#Chapter 253: The scream

Fiona Nina said she’d heard the scream, too. I knew it was Iris. I knew this fire had been her doing, but still I could not quite understand… why? How? What exactly had just happened? And where was she now? Six soldiers were here in the forest suite with us, watching over me and Lexi with attention that verged on extreme and helping to intercede with the firefighters and all the other emergency responders that now filled and surrounded the palace. I asked one of the soldiers to go and see if he could find Iris. He took a second man with him and went to check her bedroom. (I told him where it was.) They didn’t return for almost fifteen minutes, and when they did, they looked perplexed. They reported that Iris’s bedroom was empty, and had been left unlocked. They also discovered that a car had been waiting to take her to the train station—apparently she’d booked a last-minute trip, but never showed up for her ride. An irritated driver had been waiting for her in the parking lot wh