“True. But his letters suggest otherwise, I imagine?”

Iris sighed. “Yes. I’m growing fond of him. I’ve told him things that I’ve never said to anyone else.”

“That’s wild.” Attie shifted on the roof. “I wonder who he is.”

“A boy named Carver. That’s really all I know.” She paused, gazing up at the stars again. “All right. Now tell me your secret.”

“It’s not nearly as dashing as yours,” Attie said. “But my father is a musician. Years ago, he taught me how to play the violin.”

At once, Iris thought of the current restriction on stringed instruments in the city. All due to fear of Enva’s recruitment.

“I once thought I could earn a place with the symphony,” Attie began. “I practiced hours a day, sometimes until my fingertips were bloody. I wanted it more than anything. But of course, things changed last year, when the war broke out. When suddenly everyone was afraid of falling prey to Enva’s songs, and Oath began to shed its musicians like we were a sickness. The constable actually came to our house, to confiscate anything with strings. You can imagine how many of them we probably had in our house. I told you I’m the oldest of six, and my father was keen on seeing all his children learn to play at least one instrument.

“But Papa had planned for this. He surrendered all his strings save for one violin, which he hid in a secret compartment in the wall. He did it for me, because he knew how much I loved it. And he told me that I could still play, but not nearly as much. I would have to go down to the basement and play during the day when my siblings were at class, when the city was loud beyond the walls. And no one, not even my younger brothers and sisters, could know about it.

“So that’s what I did. In between my classes at university, I came home and I played in the basement. My father was my only audience, and while it seemed like our lives had been put on hold, he told me to keep my chin up. To not lose hope or let fear steal my joy.”

Iris was quiet, soaking in Attie’s story.

“There were some evenings I would feel so angry,” Attie continued. “That a goddess like Enva had interrupted our lives and stolen so many of our people, compelling them to fight in a war hundreds of kilometers away. I was angry that I could no longer play my violin in the light. That my symphony dreams were dashed. And I know I told you about my stuffy professor claiming my writing was ‘unpublishable,’ but another reason why I signed up to be a correspondent was simply because I wanted to know the truth about the war. In Oath, there’s this undercurrent of fear and half-hearted preparations, but I feel like no one truly knows what’s happening. And I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

“So here I am. Freshly returned from the front. And now I understand.”

Iris’s heart was beating in her throat. She watched Attie in the starlight, unable to take her gaze from her friend. “What, Attie?” she asked. “What do you understand?”

“Why Enva sang to our people. Why she filled their hearts with knowledge of the war. Because that’s what her music did and still does: it shows us the truth. And the truth is the people in the west were being trampled by Dacre’s wrath. They needed us, and they still do. Without soldiers coming from Oath, without us joining in this fight … it would already be over and Dacre would reign.”

Attie fell quiet, lifting her binoculars back up to her eyes. To study the stars again.

“Do you think we’ll lose?” Iris whispered, wondering what the world would be like if the gods rose again to rule.

“I hope not, Iris. But what I do know is we need more people to join this war in order to win. And with music being treated like a sin in Oath, how will people learn the truth?”

Iris was pensive. But then she whispered, “You and I, Attie. We’ll have to write it.”

Dear Iris,

I have good news and slightly not good news. All right, it’s bad news. But I’ve always been an advocate for giving the best first, so here it is:

I found a snippet of a myth I think you’ll enjoy. It’s about Enva’s instrument and is as follows:

“Enva’s harp, the only one of its kind, was first born in the clouds. Her mother goddess loved to hear Enva sing and decided to fashion an inimitable harp for her. Its frame is made of dragon bone, salvaged from the wasteland beyond sunset. Its strings are made of hair, stolen from one of the fiercest harpies in the skies. Its frame is held together by the very wind itself. They say the harp is heavy to mortals, and it would refuse to let such fingers play it without screeching. Only Enva’s hands can make it truly sing.”

Now, onto the news you won’t like: I’m going to be away for a while. I’m uncertain how long at the moment, and I won’t be able to write to you. That’s not to say I won’t be thinking of you often. So please know that, even in the silence that must come between us for a little while.

I’ll write to you whenever I’m able. Promise me you’ll remain safe and well.

Yours,

—C.

Dear Carver,

Let me first say thank you for the myth snippet. I enjoyed it, immensely. I wonder if you are perhaps a wizard, for how you’re able to find missing myths the way you do. As if by magic.

But I also can’t help but wonder … where are you going? Are you leaving Oath?

Love,

Iris

She waited for him to write a reply. And when it never came, she hated how her heart sank into the silence.

Collision

Dear Carver,

I don’t know why I’m writing this. You just told me last night you were going away, and yet here I am. Writing to you. As I’ve been doing so compulsively the past few months.

Or maybe I’m truly writing for myself today, under the guise of your name. Perhaps it’s a good thing you’re gone. Perhaps now I can fully lower my armor and look at myself, which I’ve resisted doing since my mum died.

You know what? I need to completely restart this letter to you to me.

Dear Iris,

You don’t know what’s coming in the days ahead, but you’re doing just fine. You are so much stronger than you think, than you feel. Don’t be afraid. Keep going.

Write the things you need to read. Write what you know to be true.

—I.

“We need to get the seeds in the ground,” Marisol said with a sigh. They still hadn’t planted the garden yet, despite the fact that it was tilled and ready. “I’m afraid I won’t have time to do it today, though. I’m needed in the infirmary kitchen.”

“Iris and I can plant them,” Attie offered, finishing her breakfast tea.

Iris nodded in agreement. “Just show us how to do it and we can get everything planted.”

Half an hour later, Iris and Attie were on their knees in the garden, dirt beneath their nails as they created mounded rows and planted the seeds. It caught Iris by surprise—this weighted sense of peace she felt as she gave the earth seed after seed, knowing they would soon rise. It quieted her fears and her worries, to let the soil pass through her fingers, to smell the loam and listen to the birdsong in the trees above. To let something go with the reassurance it would return, transformed.

Attie was quiet at her side, but Iris sensed her friend was feeling the same.

They were nearly done when a distant siren began to wail. Instantly, the warmth and security Iris had been experiencing bled away, and her body tensed, one hand in the soil, the other cupping the last of the cucumber seeds.

On instinct, her eyes lifted.

The sky was bright and blue above them, streaked with thin clouds. The sun continued to burn near its midday point, and the wind blew gently from the south. It seemed impossible that a day this lovely could turn sour so quickly.

“Hurry, Iris,” Attie said as she rose. “Let’s go inside.” She sounded calm, but Iris could hear the apprehension in her friend’s voice as the siren continued to blare.

Two minutes.

They had two minutes before the eithrals reached Avalon Bluff.

Iris began to inwardly count in her mind as she rushed after Attie, through the back doors of the B and B. Their boots tracked dirt along the floor and rugs as the girls began to pull the curtains, covering the windows as Marisol had once instructed them to do.

“I’ll take the ground-floor windows,” Attie suggested. “You go on upstairs. I’ll meet you there.”

Iris nodded and bounded up the steps. She went to her room first and was just about to snap the curtains over one of the windows when something in the distance caught her eye. Over the neighbor’s thatched roof and garden plot and into the expanse of the golden field, Iris saw a figure moving. Someone was walking toward Avalon Bluff through the long grass.

Who was that? Their foolish persistence in walking during a siren was threatening the entire town. They should be lying down where they were, because the eithrals would soon haunt the skies, and if the winged creatures dropped a bomb that close … would it obliterate Marisol’s house? Would the blast level Avalon Bluff to the ground?

Iris squinted against the sun, but the distance was too great; she couldn’t discern any details of the moving figure, other than they seemed to be briskly walking in defiance of the siren, and she hurried into Attie’s bedroom, finding her binoculars on the desk. Iris returned to her window with them, palms sweating profusely, and she looked through the lenses.

It was blurry at first, a world of amber and green and shadows. Iris drew a long, calming breath and brought the binoculars into focus. She searched the field for the lone individual, at last finding them after what felt like a year.

A tall, broad-shouldered body dressed in a gray jumpsuit was striding through the grass. They carried a typewriter case in one hand, a leather bag in the other. There was a badge over their chest—another war correspondent, Iris realized. She didn’t know if she was relieved or annoyed as she dragged her eyes upward to their face. A sharp jaw, a scowling brow, and thick hair the color of ink, slicked back.

Her mouth fell open with a gasp. She felt her pulse in her ears, swallowing all sound but that of her heart, pounding heavy and swift within her. She stared at the boy in the field; she stared at him as if she were dreaming. But then the truth shivered through her.

She would know that handsome face anywhere.

It was Roman Confounded Kitt.

Her hands went cold. She couldn’t move as the seconds continued to pass and she realized he was this close to her and yet so far away, walking in a field. His ignorance was going to draw a bomb. He was destined to be blown apart and killed, and Iris tried to envision what her life would be like with him dead.

No.

She set down the binoculars. Her mind whirled as she turned and ran from her room, passing Attie on the stairs.

“Iris? Iris!” Attie cried, reaching out to snag her arm. “Where are you going?”

There was no time to explain; Iris evaded her friend and bolted down the hallway, out the back doors and through the garden they had just been kneeling and planting in mere minutes ago. She leapt over the low stone wall and dashed across the street, winding through the neighbor’s yard. Her lungs felt as if they had caught fire, and her heart was thrumming at the base of her throat.

She finally reached the field.

Iris sprinted, feeling the jolt in her knees, the wind dragging through her loose hair. She could see him now; he was no longer an unfamiliar shadow in a sea of gold. She could see his face, and the scowl lifted from his brow as he saw her. Recognized her.

He finally sensed her terror. He set down his typewriter case and leather bag and broke into a run to meet her.

Iris had lost count in her mind. Over the hammering of her pulse and the roar of her adrenaline, she realized the siren had gone silent. The temptation to look at the sky was nearly overwhelming, but she resisted. She kept her eyes on Roman as the distance began to wane between them, and she pushed herself to run faster, faster, until it felt like her bones might melt from the exertion.

“Kitt!” she tried to shout, but her voice was nothing more than a wisp.

Kitt, get down!she thought, but of course he didn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t know the cause of the siren, and he continued to run to her.

In the moment before they collided, Iris clearly saw his face, as if time had frozen. The fear that lit his eyes, the confused furrow in his expression, the way his lips parted to either heave air or say her name. His hands reached for her as she reached for him, and the stillness broke when they touched, as if they had cracked the world.

She took hold of his jumpsuit and used all of her momentum to push him to the ground. He wasn’t expecting it and she easily unbalanced him. The impact was jarring; Iris bit her tongue as they tangled together in the long grass, his body warm and firm beneath hers. His hands splayed against her back, holding her to him.

“Winnow?” he gasped, his face only a fraction of a centimeter away from hers. He was staring at her as if she had just fallen from the clouds and attacked him. “Winnow, what is hap—?”

“Don’t move, Kitt!” she whispered, her chest pumping like a bellows against his. “Don’t speak, don’t move.”

For once in his life, he listened to her without arguing. He froze against her, and she closed her eyes and fought to quiet her breaths, waiting.

It didn’t take long for the temperature to drop, for the wind to die. Shadows spilled over her and Roman as the eithrals circled high overhead, their wings blocking the sun. Iris knew the moment Roman saw them; she felt the tension coil in his body, felt his sharp inhale as if terror had pierced his chest.

Please … please don’t move, Kitt.

She kept her eyes clenched shut, tasting blood in her mouth. Tendrils of hair dangled against her face, and she suddenly had the fierce urge to scratch her nose, to wipe the perspiration that began to drip from her jaw. The adrenaline that had fueled her across the field was ebbing, leaving behind a tremor in her bones. She wondered if Roman could feel it, how she was quaking against him, and when his hand pressed harder into her back, she knew he could.

Wings flapped steadily above them. Shadows and cold air continued to trickle over their bodies. A chorus of screeches split the clouds, reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard.

Iris chose to focus on the musty scent of the grass around her, broken from their fall. The way Roman breathed as a counterpoint to her—when his chest rose, hers was collapsing, as if they were sharing the same breath, passing it back and forth. How his warmth seeped into her, greater than the sun.

She could smell his cologne. Spice and evergreen. It ushered her back in time to moments they had spent together in the lift and in the office. And now her body was draped across his and she couldn’t deny how good it felt, as if the two of them fit together. A flicker of desire warmed her blood, but the sparks swiftly dimmed when she thought of Carver.

Carver.

The guilt nearly crushed her. She kept him at the forefront of her mind until a shiver spun through her, and she felt a strange prompting to open her eyes.

She dared to do so, only to discover Roman was intently studying her face. Her hair lay tangled across his mouth, and her sweat was dripping onto his neck, and yet he didn’t move, just as she had ordered. He stared at her and she stared back, and they waited for the end to come.

It felt as if spring had blossomed into midsummer by the time the eithrals retreated. The shadows fled, the air warmed, the light brightened, the wind returned, and the grass sighed against Iris’s shoulders and legs. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear shouting as life slowly returned to Avalon Bluff. It took her a few more moments to quell her fear, to be confident enough to move again, to trust that the threat was gone.

She winced as she pushed upward, her wrists and shoulders numb from holding herself frozen. A slight groan escaped her as she sat back on Roman’s waist, her hands tingling with pins and needles. The pain was good; it reminded her of how furious she was at him, for arriving unannounced in the middle of a siren. How his utter foolishness had nearly killed them both.

Iris glared down at him. He was still watching her attentively, as if waiting for her to lift the command over him, and a smirk played across his lips.

“What the hell are you doing here, Kitt?” she demanded, shoving his chest. “Have you lost your mind?”

She felt his hands slide down her back, resting on the curve of her hips. If she wasn’t so exhausted and stiff from the harrowing encounter they had miraculously survived, she would have knocked away his touch. She would have slapped him. She might have kissed him.

He only smiled as if he had read her mind, and said, “It’s good to see you again too, Winnow.”