Iris bit her lip. There were many things she wanted to say, but she held them back, refolding Roman’s drawing. “I understand, Brigadier.”
Keegan must have sensed her disappointment. She leaned on the table, lowering her voice as she said, “Do you remember when Dacre bombed the Bluff? How some houses fell while others remained upright?”
Iris was quiet, but she remembered everything about that day. How she had stood on the hillside, dazed and overwhelmed by the suffering and destruction. How when she had looked back at the town, it had seemed like a web had been cast. Lines of protection amidst utter demolition.
“Yes,” Iris whispered. “I remember seeing that.” Marisol’s B and B had been on one of those lines, its walls refusing to crumble even as its windows had shattered and the doorways had settled into strange angles.
Keegan pointed to the street of Oath that Roman had drawn. The street that they knew was also an under realm pathway. A ley line.
“I think houses that are built atop these passages can withstand Dacre’s bombs. His own magic, working against him. They will be the safest places to take shelter, should another attack happen.”
Chills swept down Iris’s arms. “Safe places from the bombs, but what of the doorways that lead below?”
Keegan grimaced. “Yes, it’s a dilemma. The safest place from one thing can be dangerous for another. But how are the doorways changed?”
“Roman mentioned keys being able to make the thresholds shift.”
“Then find out more about these keys,” Keegan said. “How do they work? How many exist? And if your Kitt can provide any further guidance on the ley lines … then we could build our own map. Of places to shelter in the city should it come to the worst.”
Iris nodded, but her heart pounded at the thought.
It wasn’t until she was walking back to the parked roadster with Attie and Tobias that she sensed it.
“Looks like we’re going to be late to work,” Attie was saying.
“I can still get you there on time,” Tobias replied.
Iris stopped abruptly in the grass. There was a slight rumble in the ground; she could feel it through the soles of her boots.
“Wait…” Attie also sensed it, coming to a halt. “Is that what I think it is?”
Iris couldn’t speak. Time suddenly felt like it was rushing along too quickly, as if a clock had lost a gear, losing minutes by the hour.
But it was exactly what Attie thought.
Dacre’s forces had almost reached Oath from below.
* * *
It had been a long, surreal day. One that had seen Roman essentially under house arrest, with Dacre, his select officers, and his best soldiers milling through the rooms, invading all the spaces that had once felt safe to Roman.
His typewriter remained on the war table in the transformed parlor, as if Dacre had decided it was his. Everything in the estate, actually, seemed to be his now, and Roman’s father had let him take that ownership without batting an eye. Even the books that had been on Roman’s shelves, Dacre had confiscated to leaf through.
All morning, Roman had watched as Dacre tore some pages out, tossing them to burn in the fire. Pages of myths that could never be reclaimed. Pages that Dacre didn’t like because their ink limned his true nature.
It made Roman’s head ache. All those pages, lost to ash. His grandfather’s books ruined.
Dacre had only been interrupted when a covered motorcar with black drapes shielding its windows pulled into the Kitts’ drive. It was the chancellor, covertly arriving for a meeting, as Dacre’s presence in Oath was still a heavily guarded secret. Roman was sent away from the room then, to sit with his mother and nan in the west wing of the estate. As far from the god and the war as his father could put the women.
But by sundown, Roman had still failed to come up with a clever way to get the typewriter back in his possession.
Exhausted, he retreated to his room.
It was dark, save for the moonlight that flooded in through the windows. Roman stared at the very window he and Iris had crawled through—had it only been that morning?—before he sighed and stepped deeper into the chamber.
From the corner of his eye, he could see a patch of white on the floor, just before the wardrobe.
It caught his attention; his breath hissed through his teeth as he realized what it was. A letter, from Iris. He rushed to it, his knees hitting the hardwood as he gathered the paper into his hands.
“Light the lamp,” he whispered hoarsely, and the house obeyed. His desk lamp flickered on, washing the room in golden light.