Page 63 of The Unknown Birds

“You were angry I kept it from you.”

“That’s different,” he argued, toeing the dirt with his boot.

“I don’t think they’d give me away.”

“Keeping secrets is hard, Ash. Especially when there’s people around who don’t know there’s a secret to be kept.”

Oh. She hadn’t thought about the strain her identity might have put on Tom. She’d formed her new life around pretending she was a boy, and that was how she usually pictured herself —just one of the lads. Sometimes she was still surprised to remember she had to sit down if she wanted to piss.

“It’s been a burden…” she realized. “Do you wish you didn’t know?”

“Didn’t say that. Only it’s dangerous. You know what some blokes are like.”

Despite the oppressive heat, Ash shivered, because she knew it all too well.

“And if someone did blab? I don’t know what I’d do with myself if you were sent home before me.”

“Fine,” she agreed.

It hadn’t occurred to her that telling them might be selfish—and dangerous in more ways that one, if it made them take extra risk to keep her safe.

But the lies still felt too heavy after carrying them so very long, a betrayal of all their friendship, and something worse with Rook.

“Anyway, I don’t think everyone would understand.”

He said it offhand. Like it was nothing but an afterthought. But the words etched themselves under Ashley’s skin and deep into her bones.

She’d proven herself for fifteen long months, but dishonesty was a hard thing to overcome. They had to rely on each other every moment of every day—and twice on Sundays. She couldn’t bear it if the truth undermined their trust.

Besides, Tom had been hurt by her deception after only a few months, and that was ages ago. Before socks and sonnets and pastries from back home.

So Ash let it go. She would keep her secret locked up tight and not tell another soul, for now.

All too soon, orders trickled down the line. She put on fresh socks and loaded her rifle and lined up to wait for the whistle to advance. Their goal was to capture the ridge and force a German retreat.

“Don’t get lost,” Tom told her as he pushed his eyeglasses further up his nose.

“Don’t get shot,” she offered him their favorite gallows humor reply.

“Fly safe,” Rook murmured on her left side.

“You too,” she told him, her eyes boring into his, desperate to say more, but now was not the time.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins, anxiety to have it over laced with a teaspoonful of fear, but even the slaughter had become almost routine after more than a year of it. Being afraid simply slowed a body down.

The trick, Ash had found, was to forget. Forget about the bullets and the shells flying overhead, forget about the danger, forget to worry about her friends. Just run with a singular focus until she reached the other side. She could deal with what she found there once she arrived.

When next she slept, there would be time enough to shiver, time to sweat out the terror lying dormant in her pores, recalling every moment until exhaustion claimed its prize. But in the midst of battle, fear had no place to call home, and so she ran and ran and ran.

Out of the smoke emerged a figure, much too close for Ash to dodge. They collided and she thanked God no bayonet had pierced her gut. Both falling to the ground, she skittered back and he skittered like her mirror, dazed and young and frightened and alone.

Then he lifted his rifle in shaky, untried hands.

Ash darted off like it was Brigade Sports Day, dodging behind a bombed-out tank for cover. It was hard to get her bearings through all the smoke and chaos before running, running, running, never pausing for a moment to look back until a German trench appeared and the edges of her terror crept up like hellhounds at her heels.

What if it was an active enemy trench and not the one the Allies had already taken?

Too late to cede to caution, she hurdled the remaining barbed wire along with the rampart in one haphazard leap and tumbled pell-mell down into the trench and whatever fresh hell awaited her below.