Chapter Three

Violet’s breathing was even and deep now, and Iris knew that she had to go. Her eyes still closed, she ran over her route one last time, checking and double-checking that she remembered everything.

She opened her eyes and got to her feet.

Then she sat down on the edge of her bed, suddenly intensely, overwhelmingly afraid.

It would be easy – so so easy – to stay here in the Garden, she knew. She could start drinking the morning tea and the warm bedtime milk again and fall back into the haze, slip under the consciousness of the realities of life, float away into the world of having no power and never having to make any decisions. She had her tasks, her duties, her routines. It was all so familiar here and that made it safe in ways that the world out there was not.

She had no idea who or what was waiting outside that fence – what if that thing or person was worse than what she had and knew in here? It’s not as if her life before a year ago had been so wonderful; it’s not like she had anyone out there waiting with bated breath for her return. At least in this ward, she had her sisters and their absolute love for her. She loved them too and she was worried about what would happen if she left.

She should stay for them… for Daisy, Zinnia, Rose, Dahlia, Camilla, Tulip, Cassia. For all eleven of them.

Iris wavered now, felt her determination start to fall to pieces all around her. Then an image came to her, the one that haunted her dreams since she’d stopped going to sleep under the influence of a drug:

Lily’s naked, twisted body. Her blue, twisted face.

Fuck. This. I'm out of here.

This time when she stood, she stayed on her feet.

Her mind snapped back into focus and Iris suddenly knew – she just knew – that it was all going to be fine. She was sure that Gideon would call this feeling a premonition or destiny or some such crap, but Iris saw it for what it was: perfect planning and a teeth-gritting will to get it done.

Oh, and since I have no choice but to finish what I set in motion when I walk out into that hallway, I’m going to do this because it’s also life-and-death. Literally.

Despite the fact that the other women were drugged into deep sleep, Iris still found that she was channeling a ninja warrior vibe and moving across the floor as quietly as possible. She reached the open door, looked left then right, stepped into the wide, dark hallway and headed for the stairs. Even though she was totally confident in the knowledge that nobody was lurking in the stairwell waiting to pounce on her, she held her breath almost the whole time, not releasing it until she was standing on the ground floor.

Still in stealth mode, she headed to the library and made a beeline for the cabinet that housed Gideon’s sermons going back as far as fifteen years, when he’d founded The Garden of Divine Light. Iris herself had spent untold hours transcribing the recordings of his words and beliefs and commandments, then copying and binding them as books before placing them with proper reverence on the shelves and cataloguing them.

Ignoring the camera above her, she reached past the first two rows of books until her fingertips grazed the back wall of the shelf. She pried the yellow envelope from between volumes 156 and 157 and checked to see that it was still glued down; it was, and this meant that she held in her hand a total of three hundred and twelve dollars. It was all that she had in the world and she was just going to have to figure it out from there, because she didn’t dare to steal any more money from Gideon.

Iris exited the library and turned left to the back entrance hall area. There she found flashlights, shoes, boots and coats belonging to the men and the Guardians – she’d have to make do with what she could get her hands on because the women-servants weren’t given outdoor apparel for a biting February night in Utah. Oh sure, each woman had a heavy sweater that was fine for quickly running out to deliver food and hot drinks to the guards, but that was it. The women’s daily uniform was a thin dress, flat shoes and something to hold back their long hair – an elastic, pins, a barrette, a kerchief.

And of course, an apron. That went without saying.

She scanned the clothes hanging off various hooks and found a heavy cardigan and a thick coat with a hood. She stuffed the money, a flashlight and two scarves into the coat pockets, added a hat and mittens, then quickly measured the boots with her eye, looking for the smallest pair. Once she found them and pulled them on, they were still pretty big so she tugged the laces as tight as possible. It was the best that she could do, so she accepted it.

There was no mirror, naturally, because Gideon said that they encouraged vanity (though his own lavish bedroom had mirrors everywhere), so Iris couldn’t see what she looked like. She pictured a clown in oversized, flapping footwear crossed with a kid playing dress-up in her Dad’s winter overcoat, and figured that was about right. But looking ludicrous wasn’t her concern: not freezing to death was. She wasn’t heading out to be a fashion icon – she was running for her life, floppy boots and all.