“What does he see it as, then?” Iris asked, rotating the wedding band on her finger.
“He sees it as fearmongering and propaganda. He thinks I’m trying to drive up my sales with such headlines.”
“That’s rubbish!” Attie cried. “Iris and I were eyewitnesses to the attack on the bluff. We’re doing our jobs as reporters. If the chancellor has a problem with this, then he’s obviously a Dacre sympathizer.”
“I know,” Helena said gently. “Believe me, kid. I know it. You wrote the truth. You wrote what you experienced, bravely and honestly, just as I needed you to. And yes, the chancellor seems to have strings attached to Dacre, willing to dance at the god’s bidding. Which leads me to my next point: Verlice thinks I’m trying to stir up trouble by making people panic and angry. He blames us for the most recent gods belong in their graves vandalism, which was, in fact, painted on his driveway in big bold letters this morning.”
Iris flexed her hand. She remembered seeing that fearless slogan on her morning walk. “People are allowed to have their own opinions and beliefs on divinity, whether they worship them or not. We can’t control that.”
“The very words I said to Verlice,” Helena said. “Which he doesn’t agree with.”
“What does this mean for us, then? Do you want us to stop writing about the war? Should we act as if the gods don’t exist?”
“Course not,” Helena responded with a snort. But her defiance waned as she continued. “And I don’t want to ask this of you two, because you’ve been through more than any of us here can fathom. You’ve only just returned. But if Dacre is making a hard drive to the east like both of you saw at the bluff … then we need to know, especially if our good chancellor is in bed with him. We need to know how much time we have before the god reaches Oath, and what we can do to prepare for it.”
Iris’s heart quickened. She had felt hollow since returning to Oath. She slept but she didn’t dream. She swallowed but she couldn’t taste. She wrote three sentences and deleted two, as if she didn’t know how to move forward.
“You need us to return to the front,” she stated, breathless.
Helena’s brow furrowed. “Yes, Iris. But not exactly as you did before, since Marisol is no longer in Avalon Bluff.”
“How, then?” Attie asked.
“I’m still working on those details, so I can’t quite tell you at the moment.” Helena raked a hand through her hair, leaving it more limp and mussed than before. “And I don’t want answers from you right now. In fact, I want you to take the rest of the day off. I want you to truly think about this and what it means for you, and not just give me the answer you assume I want to hear. Do you understand?”
Iris nodded, her thoughts instantly drifting to Forest. Her brother wouldn’t want her to leave, and dread welled in her throat when she imagined breaking that news to him.
She glanced at Attie, uncertain what her friend would do.
Because the truth was that Attie had five younger siblings and parents who loved her. She had been enrolled in prestigious classes at Oath University. She had many threads to keep her tethered here, whereas Iris only had one. But Attie was also a musician who kept her violin hidden in the basement, defying the chancellor’s law to surrender all stringed instruments. She had gifted her stuffy old professor a subscription to the Inkridden Tribune, since he had once believed her writing wouldn’t amount to anything.
Attie had never been one to let people like Chancellor Verlice or narrow-minded professors have the final say.
And, Iris was swiftly coming to learn, neither was she.
* * *
Dark clouds were billowing across the sky by the time Iris reached the riverside park. She had parted ways with Attie at a corner café, the two of them having eaten a late breakfast together before taking Helena’s advice to heart. Attie wanted to walk the courtyard of the university again before heading home to her parents’ town house, and Iris wanted to visit the park she and Forest had haunted when they were younger.
Iris stopped on a mossy rock, typewriter case in one hand weighing her down. She gazed into the shallow rapids.
Willow and birch trees grew crooked along the winding banks, and the air tasted damp and sweet. It was strange how this place felt far removed from the city, how the tram bells and sputter of vehicles and many voices seemed to fade away. For a moment, Iris could imagine she was kilometers from Oath, tucked into the idyllic countryside, and she knelt to gather a few river stones, the water a cold shock to her fingers.