Iris nodded. She was about to thank Attie for all her help yesterday when the house suddenly rocked on its foundation. A splitting boom shook the walls and the ground, and Iris fell to her knees, hands clapped over her ears. She didn’t even remember ripping her fingers from Roman’s. Not until he knelt behind her on the kitchen floor and drew her into his arms, holding her back against his chest.
He was saying something to her. His voice was low but soothing in her ear. “We’ll get through this. Breathe, Iris. I’m here and we’ll get through this. Breathe.”
She tried to calm her breaths, but her lungs felt locked in an iron cage. Her hands and feet were tingling; her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would split her open. But she slowly became aware of Roman. She could feel his chest against hers—deep, calm draws of air. Slowly, she mimicked his pattern, until the stars that danced at the edges of her vision began to fade.
Attie. Marisol. Their names shot through Iris’s mind like sparks, and she lifted her chin, searching the kitchen.
Attie was on her knees directly across from them, her mouth pressed into a tight line as Lilac screeched in fear. Everything was trembling. Paintings fell off the walls. The pot rack shook. Herbs began to rain down. Teacups shattered on the floor.
“Marisol,” Iris panted, reaching for Attie’s hand. “Where is Mari—”
Another bomb fell. A loud peal of thunder not that far away, because the house shook even harder, down to its roots. The timber beams overhead groaned. Plaster from the ceiling began to fall in chunks around them.
The B and B was going to collapse. They were going to be buried alive.
The fear burned thorough Iris like a coal. She was trembling, but she breathed when Roman breathed, and she held fiercely to Attie’s hand. She closed her eyes, envisioning the night before. A wedding in the garden. Flowers in her hair. A dinner of candlelight and laughter and nourishing food. That warm feeling, like she had finally found her family. A place where she belonged. A home that was about to crumble.
Iris opened her eyes.
Marisol was standing a few paces away. Her revolver was holstered at her side, the dash-packs in her hand. Her dress was red, a striking contrast to her long black hair. She was like a statue, staring into the distance as the house rocked for the third time.
Dust streamed down. The windows cracked. The tables and chairs inched along the floor as if a giant was pounding the earth.
But Marisol didn’t move.
She must have felt Iris’s gaze. Through the chaos and devastation, their eyes met. Marisol slowly knelt beside Roman and Attie, their bodies creating a triangle on the kitchen floor.
“Have faith,” she said, touching Iris’s face. “This house will not fall. Not while I’m within it.”
Another bomb exploded. But it was as Marisol swore: the B and B shuddered, but it didn’t crumble.
Iris closed her eyes again. Her jaw was clenched, but she envisioned the garden, the life that grew within it. Small and seemingly fragile, yet it flourished more and more with each passing day. She envisioned this house with its many rooms and the endless people who had come and found solace here. The love that this ground had been claimed by. The green castle door that had seen sieges of an older era. The way the stars shined from the rooftop.
The world was becoming silent again.
A heavy, dust-laden silence that made Iris realize the air was warmer. The light shone brighter through the seams in the walls.
She opened her eyes. Marisol stood amid the debris, glancing at her wristwatch. Time felt distorted, the seconds spilling through fingers like sand.
“Stay here,” Marisol said after what could have been two minutes or a full hour. She glanced at the three of them, a dark fire shining in her eyes. “I’ll return soon.”
Iris was too shocked to say anything. Attie and Roman must have been the same, because they were quiet as Marisol departed.
“Iris,” Attie said a few moments later, her voice strained, “Iris, we can’t … we have to…”
They couldn’t let Marisol out of their sight. They were supposed to protect her, ensure she was taken to safety in the lorry. They had made a binding vow.
“We should go after her,” Iris said. Now that she had a task, a mission to focus on, she could take control of her thoughts. She pushed herself up, letting Roman help her when she stumbled. Her knees felt watery, and she took a few deep breaths. “Where do you think we should look first?”
Attie stood, petting a disgruntled Lilac. “Keegan was stationed on the hill, wasn’t she?”
“Right.”
“The let’s start there. But let me put Lilac somewhere safe.”
Iris and Roman waited in the foyer while Attie closed the cat in one of the downstairs rooms. A beam of light snuck through a crack in the mortar, cutting across Iris’s chest. The front door sat crooked on its hinges; it creaked open beneath Roman’s hand.
Iris wasn’t sure what she would find beyond the threshold. But she stepped into a sunlit, steaming world. Most of the buildings on High Street were unscathed save for shattered windows. But as Iris and Roman and Attie walked deeper into town, they began to see the radius of the bombs’ destruction. Houses were leveled, lying in piles of stone and brick and glittering glass. A few had caught on fire, the flames licking the wood and thatch.
It didn’t feel real. It felt like the wavering colors of a dream.
Iris walked around the barricades, around soldiers who were either holding fast at their posts or rushing to put out the flames. She watched through billows of smoke, her heart numb until Roman brought her to the foot of the bluff. Their summit.
She felt his hand tighten on hers, and she looked up to what remained.
The hill had been bombed.
* * *
There was a crater in the street. The buildings were heaps of rubble. Smoke rose in steady streams, smudging the clouds and turning the sunlight into a dirty haze.
From the bluff looking down on Avalon, there seemed to be a pattern to the destruction, as if Dacre had cast a web of ruin. Although the longer Iris stared at the bisecting lines of unscathed homes and the corresponding pockets of debris, the stranger the sight seemed to be. She struggled to make sense of how one home was standing while its next-door neighbor was demolished. But when she squinted, she could almost see pathways. Routes that were protected from the bombs. Marisol’s B and B was on one of them.
Iris had to turn away from the uncanny observation. She released Roman’s hand to help the wounded.
There were more than she could count, lying on the cobblestones. Broken and moaning in pain. Her gorge was rising; she had a moment of panic. But then she saw Keegan farther up the road. Moving and bleeding from a wound on her face but wondrously alive. Iris felt her resolve trickle back through her. She knelt beside the nearest soldier, pressing her fingertips to his neck. His eyes were open, fixed on the sky. Blood had poured from a wound in his chest, staining the street.
He was dead, and Iris swallowed, moving over loose cobblestones to reach the next soldier.
She was alive but one of her legs was splintered below the knee. She was struggling to rise, as if she didn’t feel the pain.
“Just lie back for a moment,” Iris said, taking her hand.
The soldier released a shaky gasp. “My legs. I can’t feel them.”