Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)(9)

“I don’t want you to return to the front,” Forest finally said. “It’s too dangerous. And there’s nothing you can do for Roman but remain safe yourself, as he would want. He won’t remember you, at least not for a good long while.” He crumpled the newspaper around the scraps of his sandwich. The conversation was over, and he rose to toss his dinner in the dustbin.

Iris watched as he retreated to their mother’s old room, which he had taken for his own since they had returned home. He didn’t slam the door, but the sound of it closing jarred her.

She wrapped up the remainder of her sandwich and set it in the icebox before returning to her room. She looked at the typewriter sitting on the floor, just as she had left it, with paper curling from the platen. A half-inked letter addressed to Roman in its clutches.

Iris didn’t know why she was writing to him. This typewriter was ordinary; the magical link between her and Roman was broken. But she pulled the paper free and folded it. She slipped it under her wardrobe door and waited a few breaths.

When she opened the closet, it was just as she expected. Her letter was still there, sitting on the shadowed floor.



* * *



Sometime deep into the night, Iris was woken by the sound of music.

She sat up in bed with a shiver, listening. The song was faint but incandescent, a crescendo of notes played on a lone violin. Light flickered beneath her bedroom door, eating at the darkness, and there was the faint scent of smoke. It all felt strangely familiar, like she had lived this moment before, and she slipped from her bed, coaxed from her room by the music and that hint of comfort.

To her shock, she found her mother in the living room.

Aster sat on the couch wrapped in her favorite purple coat, her bare feet propped on the coffee table. A cigarette burned between her fingers and her head was angled back, eyes closed. Her lashes were dark against her pale face, but she looked at peace as she listened.

Iris swallowed hard. Her voice was ragged when she spoke.

“Mum?”

Aster’s eyes fluttered open. Through the curl of smoke, she met Iris’s gaze and smiled.

“Hi, sweetheart. Do you want to join me?”

Iris nodded and sat beside her mother on the couch, her mind full of fog and confusion. There was something she needed to remember, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She must have been frowning, because Aster took her hand.

“Don’t think too hard, Iris,” she said. “Just listen to the instrument.”

The tension clinging to Iris’s shoulders eased; she let the music trickle through her, and she didn’t realize how parched she was for the notes, how daily life had become a drought without the sound of strings to refresh the hours.

“Isn’t this against the chancellor’s law?” she asked her mother. “To listen to music like this?”

Aster took a long draw on her cigarette, but her eyes gleamed like embers in the dim light. “Do you think something so lovely could ever be illegal, Iris?”

“No, Mum. But I thought…”

“Just listen,” Aster whispered again. “Listen to the notes, darling.”

Iris glanced across the room and noticed Nan’s radio on the sideboard. The music poured from the small speaker, clear as if the violinist stood in their presence, and Iris was so pleased to see the radio that she rose and crossed the room.

“I thought it was lost,” she said, reaching out to trace its dial.

Her fingers passed through the radio. She watched, astounded, as it melted into a puddle of silver and brown and gold. The music suddenly became dissonant, a screech of a bow on too-tight strings, and Iris whirled, eyes widening as Aster began to fade.

“Mum, wait!” Iris lunged across the room. “Mum!”

Aster was nothing more than a smudge of violet paint, woven with smoke and smeared with ash, and Iris screamed again as she tried to hold her mother.

“Don’t go! Don’t leave me like this!”

A sob cracked her voice. It felt like she held the ocean in her chest, her lungs drowning in salty water, and she gasped as a warm hand on her shoulder became a sudden anchor, pulling her up to the surface.

“Iris, wake up,” said a deep voice. “It’s only a dream.”

Iris startled awake. She blinked against a wash of gray light to see Forest sitting on the edge of her bed.

“It was just a dream,” he repeated, although he looked just as shaken as her. “It’s all right.”

Iris made a strangled noise. Her heartbeat was rapid, but she nodded, gradually returning to her body. The vision of Aster clung to her, though, as if burned behind her eyes. She realized it was the first time she had dreamt in weeks.

“Forest? What time is it?”

“Half past eight.”

“Shit!” Iris lurched upright. “I’m late to work.”

“Take it easy,” Forest said, his hand falling from her shoulder. “And since when do you curse?”

Since you left, Iris thought but didn’t say, because while part of that was true, part of it wasn’t. She couldn’t blame her brother for the words that came out of her mouth these days.

“Dress for rain.” Forest rose from the bed but gave her a pointed look. “It’s storming.”

Iris glanced at the window. She could see the rain streaking down the glass and realized the dour light of the storm had made her oversleep. Quickly, she drew on a linen dress with buttons down the front and laced up her wartime boots. She had no time to fix her hair, and she combed her fingers through the long tangles as she flew out of the bedroom, gathering her small purse, her trench coat, and her typewriter, locked firmly in its black case.