and runs.

Charlotte expects to be killed within moments but reaches the street unharmed amid distant sirens. Casting herself as Orpheus to Sabine’s Eurydice, Charlotte chooses not to look back, fleeing into the night.