Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1)

They rolled into Avalon Bluff in the middle of the night. The air was cool and dark and the stars blistered the sky as Iris climbed down from the lorry on shaky legs.

She was suddenly surrounded by nurses, doctors, townspeople. She was swept up and away into the light of the infirmary, so exhausted she could hardly speak—I’m fine, don’t waste your efforts on me. Before she could protest, a nurse had her inside the hall, cleaning her scrapes and cuts with antiseptic.

“Are you injured anywhere else?” the nurse asked.

Iris blinked. She felt like she was seeing double for a moment. She couldn’t remember the last time she had drunk or eaten something, the last time she had slept.

“No,” she said, her tongue sticking to her teeth.

The nurse reached for a cup of water and dissolved something in it. “Here, drink this. Marisol is just down the hall. I know she’ll want to see you.”

“Iris!” Attie’s voice cut through the clamor.

Iris jumped and frantically looked around, finding Attie weaving through the crowd. She set down the cup of water and launched herself into her friend’s arms. She drew a deep breath and told herself to be calm, but the next moment she was sobbing into Attie’s neck.

“You’re all right, you’re all right,” Attie whispered, holding her tightly. “Here, let me get a good look at you.” She angled herself back, and Iris dashed the tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Iris said, sniffing.

“Don’t apologize,” Attie said firmly. “I’ve been worried sick about you, ever since the first lorry pulled up hours ago. I’ve literally looked at everyone who arrived, hoping to find you.”

Iris’s heart stalled. She felt the color drain from her face. “Kitt. Is he here? Did you see him? Is he all right?”

Attie grinned. “Yes, he’s here. Don’t worry. He just got out of surgery on the upper floor, I believe. Here, I’ll take you to him, but grab your water first.”

Iris reached for her cup. She didn’t realize how badly she was shaking until she tried to take a sip and spilled half of it on her chest. Attie noticed but said nothing, leading her to the lift. They ascended to the second floor. It was quieter on the upper story; the corridors smelled like iodine and soap. Iris’s throat narrowed as Attie led her farther down the hallway, around a corner and into a dimly lit room.

There were multiple beds, each partitioned off by cloth walls for meager privacy. Iris’s eyes found him instantly.

Roman was in the first bay, lying on a narrow cot. He was sleeping, his mouth slack and his chest rising and falling slowly, as if he were in the throes of a deep dream. He looked so thin in a hospital gown. He looked so pale in the lamplight. He looked like the slightest thing might break him.

She took a step closer, uncertain if she was supposed to be in there. But a nurse nodded at her, and Iris tentatively continued her path to Roman’s bedside. His injured leg was swathed in linens, propped up on a spare pillow, and intravenous fluids were being fed into a vein in his right hand.

She stopped, gazing down at him. He had taken multiple wounds for her. He had put himself in harm’s way to keep her safe, and she wondered if she would be standing here in this moment with minor scrapes without him or if she would be shredded by shrapnel, dead in the shadows of a trench. If he hadn’t come with her … if he hadn’t been so stubborn, so insistent that he follow her …

She couldn’t breathe, and she dared to reach out and trace his hand, the nicks and cuts on his knuckles.

Why did you come here, Kitt?

She returned her gaze to his face, half expecting to find his eyes open and his mouth upturned in a cocky smile. As if he felt the same dangerous spark she did when their skin touched. But Roman continued to sleep, lost to her in the moment.

She swallowed.

Why did you take the wounds that should have been mine?

Her fingertips traced up his arm, across his collar and the slope of his jaw to the thick shock of his hair. She brushed away a lock from his brow, daring him to wake up to her caress.

He didn’t, of course.

She was partly relieved, partly disappointed. She was still rife with worry over him, and she felt as if the ice in her stomach wouldn’t fully melt until she spoke with him. Until she heard his voice again and felt his gaze on her.

“We removed twelve pieces of shrapnel from his leg,” the nurse said quietly. “He’s very fortunate it was only his leg, and all of his arteries were missed.”

Iris’s hand dropped from Roman’s dark hair. She glanced over her shoulder to see the nurse standing at the foot of his bed.

“Yes. I was with him when it happened,” Iris whispered, beginning to back away. She could see Attie at the corner of her eye, waiting in the doorway.

“Then he must be here because of you,” the nurse said, moving closer to take his pulse. “I’m sure he’ll want to see and personally thank you tomorrow.”

“No,” Iris said. “I’m here because of him.” And that was all the lump in her throat would allow her to say.

She turned and left the room, her breaths turning shallow and quick, and she thought she might faint in the corridor until she glanced up and saw someone striding toward her with purpose. Long black hair was escaping a braid. Blood was splattered on her skirts and fire shone in her brown eyes.

Marisol.

“There you are!” Marisol cried, and Iris worried she was in trouble until she realized that that Marisol was crying. Tears shone on her cheeks. “My gods, I have been praying every day for you!”

One moment, Iris was standing uncertain, trembling in the hall. The next, Marisol had embraced her, weeping into her matted hair. Iris sighed—she was safe, she was safe, she could let down her guard and breathe—and she held to Marisol, struggling to hide the tears that surged.

She didn’t think she could cry anymore, but when Marisol leaned back and framed her face, Iris let her tears fall.

“When’s the last time you ate, Iris?” Marisol asked, tenderly wiping her tears away. “Come, I’m taking you home and feeding you. And then you can take a shower and rest.”

She reached for Attie’s hand, holding both girls close.

Marisol led them home.

Iris wanted a shower first.

While Marisol and Attie prepared hot cocoa and a late-night meal in the kitchen, Iris trudged upstairs to the lavatory. The adrenaline that had kept her going since that afternoon—a day that felt like years ago, a day when the sky was blue and the storm clouds were building and the trenches were full of heavy silence and the Sycamore Platoon was alive—was utterly gone. She could suddenly feel the keen edge of her exhaustion.

She carried a candle into her bedroom. She dropped the bags from her back to the floor, where they lay like two heaps on the rug. She stripped, shivering as the bloodstained linen peeled off her skin.

A quick shower, Marisol had told her. Because it was the middle of the night, and they must always be ready for the hounds to come.

Iris washed by candlelight. It was dark and warm, the steam curling up from the tiles, and she stood in the shower, her eyes closed and her skin burning as she scrubbed. She scrubbed as if she could wash it all away.

Her ears still held a faint ring; she wondered if it would ever fade.

She knocked something off the soap ledge. The clang made her jump, her heart faltering. She almost cowered, but slowly told herself she was fine. She was in the shower, and it was just a metal tin of Marisol’s lavender shampoo.

When Iris was certain she had washed away the dirt and the sweat and the blood, she shut off the valve and dried herself. She didn’t even want to look at her body, the marks on her skin. Bruises and cuts to remind her what she had experienced.

She thought of Roman as she drew on her nightgown. He lingered in her mind as she worked the tangles from her damp hair. When would he wake? When should she return to him?

“Iris?” Marisol called. “Breakfast!”

Breakfast, in the middle of the night.

Iris set her comb aside and carried her candle down the stairs, into the kitchen. At the smell of the food, her stomach clenched. She was so hungry, but she wasn’t sure if she would be able to eat.

“Here, start with the cocoa,” Attie said, offering a steaming cup to Iris.

Iris took it gratefully, sinking into her usual chair. Marisol continued to set down plates on the table. She had made some sort of cheesy hash, full of comforting ingredients, and gradually, Iris was able to begin taking a few bites. The warmth trickled through her; she sighed and felt herself slowly returning to her body.

Attie and Marisol sat and ate with her, but they were quiet. And Iris was thankful. She didn’t think she could speak of it yet. Just having them close beside her was all she needed.

“Can I help you clean, Marisol?” Attie asked, rising to gather the dishes when they were done.

“No, I’ve got this. Why don’t you help Iris to her room?” Marisol said.

Iris’s eyes were heavy. Her feet felt like iron as she rose, and Attie took hold of her arm. She hardly remembered ascending the stairs, or Attie opening her door and guiding her inside.

“Do you want me to stay with you tonight, Iris?”

Iris sank to her pallet on the floor. The blankets were cold.

“No, I’m so tired I don’t think sleeping will be an issue. But wake me if a siren sounds.”

She hardly remembered falling asleep.

Iris woke with a start.

She didn’t know where she was at first. Sunlight was streaming in through the window, and the house was silent. She sat forward, her body stiff and sore. The B and B. She was at Marisol’s, and it looked to be late morning.

The events of the past few days returned to her in a rush.

Roman. She needed to go to the infirmary. She wanted to see him, touch him. Surely he was awake by now.

Iris stood with a groan. She had fallen asleep with wet hair, and it was a snarled mess now. She was reaching for her comb when she saw her bag on the floor nearby, Roman’s directly next to it. Both were scuffed and streaked with dirt. And then her gaze roamed to her jumpsuit, discarded by her desk where her typewriter sat, gleaming in the light.

Carver.

His name whispered through her, and she eagerly glanced at her wardrobe, expecting to find letter after letter on the floor.

There was nothing. The floor was bare. He hadn’t written to her at all while she was away, and her heart sank.

Iris closed her eyes, her thoughts swimming. She remembered his final letter to her. The one she had shoved in her pocket and tried to read before Roman interrupted her twice.

She dove for her jumpsuit, searching the pockets. She half expected the paper to be gone, just like her mother’s locket, as if the battle had also torn it away from her. But the letter was still there. A few specks of blood had dried on one of the corners. Iris’s hands trembled as she smoothed the page out.

Where had she left off? He was asking her questions. He wanted to know more about her, as if he felt the same hunger she did. Because she wanted to know him too.

She found the place. She had almost been at the end when Roman had rudely tossed that paper wad at her.

Iris bit her lip. Her eyes rushed along the words:

I want to know everything about you, Iris.

I want to know your hopes and your dreams. I want to know what irritates you and what makes you smile and what makes you laugh and what you long for most in this world.

But perhaps even more than that … I want you to know who I am.

If you could see me right now as I type this … you would smile. No, you’d probably laugh. To see how badly my hands are shaking, because I want to get this right. I’ve wanted to get it right for weeks now, but the truth is I didn’t know how and I’m worried what you might think.

It’s odd, how quickly life can change, isn’t it? How one little thing like typing a letter can open a door you never saw. A transcendent connection. A divine threshold. But if there’s anything I can should say in this moment—when my heart is beating wildly in my chest and I would beg you to come and tame it—is this: your letters have been a light for me to follow. Your words? A sublime feast that fed me on days when I was starving.

I love you, Iris.

And I want you to see me. I want you to know me. Through the smoke and the firelight and kilometers that once dwelled between us.

Do you see me?

—C.

She lowered the letter but continued to stare at Carver’s inked words.

What is a synonym for sublime? Roman had once asked her from his second-story window. As if he were a prince, trapped in a castle.

Divine, she had grumbled from below, where she had been watering the garden. Transcendent, Attie had offered, assuming he was writing about the gods.

Iris’s heart pounded. She read through Carver’s letter again—I love you, Iris—until the words began to melt into each other, and her eyes were blinking back a sudden flood of tears.

“No,” she whispered. “No, it can’t be. This is a mere coincidence.”

But she had never been one to believe in such things. Her gaze snagged on Roman’s bag, lying in the center of the floor. He had been so insistent that she grab his bag after he had been injured. She could still hear his voice, vividly.

Iris … my bag … I need you … need to get my bag. There’s something … I want you—

The world stopped.

The roaring in her ears returned, as if she had just crouched through an hour of artillery fire.

Carver’s letter slipped from her fingers as she walked to Roman’s bag. She bent down and retrieved it, dried dirt cascading in clumps from the leather. It took her a minute to get the front untethered. Her fingers were icy, fumbling. But at last it was open and she turned it upside down.

All his possessions began to spill out.

A wool blanket, a few tins of vegetables and pickled fruits. His notepad, full of his handwriting. Pens. A spare set of socks. And then the paper. So many loose pages, fluttering like snow down to the floor. Page after page, crinkled and folded and marked by type.

Iris stared at the paper that gathered at her feet.

She knew what this was. She knew as she dropped Roman’s bag, as she knelt to retrieve the pages.

They were her letters.

Her words.

First typed to Forest, and then to someone she had known as Carver.

Her emotions were a tangled mess as she began to reread them. Her words stung as if she had never once typed them sitting on the floor of her old bedroom, lonely and worried and angry.

I wish you would be a coward for me, for Mum. I wish you would set down your gun and rend your allegiance to the goddess who has claimed you. I wish you would return to us.

She had thought that Carver had thrown away the very first of her letters. She had asked him to send them back to her, and he had said it wasn’t possible.

Well, now she knew he was lying. Because they were here. They were all here, wrinkled as if they had been read numerous times.

Iris stopped reading. Her eyes were smarting.

Roman Kitt was Carver.

He had been Carver all along, and this realization struck her so hard she had to sit down on the floor. She was overwhelmed by a startling rush of relief. It was him. She had been writing to him, falling for him, all this time.

But then the questions began to swarm, nipping at that solace.

Had he been playing her? Was this a game to him? Why hadn’t he told her sooner?

She covered her face, and her palms absorbed the heat of her cheeks.

“Gods,” she whispered through her fingers, and when she opened her eyes again, her sight had sharpened. She stared at her letters, spread around her. And she began to gather them up, one by one.