Once the window was open, the room would become like a chimney for smoke and flames—once begun, he could not hesitate.
Padraig dropped down to his knee and shook Iris.
“Iris,” he shouted. “Iris, you must wake up. Wake up! Iris!”
She gave a raspy moan in her throat—the slightest sound—but it was like a choir of angels to Padraig’s heart.
“Can you hear me, lass? You’ve got to stand on your feet—we have to go through the window.”
“Padraig,” she whispered. “My legs feel strange.” She began to cough.
Padraig pressed his lips together with a curt sigh.
Have faith.
“Listen to me, lass,” he said in a rush, his own throat raw with smoke. “I’m going to break out the window and lower you down. I doona know how far it is, you ken?”
“Lady Caris…”
“I couldna carry you both,” he said, guilt heavy on his heart. “I had to choose.”
“She poisoned me,” Iris whispered. “She killed Cordelia. She was going to kill me too.”
Padraig couldn’t let the shock of her words overtake him in the moment, and so he ignored the horrifying declaration. “Shh—you must try to stand, ken? Up you go.” He lifted her around her ribs and leaned her up against the wall near the window. Iris slid at first, but Padraig propped her higher, and her knees seemed to lock. “Hold just there. You must stay up, Iris. You must.”
He turned to the window once more, ripping down the long, heavy drape in two swift pulls, working by feel alone as the room was completely black now. Iris coughed and choked in the darkness; Padraig’s own eyes ran with tears.
He wrapped his hand in one end of the drapery and punched through the thick glazing. A breeze of hot air whooshed past his face as he swept at the sides of the frame, clearing away the jagged shards. He stuck his head out into the cold night and shouted with surprised relief—the narrow window was over the curtain wall, not three stories above the bailey as he’d feared, but perhaps only twelve feet above the stone wall walk. The fallen snow flickered against the reflected glow of the burning keep against the backdrop of night.
“Padraig?” Iris choked.
He ducked back inside, and where the room had before been black, a terrible heat now painted the absence of color, as if hell itself had bloomed around them. Padraig felt Iris grasping for him in their shared blindness. They had perhaps only moments left before the flames reached them.
“It’s the wall beneath you,” he rasped, his throat parched and raw as he looped the length of drapery around her back and beneath her arms. “Nae far. Bend your knees and roll when you drop.” Padraig turned her toward the window and lifted her to the sill, helped her to fit her legs through the opening. He held the ends of the drape in one of his hands and Iris’s wrist in the other while she slid through, the little sounds of scraping glass on stone beneath her causing him to wince. “Did you hear? Roll.”
“Yes,” she choked. “Don’t leave me, Padraig.”
“Get far out of the way. Far as you can,” he said as he let her slide out further, stretching his arms, his back to their limits to retain his hold on her for as long as he could. He took firm hold of the ends of the drapery and raised up on his toes. “Go!”
Padraig thought he had never known such fear in his life as when he felt Iris’s sliding reverberate through the thick material, and then her short scream cut through the smoke boiling around him out the window. He thought he heard the soft, crumpling thud of her landing, but he couldn’t see the wall any more for the heavy billows climbing the keep from the lower levels. He let loose of the limp drapery and it was swallowed up by the black smoke.
“Stay back,” he choked as he gained the window ledge. He turned onto his stomach and slid over the edge, his sweaty, sooty fingers already slipping, the flesh of his palms scraping away as he fell free of the window.
He’d tried to keep his legs loose as he fell, so whether he had turned in the billowing smoke or instinctively reached out with his feet to meet solid ground, the end result was a sharp pain in his lower left leg before he fell onto his side on the stones with a cry.
But there was no time to concern himself with so slight an injury. Iris was at his shoulder then, her hands brushing over him. Iris, alive and speaking to him, urging him to his feet.
“Are you all right?” she asked as he pulled her aright. Her legs were still weak, for she sagged against him.
“Fine,” he said, turning to her and gathering her against him, wrapping both arms so completely around her shoulders that she was truly enveloped by his embrace. He would never let her go, he thought. But they both flinched and ducked as a pair of flaming window frames plummeted from the uppermost floor with a terrible explosion of glass and smoke.
“Let’s get away from here,” Padraig said and, limping, half-carried her to the edge of the wall.
A large crowd of people were looking up at the façade of Darlyrede House, the bright light flickering over them, indicating to Padraig that the fire was so much thicker on the front of the hold. Their faces were solemn, round with horror as they watched—soldier, servant, nobility alike. Padraig waved an arm and shouted.
“Lucan!”
It was Rolf, though, who heard Padraig and turned his head to notice them standing on the high wall, Rolf who grabbed
