Passion by Lauren Kate

the cabinet with clean ones and added more gas to the lantern. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen.
    Luce stood up to help, but the girl waved her of . “Sit down. Rest. You just got transferred here, didn’t you?” Hesitantly, Luce nodded.
    “Were you al alone coming from the front?” The girl stopped cleaning for a moment, and when she looked at Luce, her hazel eyes brimmed with compassion.
    Luce started to reply, but her mouth was so dry she couldn’t speak. How had it taken her this long to recognize that she was looking at herself?
    “I was,” she managed to whisper. “I was al alone.”
    The girl smiled. “Wel , you’re not anymore. There’s a bunch of us here at the hospital. We’ve got al the nicest nurses. And the handsomest patients. You won’t mind it, I don’t think.” She started to extend her hand but then looked down and realized how dirty it was. She giggled and picked up her mop again. “I’m Lucia.”
    I know, Luce stopped herself from saying. “I’m—”
    Her mind went blank. She tried to think of one name, any name that would work. “I’m Doree—Doria,” she nal y said. Almost her mother’s name. “Do you know—where do they take the soldiers who were in here?”
    “Uh-oh. You’re not already in love with one of them, are you?” Lucia teased. “New patients get taken to the east ward for vitals.”
    “The east ward,” Luce repeated to herself.
    “But you should go see Miss Fiero at the nurses’ station. She does the registration and the scheduling”—Lucia giggled again and lowered her voice, leaning toward Luce—“and the doctor, on Tuesday afternoons!”
    Al Luce could do was stare at Lucia. Up close, her past self was so real, so alive, so very much the kind of girl Luce would have befriended instantly if the circumstances had been any shade of normal. She wanted to reach out and hug Lucia, but she was overcome by an indescribable fear. She’d cleaned the wounds of seven half-dead soldiers—including the love of her life—but she was unsure what to do when it came to Lucia. The girl seemed too young to know any of the secrets Luce was searching for—about the curse, about the Outcasts. Luce feared she’d only frighten Lucia if she started talking about reincarnation and Heaven. There was something about Lucia’s eyes, something about her innocence—Luce realized that Lucia knew even less than she did.
    She stepped down from the ambulance and backed away.
    “It was nice to meet you, Doria,” Lucia cal ed.
    But Luce was already gone.
    It took six wrong rooms, three startled soldiers, and one toppled-over medicine cabinet before Luce found him.
    Daniel was sharing a room in the east ward with two other soldiers. One was a silent man whose entire face had been bandaged. The other was snoring loudly, a bot le of whiskey not very wel hidden under his pil ow, two broken legs raised in a sling.
    The room itself was bare and sterile, but it had a window that looked out onto a broad city avenue lined with orange trees.
    Standing over his bed, watching him sleep, Luce could see it. The way their love would have bloomed here. She could see Lucia coming in to bring Daniel his meals, him opening up to her slowly. The pair being inseparable by the time Daniel recovered. And it made her feel jealous and guilty and confused because she couldn’t tel right now whether their love was a beautiful thing, or whether this was yet another

    jealous and guilty and confused because she couldn’t tel right now whether their love was a beautiful thing, or whether this was yet another instance of how very wrong it was.
    If she was so young when they met, they must have had a long relationship in this life. She would have got en to spend years with him before it happened. Before she died and was reincarnated into another life completely. She must have thought they’d spend forever together
    —and must not even have known how long forever meant.
    But Daniel knew. He always