Iris dreamt of the Revel Diner. She sat at the bar with a book and a glass of lemonade before her, watching as her mother waited on tables. It felt like any other day, a page torn from her past, for she had often visited the diner before the war. Before Aster had started to drink heavily. That was how Iris knew she was dreaming. Her mother looked vibrant and whole again, quick to smile and laugh, her eyes bright as she moved around the café.
“Another lemonade, Iris?” Aster said as she returned behind the bar.
Before Iris could reply, a song crackled over the radio, filling the café with the melancholy tone of a violin. At once, the hair rose on her arms. There it was again. The melody that haunted her dreams when she saw her mother.
“Mum?” Iris whispered, leaning over the bar. “Why do I hear this song every time we meet in a dream?”
Aster set down a steaming coffeepot. “Do you know who Alzane was?”
Iris was startled by the abrupt change in topics, but said, “He was one of the last kings of Cambria, before the monarchy fell and chancellors were appointed.”
“Yes, but there is far more to him than that. He was the monarch who oversaw the divine graves. He buried Dacre, Mir, Alva, Luz, and Enva centuries ago. In a myth that has been cut away from our history, he inspired this lullaby to sing the gods to sleep. Since then, there have been many iterations of it, but the power of the notes remains, even if they have been forgotten by many.”
Iris mulled that over. The world beyond the café windows was beginning to darken. A storm was brewing. Rain slid down the glass, and flickers of lightning illuminated distant buildings.
“I don’t think Enva was ever buried,” Iris dared to say, to which Aster quirked her red-stained lips to the side. “I think she struck a deal with the king, and she sang the other four to sleep while she remained hidden in Oath.”
“A wild theory, sweetheart. But one that may have some truth within it.”
Iris listened to the music, but her breath caught when the radio’s static intensified and the dream began to break. Desperate, she reached out to take hold of Aster, but her mother had already faded into the shadows. The café began to spin, the glass windows cracking beneath the weight of the storm, until the pressure felt unbearable.
Iris startled awake.
A beat later, she realized a cough had woken her; the mattress beneath her shook as Roman rolled away, rising to his feet. With her eyes open to the darkness, she listened as he stifled another cough, then another. They sounded wet and painful, and she quickly sat forward and turned toward him.
A sliver of moonlight that snuck in through the curtains limned his body. His pale shoulders were hunched; she could count the ridges of his spine as he reached for his discarded shirt on the floor and coughed into the fabric, muffling the sound.
“Kitt,” she whispered, moving to the edge of the bed. The floor was icy cold on her bare feet; her hair was still damp from the shower. “Are you all right?”
He straightened, but kept the shirt pressed to his mouth for a moment more. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m fine, Iris. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She stood and walked to him. “Can I get you anything?”
“You plan to sneak down to the kitchen and boil a pot of tea for me?”
He was teasing, but it only made Iris realize how impossible this was. How impossible they were. Mr. Kitt would be outraged to find her in his house, sharing a bed with his son. He would probably throw her out if he caught her wandering the corridors, or have his associate drag her off and drop her somewhere for the Graveyard to punish.
“If you want tea,” Iris said, her voice husky and determined, “then I will sneak down to the kitchen and make it for you. Simply tell me what you’d like. And how to find the kitchen, of course.”
Roman turned, a few tendrils of his black hair dangling over his right eye. Sometimes his beauty still struck her, made her knees feel weak. She realized that she loved the sight of him in the night just as much as she did in the day. How the darkness made him seem sharper in some ways and softer in others, like he was a starlit portrait in the process of being painted.
“I know you make a bloody good pot of tea, but I’m fine,” he said. “Truly.”
She didn’t believe him. She was opening her mouth to protest when he continued.
“Sometimes I have a hard time breathing at night. My throat feels narrow. I’ve had a cough ever since my memories returned, but it’s nothing that I can’t handle.”
“From the gas,” Iris whispered.
Roman nodded. “When this is over, I’ll seek proper treatment. See if a doctor in Oath can help me.”
“Dacre doesn’t know?”
“No. And I don’t want him to. If he did, then he would realize his influence over me has broken. That I am no longer a captive to him. That I know he only healed me enough to make me pliable and confused.”
He fell pensive, glancing down at the shirt in his hands. Iris was worried there would be blood on the fabric, and she could feel panic climbing her bones. But it was still the flawless white linen it had been before, save for a few wrinkles it had now garnered, from when she had tossed his shirt to the floor.
“You’re cold,” Roman said, studying her in the moonlight.
“A little,” she confessed. “But I don’t mind it.”
“Give me a few moments, and I’ll join you in the bed again. Since it does, in fact, fit two people.”
She smiled and returned to the feather down mattress, still warm from their bodies. But her heart was heavy. She listened as Roman walked to the lavatory and turned on the sink faucet, drinking a cup of water. She was thinking about doctors and if it would be possible to find a way to sneak him medicine when Roman slipped under the covers.
“There’s something I need to tell you, Iris.”
“Then tell me, Kitt.”
He sighed as he lay face-to-face with her.
Iris could feel herself grow stiff with unease. “Is it that terrible?”
“Yes. Dacre took me to Luz’s grave.”
The statement made Iris freeze. She listened as Roman told her about that stormy afternoon on the hill, not far from Hawk Shire.
“You think Dacre planned to kill Luz, then?” Iris surmised. “But it didn’t happen because…”
“Someone already killed him,” Roman concluded. “Which makes me suspect Alva and Mir are also dead in their graves. Or wouldn’t they have woken by now, alongside Dacre?”
“Who would have killed them?”
Roman was quiet, but he reached out to trace the moonlight on Iris’s face.
“I think it was Enva.”
They didn’t drift off to sleep after that.
They continued talking, recounting the events that had led them each here. Roman told Iris of the keys, the doorways, the sulfur pools, the flute, and the ride on the eithral’s back. She listened to every word, sharing pieces of her story as well. All the parts that Roman had been wondering about. Eventually, they shifted away from dire topics to more lighthearted ones, their arms and legs wound together, fingers carding through each other’s hair as if they had all the time in the world to wake up slowly.
Roman could have listened to Iris for hours. When he noticed the darkness fading, he held to her tighter, as if his will could stop time. But sunrise was imminent, and they would have no choice but to let go as the light spilled into his bedroom.
It wasn’t daybreak that drove him from the bed but the sounds of the servants on the floor below, moving furniture.
“Are there early risers in your family?” Iris asked as she took note of the predawn noise.
“Yes, but my father keeps to his study.” Roman frowned. “We should probably go. I need to get you back through the garden before anyone notices. But first … I have something for you.”
He forced himself up from the blankets, kneeling beside his desk. He removed the loose floorboard, the place where he had once hidden childhood treasures as well as Iris’s many letters, and he brought out her wedding band and the map he had drawn.
“It kept me good company,” Roman said, sliding the ring onto Iris’s finger. “But I much prefer it on you.”
Iris studied it, the silver winking in the morning light. “Are you sure you don’t need it?”
“I’m certain. And this is a very poorly drawn map.” He set it into her hands next, watching her brow furrow as she sought to make sense of it.
“A map of…?”
“A ley line in Oath.”
Iris’s eyes widened. She listened as Roman explained to her what he had seen, the doors that might be enchanted should they be turned with a key.
“Kitt,” she breathed, tracing his drawing with her finger. “This is brilliant.”
“I hoped you would say that.”
“Would it be too much trouble to ask for other ley lines, should you come across them?”
Roman shook his head. “I have access to the war table. I’ll see what I can do.”
Iris gazed up at him, her eyes shining. For a moment, he almost went to her, almost eased her back down to the warm tangle of the blankets, but a thud from the floor below brought him back to his senses.
There will be another time, he told himself as they rushed to don their clothes. This is not the end.
And yet, in some strange way, it felt like it was as Roman opened the window. He took Iris’s hand, easing her over the sill.
He followed her across the slant of roof and down the trellis, and he took her back the way they had come. The light strengthened by the second, making the dew glitter on the grass and the flowers lift their heads and the trees look stark as the shadow melted.
When they reached the oak and the arbor of brambles, Roman hesitated, tightening his hold on Iris’s hand.
“I’ll see you soon,” she whispered.
He nodded but drew her close, kissing her open-mouthed and ravenous, his tongue sliding along hers, until he forced himself to break away. He stepped back, but his gaze remained on her.
“Be safe, Iris,” he said. “I’ll write to you first, when I’ve returned to my station.”
“I’ll try to be patient,” she replied.
That provoked a small smile from him. “I never scolded you for that, by the way. As you asked me to do in person.”
Iris gave him a wicked grin. “Next time, then? Oh, and you were right, Kitt.”
“About what, Winnow?”
She waited to answer until she had almost vanished among the brambles, her voice carrying through the vines. “Your bed fits the two of us perfectly.”
He had to hurry back, coughing into his sleeve. Uneasy, Roman climbed the trellis, unable to take a full breath until he was safe in his room again, the window closed behind him.
He only had a few more minutes, and he straightened his room. He made the bed, smoothing all traces of him and Iris from the blankets, but his hand froze when he saw the small green book resting on the rug.
Iris’s bird volume.
Roman picked it up, leafing through the old pages. He almost put it on the shelf with his other books, but he stopped himself at the last minute. This was such a tiny tome. Something he could easily carry with him. A tangible reminder of her.
He slipped it into his pocket.
He was opening his wardrobe door to find his jumpsuit when he felt the house shake. It was distinct enough to make him pause, a shudder crawling down his spine.
Roman walked from his room, listening to the sounds that echoed through the corridors. There were distant male voices, more shifting furniture, the sound of boots on hardwood floors.
He hurried down the hallway, stiff with trepidation.
His ankles popped as he descended the stairs, leaving the sleepy shadows of the upper story for the brightly lit ground floor, and he froze when he was five steps from the bottom, staring into the parlor.
The wardrobe door was wide open, chilling the air. But a fire was burning in the marble hearth. Officers and soldiers were milling about the chamber, moving the furniture so a table could be brought in. The war table, Roman recognized.
His hands curled into fists until he felt the bite of his nails, but the vision before him didn’t waver or break. It only came into sharper focus when he saw the servants carry in trays of coffee and scones, setting them down for the officers and soldiers to serve themselves. When he saw his father, standing off to the side with his mug of brandy-laced coffee, watching the activity with approval. When he saw Lieutenant Shane emerge from the under realm, carrying the typewriter.
Roman’s gaze fixed on that familiar black case, his distress surging on seeing the lieutenant handling it. He was devising a way to recover his typewriter when someone stepped into his view. Someone fair and tall with broad shoulders, flaxen hair, and eyes blue as the sky.
Dacre stood in the foyer, staring up at Roman on the stairs.
Their gazes met. Roman suddenly felt small and helpless. But his mind whirled, overcome with thoughts that only grew stronger the longer the silence stretched between them.
Has he come to wipe my memories again? Does he doubt me? Can he sense Iris’s presence on my skin?
“Hello Roman,” Dacre greeted him. “I see your father got my letter.”
