She stared at the birds as they sunned their wings, wondering if they had followed her from River Down. With an anxious twitch of her hands, Iris reached into her pocket and retrieved Marisol’s book. She sifted through the worn pages, admiring the intricate illustrations, until she came to the page devoted to nightingales. There her eyes remained, reading through the fine-print description:
A small and secretive bird that is rather plain to behold, the Nightingale is difficult to spot. They keep to thick cover, and while their feathers might be unexciting, they have a repertoire of more than two hundred different phrases that they can sing.
The door creaked open.
Iris closed the book, her mouth suddenly dry. All the words seemed to scatter from her thoughts as she turned away from the windows, preparing to ask for Keegan again. But Iris stopped short, her breath catching.
It was Keegan. Marisol’s wife stood tall and proud in her green uniform, three golden stars pinned over her breast. Her blond hair was slicked back and her jaw was set, as if she too had come to this meeting with preconceptions. Her dark eyes were keen but red-rimmed, as if she hadn’t slept a full night in weeks, and her expression was inscrutable. Her mouth was set in a line that looked chiseled from stone.
“Cap—Brigadier Torres,” Iris said. “I know you probably don’t remember me, but I’m—”
“Iris Winnow,” Keegan said, shutting the door behind her. “Of course I remember you. Didn’t I oversee your vows in the garden? My wife is very fond of you and Attie, as well as your Kitt. But what in all the gods’ names are you doing here?”
Iris drew a deep breath. “I have a message I think you should see.”
“A message?”
“Yes. I…” How much to say? Iris reached into her pocket again, withdrawing Roman’s letter. “Please read this.”
She gave the letter to Keegan, watching as the brigadier read Roman’s words. Keegan’s expression didn’t change; indeed, Iris was beginning to believe that the brigadier might doubt it all, and Iris didn’t know what she would do if that happened. But then Keegan exhaled sharply and met Iris’s gaze. Her eyes glittered as if she had just been shaken from a dream.
“How did you get this, Iris?”
“I have a magical connection to Roman through our typewriters,” Iris began. She shared everything with Keegan, from the beginning in Oath when they were mere rivals at the paper to where she stood now, writing to her husband even though he was Dacre’s prisoner and couldn’t even remember her name.
“I know it sounds impossible, but Roman wouldn’t lie to me,” she finished, surprised by the hoarseness in her tone. She swallowed the lump in her throat, but it only wedged in her chest, and she knew it was the grief she hadn’t allowed herself to process. Grief over Roman being a captive, his mind scrambled by Dacre’s magic. Grief that whatever they once had might not ever be recovered.
She was very good at burying things like that, her anguish and her sorrow and sometimes even the reality of what she faced. But she didn’t quite know how to let them go without losing vital pieces of herself.
Keegan was silent, staring down at Roman’s typed words again. “When did you receive this letter?”
“Yesterday morning. I came as soon as I read it. We drove all night from Bitteryne.”
“Which means we only have another day or so before Dacre attacks, if what Roman says is true.” Keegan rolled her lips together but then glanced at Iris. “Who is we? You said you drove here with someone?”
“Attie and Tobias Bexley.”
“Where are they now?”
“At the barricade in the motorcar, waiting for me to return.”
“Then the three of you must be exhausted and hungry. I’ll send breakfast for you, as well as find you all a quiet room to rest.” Keegan strode to the door and opened it, murmuring to a soldier waiting in the hallway.
Iris hesitated, her eyes drifting to Roman’s letter, still in Keegan’s hand.
“Go with Private Shepherd. He’s going to take you to a room on the lower floor to rest and eat,” Keegan said, glancing back at Iris. But she must have seen the stricken light in Iris’s eyes. The brigadier softened her tone, adding, “Don’t worry. I need to speak to my officers, but I’ll come find you in a little bit, after you’ve rested.”
“Of course,” Iris whispered with a half smile. “Thank you, Brigadier Torres.”
But despite her relief at having delivered the news in time, Iris still found it hard to quit the room, to follow another stranger, leaving Roman’s letter—burn my words—behind to an unknown fate.
* * *
None of them planned to sleep for more than an hour, but after a warm fare of eggs and buttered toast, accompanied by watered-down chicory with no sugar and only a splash of cream, Iris, Attie, and Tobias fell into a deep slumber on the cots Keegan had provided. They had been given an inner room in the factory, one with no windows, and the darkness felt like a balm until Iris was woken by the distant sound of a violin.
It was playing a poignant, lovely song, one that filled Iris with nostalgia, and she rose from her cot and followed the music out of the dark room.
She walked down the hallway, the violin’s melody growing louder, as if she was on the cusp of finding it. She turned a corner and nearly ran into her mother.
Aster was leaning against the wall, wrapped in her purple coat with a cigarette smoldering in her fingers.
“There you are, darling,” she said brightly. “Have you come to enjoy the music with me?”
Iris frowned, unsettled. “Who is playing the violin?”
“Does it matter? Listen, Iris. Listen to the notes. Tell me if you know them.”
Iris fell quiet. She listened to the violin, and while the music curled through her like sun-warmed vines, there was no recognition. She had never heard this song before.
“I don’t know it, Mum,” she confessed, watching a furrow form in Aster’s brow. “And why are you here?”
Aster opened her mouth, but her voice was robbed as the colors began to melt together. Iris felt a prick of fear, watching the features of her mother’s face begin to smudge, until she raised her own hands and saw they were also fading, breaking into hundreds of stars.
“This is a dream,” she panted. “Why do you keep appearing to me, Mum?”
The floor shook and cracked beneath her boots. Iris was about to fall through the widening crevice when she gasped and sat forward, blinking into the peaceful dark. It took her a moment to gain her bearings, but she remembered where she was. She could hear Attie, her breathing heavy with dreams, in the cot next to her, and Tobias’s soft snores on the other side of the room. There was no way to tell the time, and Iris ran her fingers through her tangled hair as she set her feet on the floor. There, she felt it again. A steady rumbling.
Iris slipped from the room and moved down the hallway, searching for someone to tell her what was happening, but she soon found the answer herself when she passed a set of windows. She paused, watching the doctor she had seen earlier help load a line of wounded patients into the back of a lorry. Another truck was passing by on the road, brimming with soldiers.
It was Keegan’s forces, Iris realized. They must be retreating from Hawk Shire.