Read Chapter 18: The Witness

The supply tent smelled of iodine and wet canvas, and Élise had barely slept in two days. She was counting morphine vials when Prudence Whitcombe appeared in the opening, her shadow long against the lantern light. The Englishwoman’s face was pale, her jaw set in a way that made Élise’s stomach drop.

“I need to speak with you,” Prudence said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of something decided.

Élise set down the vials. “Of course.”

They stepped outside, into the grey pre-dawn. The distant thunder of artillery rolled across the horizon like a storm that never broke. Prudence stopped by the ruined wall of what had once been a farmhouse, turning to face Élise with her arms folded tight across her chest.

“The locket,” Prudence said. “I want it back.”

Élise’s hand instinctively went to the pocket of her apron, where the small gold oval had lived since Saint-Rémy. It felt heavier than it had any right to. “I told you I would keep it safe.”

“Safe.” Prudence laughed, a short, broken sound. “You told me my fiancé died with dignity. That he was brave. But you never told me how you came to have his locket.”

Élise said nothing.

“I’ve seen the way Corporal Reeves watches you,” Prudence continued. “He and I have spoken. He says you arrived at Saint-Rémy with no papers, no records. He says your name isn’t even in the hospital register until the day you appeared.”

“There was chaos. Records were lost.”

“Reeves says you were never assigned. That you simply… came.” Prudence’s eyes were sharp now, cutting through the half-dark. “Who are you, really?”

Élise felt the familiar tightening in her chest, the lie she had worn like a second skin for months beginning to fray at the edges. She opened her mouth to speak, to summon another excuse, when James’s voice cut through the morning air.

“She’s my nurse.”

They both turned. James stood at the entrance of the surgical tent, his arm still bound in a clean sling, his face drawn but steady. He walked toward them with the deliberate calm of a man accustomed to command.

“She saved lives at Saint-Rémy. She saved lives at Verdun. She stood over a soldier with a crushed windpipe and cut into his throat because I was too exhausted to lift a scalpel.” James stopped beside Élise, not touching her, but close enough that she felt the heat of him. “Whatever her name was before, she is Élise Moreau now. That is all that matters.”

Prudence’s gaze flickered between them. “You know,” she said. “You know she’s hiding something, and you don’t care.”

James’s silence was answer enough. He looked at Élise, and for a moment, she saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t expected — not love, not defense, but a quiet acknowledgment. He had always known.

“I suspected,” James said, his voice low. “From the beginning. Your hands. Your knowledge. The way you carried yourself. No village girl I’ve ever met could identify a brachial artery at a glance.”

Élise’s throat tightened. “James —”

“But I never asked,” he continued. “Because whatever you were running from, whatever name you left behind, you became the best nurse I’ve ever worked with. And that was enough for me then. It’s still enough now.”

Prudence stood in silence for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached out her hand. “The locket.”

Élise’s fingers closed around the cool metal in her pocket. She had imagined this moment many times — returning the locket, letting go of the weight of a dead stranger. But something held her back. Something about the small, dented gold oval had become more than just a belonging. It had become proof. Proof that she had done something good, something real, in the midst of all this death.

“Please,” Prudence said, her voice cracking for the first time. “He gave it to me when he proposed. I gave it back to him when he left for France. I never received it from him again. It’s all I have of him.”

Élise pulled the locket from her pocket. It caught the first pale light of dawn, glinting warmly despite the grim surroundings. She looked at Prudence — at the raw grief written across her face, at the desperate hope in her eyes — and she made her decision.

“I’m sorry,” Élise said. “But I can’t give it to you.”

Prudence’s face crumpled. “What?”

“Not yet.” Élise pressed the locket into Prudence’s hand, closing the other woman’s fingers around it. “I need you to understand something first.”

Prudence stared at the locket, then at Élise. “Understand what?”

Élise took a breath. “I found this locket on the ground at Saint-Rémy. I didn’t know whose it was. I only knew that someone had lost it, and I hoped to find them and return it.” She paused. “When I met you, I realized. But I didn’t give it back then because I — I didn’t know if I could face it. Another death. Another life I couldn’t save.”

“But now you can face it?”

“Now I know that grief doesn’t end when you hand it over.” Élise’s eyes met Prudence’s. “It follows you. It becomes part of you. But you can carry it and still stand. I’ve learned that.”

Prudence’s hand trembled around the locket. She opened it, looking at the faded photograph inside — a young man with dark hair and a crooked smile, frozen forever in a moment before the war took him. Her breath hitched.

“Edward,” she whispered.

James moved closer, his good hand resting gently on Prudence’s shoulder. “He was brave,” he said. “He died trying to get to the wounded. There was no fear in him. I saw it myself.”

Prudence looked up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You saw him?”

“I was there when he fell,” James said. “He spoke of you. He said your name. He said he was sorry he wouldn’t see you again.”

Élise felt her own eyes sting. She hadn’t known that. James had never once mentioned the dead soldier’s last moments. He had kept it inside, the way he kept everything, until the weight became too much to bear alone.

Prudence clutched the locket to her chest, sobbing quietly. Élise stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the other woman, letting her cry, feeling the ragged tremor of grief pass through both of them.

They stood like that for a long moment — two women who had lost so much, holding each other against the chaos of a world gone mad.

Then the shell came.

The whistle was unmistakable. James shouted something, but his voice was swallowed by the explosion. The world turned white and orange, and Élise was thrown backward into the wall. The air was stolen from her lungs. Debris rained down around them.

She couldn’t hear. There was only a high, ringing silence and the acrid smell of cordite.

She blinked, coughing, her ears ringing. The supply tent — their entire field pharmacy — had taken a direct hit. Flames licked upward from the wreckage, feeding on bandages and alcohol and precious, irreplaceable equipment. Someone was screaming. James was on the ground beside her, blood running from a cut on his forehead, struggling to rise.

“Prudence!” Élise shouted, her voice sounding muffled and foreign to her own ears.

Prudence lay a few feet away, her arm thrown over her face. She was breathing. Alive.

Élise dragged herself to her feet, ignoring the pain in her ribs, and rushed to help James up. Together, they stumbled toward Prudence, pulling her from the debris.

“The locket,” Prudence gasped. “It’s gone — it must have fallen —”

Élise felt in her own pocket, and her fingers closed around something small and warm and intact.

She pulled it out. The locket was dented, one corner blackened by scorch marks — but the clasp still held, and when she opened it, the photograph inside was untouched.

She pressed it back into Prudence’s hands.

“It survived,” Élise said, her voice cracking. “Miraculously.”

Prudence looked at the locket, then at Élise, and something shifted in her grief-stricken face — something like wonder, or faith, or both.

But over the roar of the flames, Élise heard James’s whisper, barely audible: “That’s some luck. For both of you.”

And she knew, in that moment, that the locket surviving meant more than chance. It meant that even in this hell, some things refused to be destroyed.