“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you got home from work today.” He paused, wiping the crumbs from his shirt. “I’ve been interviewing, trying to find a job.”
Iris’s brows rose. “Oh? That’s great news, Forest. Are you thinking to return to the horologist’s shop?”
Forest shook his head. “No. Too many questions if I go back there. They knew I enlisted and I don’t want to have to explain what happened.”
Iris understood. But she also didn’t want her brother to feel like he had to keep to the shadows and completely restart his life, all because Dacre had set his claws in him, manipulating him like a puppet.
She opened her mouth to say this, but then caught the words.
Forest glanced up. “What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s just … I’m proud of you.”
Her brother’s face creased. He suddenly looked like he was battling tears, and Iris rushed to add, in a lighter voice, “And it would be nice if you left a note for me, so I know you’re out but will be back. So I don’t worry. I actually got off work early today. Helena gave me and Attie the day off, and—”
“Why did she give you the day off?” Forest interjected, like he sensed the brewing storm.
Iris curled her tongue behind her teeth. Well, she thought, there’s no sense in delaying the inevitable.
“Iris?”
“Helena has asked me and Attie to return to the front.”
“Of course she has.” Forest tossed down the remainder of his sandwich. “You’ve only been back two weeks and she’s ready to send you off again!”
“It’s my job, Forest.”
“And you’re my sister! My little sister who I should have been protecting.” He dragged his hand through his damp hair, his lips pressing into a thin line. “I should have never left you and Mum. I should have stayed here, and none of this would have happened.”
This.
Forest being wounded and healed by Dacre, fighting for the enemy. Their mum succumbing to the bottle, being struck by a tram on a drunken walk home. Iris going to the front lines to report on the war, nearly blown to pieces by a grenade during the barrage.
It all felt hopelessly tangled, one thread entwined with the next.
“Why did you go?” Iris asked, so softly she wondered if Forest would ignore it.
She already knew part of the answer: her brother had enlisted because he had heard Enva playing her harp one evening on his walk home from work. And that song had pierced his heart with the truth about the war. For a complete stanza, Forest had seen the trenches as if he had been there. The wake of devastation Dacre’s forces left behind in small rural towns. Smoke and blood and ash that fell like snow.
“Do you mean what was I fighting for?” he countered.
Iris nodded.
Forest was quiet, picking a hangnail, but then he said, “I was fighting for us. I was fighting for your future. For mine. For the people in the west who needed aid. It wasn’t for Enva. Not really. She never once appeared at the front. She never once guided our forces after getting us to enlist.”
“And I write for the same reasons,” Iris said. “Knowing that … will you still keep me from going?”
Forest sighed, but he looked haggard. He placed a hand over his waist, and Iris knew he was touching one of his scars.
She wondered if the old wounds were hurting him. Three bullet holes had torn through his body, two hitting vital organs. He should be dead, Iris thought with an icy shiver. He should be dead, and I don’t know if I should be thankful to Dacre for saving him, or furious that my brother now lives with such painful scars.
“Your wounds, Forest,” she said, making to rise from the table. She wanted to ease the anguish he still felt but was at an utter loss when it came to helping him. Honestly, Forest didn’t like her to acknowledge his injuries at all.
“I’m fine,” he said, picking up his sandwich. He took a bite, but his face was pallid. “Sit down and eat, Iris.”
“Have you thought about visiting the doctor?” she asked. “I think it would be good to go.”
“I don’t need a doctor.”
She lowered herself back to the chair. The past fortnight, she had respected Forest’s desire for privacy, and she had held most of her questions captive. But now she was about to leave, whether Forest gave his blessing or not. She was about to move toward Dacre again—toward Roman—and she needed to know more.
“Do your scars hurt you all the time?” she said.