The gas was long gone by now. As if it had never been.
“We’ll have to crawl through the grass,” Forest said, his words clipped with tension. “It looks like Dacre isn’t expecting any retaliation from Enva’s forces. I don’t see any sentries, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t stationed as snipers. So move very slowly, and stay down. Do you hear me?”
She nodded. She didn’t spare her brother a glance. She was too focused on the sway of the grass as the wind raked over it. On the place she believed Roman to be.
She and Forest crawled side by side through the field. She moved gentle but swift, as he instructed. She didn’t wince when the stalks cut her hands, and it felt like a year passed before she reached the place where she had fought her brother, hours ago. She recognized it easily. The grass was broken here, trampled by their boots.
She swallowed the temptation to call for Roman. She remained low, crawling on her belly. The stars were beginning to wink overhead. The music from Avalon Bluff continued to echo, a fierce beating of drums.
The light was almost gone. Iris strained her eyes, looking for him amongst the flax.
Roman!
Her breaths were shallow and painful. Perspiration dripped from her brow, even as the temperature dropped. She searched for him, knowing this had been the spot. She searched, but there was no trace of him. Only his blood, staining the grass.
“We need to go, Iris,” Forest whispered.
“Wait,” she pleaded. “I know he has to be here.”
“He’s not. Look.”
Her brother pointed at something. She frowned, studying it. There was a ring drawn in the dirt. It encircled them both as they paused, still lying low.
“What is this, Forest?” she asked, finding more of Roman’s blood on the ground. It looked like spilled ink in the dusky light.
“We need to go. Now,” he hissed, grabbing her wrist.
She didn’t want him touching her, and she lurched away. Her hand still ached, as did her neck. All due to him.
“Just a minute longer, Forest,” she begged. “Please.”
“He’s not here, Iris. You have to trust me. I know more than you.”
“What do you mean?” But she had a terrible inkling. Her heart was beating, hummingbird swift in her throat. “Do you think he’s in Avalon Bluff?”
Guns fired in the distance. Iris startled, pressing deeper into the earth. Another round of shots, and then came peals of laughter.
“No, he’s not there,” Forest said, his eyes sweeping their surroundings. “I promise. But it’s time for us to go, as you agreed, sister.”
She glanced around the grass one last time. The moon hung above, watching as she sagged, as she crawled back to the woods with her brother.
The stars continued to burn as the last of her hope waned into despair.
* * *
He chose a place deep in the woods to make camp, where the mist curled around the trees. It gave Iris the chills, and she remained close to the small fire he built.
They had put several kilometers between them and Avalon Bluff, but Forest was still on edge, as if he expected Dacre’s forces to emerge from the shadows at any moment.
Iris had endless questions for him, but the air between them was tense. She held her tongue and accepted the food he handed her—food from Marisol’s kitchen—and she ate it, even though there was a lump in her throat.
“Where is Kitt?” she asked. “You said you know more than me. Where can I find him?”
“It’s not safe to talk about it here,” Forest said tersely. “You should eat and go to bed. We have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow.”
Iris was quiet, but then murmured, “You should have let him come with us.”
“This is war, Iris!” Forest cried. “This isn’t a game. This isn’t a novel with a happy ending. I saved you, because you are all I care about and you were all I could manage. Do you understand me?”
His words pierced her. She wanted to remain frozen and guarded, but she felt incredibly fragile in that moment. She kept seeing Roman rise from the grass. The way he had looked at her.
A sob hitched her breath. She drew her knees to her chest and began to weep, covering her face with her dirty hands. She tried to suck everything back in, to press it down to her marrow where she could handle it in private. But it was like something had broken in her, and things were spilling out.
Forest sat across from her, deathly quiet. He didn’t offer her any comfort; he didn’t embrace her. He didn’t speak kind words to her. The things he would have done in the past. But he remained near her, and he bore witness to her grief.
And all she could think through her tears was He feels like a stranger to me now.
* * *
He was paranoid about something. He had Iris up and walking early the next day, and by the slant of the sun, she judged they were traveling east.
“We could go to the road,” she suggested. “We could catch a ride with one of the lorries.” She wanted, more than anything, to find Attie and Marisol. To continue her search for Roman.
“No.” Forest’s reply was curt. He quickened his pace, glancing behind to make sure Iris was still following him. Twigs cracked beneath his boots. Iris thought the jumpsuit fit him poorly, and she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before.
“So we’re going to walk all the way to Oath?” she asked, a bit snidely.
“Yes. Until it’s safe to board a train.”
They traversed the next few hours in silence, until her brother was ready to make camp.
Perhaps Forest would finally explain himself here.
She waited for it, but her brother remained quiet, sitting on the other side of the fire from her. She watched the shadows dance over his lean, freckled face.
Eventually she could bear it no longer.
“Where’s your company, Forest? Your platoon? A lieutenant wrote to me, explaining that you joined another auxiliary force.”
Forest stared at the flames, as if he hadn’t heard her.
Where is your uniform? she inwardly added, wondering why he had gone to such lengths to steal one of Roman’s jumpsuits. Although it was becoming more evident that her brother was a deserter.
“They’re gone,” he replied suddenly. “Every last one of them.” He threw another branch on the fire before lying down on his side. “You can take the first watch.”
She sat quietly, her mind racing. She wondered if he was speaking about his Fifth Landover Company. The one that had been slaughtered at Lucia River.
She didn’t feel it was right to press him for clarity, and so she thought of other things.
Attie and Marisol most likely got away in the lorry. They would be driving east. Iris knew she could eventually find them at River Down, with Marisol’s sister.
But she wasn’t sure about Keegan’s fate.
She wasn’t sure about Roman’s.
Her stomach ached. Everything within her ached.
The fire was beginning to burn low.
Iris stood and brushed pine needles from her backside, looking for a new stick to add to the flames. She found one on the edges of the darkness, a shudder racking her spine as she returned to the camp, feeding the fire.