Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1)

Iris walked into the infirmary ten minutes later, wearing a fresh jumpsuit and a tightly cinched belt. Her hair remained a tangled, hopeless mess around her shoulders, but she had more important things on her mind. All her letters were folded and in hand as she rode the lift to the upper level.

The doors chimed.

She stepped into the corridor, passing a few nurses and one of the doctors, none of whom paid her any attention, and she was glad for it. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, was about to unfold, but her blood was thrumming.

Her face was flushed by the time she approached Roman’s room.

He was in the same curtained bay and bed. His hand was still hooked to an intravenous tube, and his right leg was freshly bandaged, but he was sitting upright, his attention focused on the bowl of soup he was eating.

Iris stood on the threshold and watched him, her heart softening to see him awake. He wasn’t as pale as he had been the day before. She was relieved that he looked much better, and he swallowed a spoonful of soup, his eyes closing briefly as if savoring the food.

Iris felt the perspiration begin to bead on her palms, soaking into her letters. She hid them behind her back and walked to him, coming to a stop at the foot of his bed.

Roman glanced up and startled at the sight of her. He dropped his spoon with a clatter, rushing to set the bowl on his side table.

“Iris.”

She heard the joy in his voice. His eyes drank her in, and when he made to move—was he truly trying to rise and come to her on one leg?—she cleared her throat.

“Stay where you are, Kitt.”

He froze. A frown creased his brow.

She had rehearsed what she wanted to say to him. How to begin this strange conversation. She had pounded it into her mind the entire walk here. But now that she was looking at him … the words vanished within her.

She held up her handful of letters. And she said, “You.”

Roman was silent for a beat. He drew a deep breath and whispered, “Me.”

Iris smiled, a shield for how mortified she was. She felt like laughing and crying, but she forced them both down. Her head began to ache. “All this time, you were receiving my letters?”

“Yes,” Roman replied.

“I just … I can’t believe this, Kitt!”

“Why? What’s so hard to believe, Iris?”

“All this time it was you.” She blinked away her tears and tossed one of the letters onto Roman’s bed. It was satisfying, to hear the paper crinkle, a distraction from her embarrassment. She dropped another page, and then another. The letters fell onto his lap.

“Stop it, Iris,” Roman said, gathering them up as they drifted. As she carelessly crinkled them. “I understand why you’re angry at me, but let me expl—”

“How long have you known?” she asked tersely. “When did you know it was me?”

Roman paused, his jaw clenched. He continued to gently gather her letters. “I knew from the beginning.”

“The beginning?”

“From the first letter you sent,” he amended. “You didn’t mention your name, but you talked about your job at the Gazette, the columnist position.”

Iris froze in horror, listening to him. He had known all this time? He had known all this time!

“I honestly thought it was a prank at first,” he rambled on. “That you were doing it to get in my head. Until I read the other letters—”

“Why didn’t you say something to me, Kitt?”

“I wanted to. But I was worried you would stop writing.”

“So you thought it best to play me for a fool?”

His eyes smoldered with offense. “I never once played you for a fool, Iris. Nor did I ever think that of you.”

“Were you humoring me, then?” she asked. She hated how her voice trembled. “Was this all some joke to play on the poor low-class girl at work?”

She hit a nerve. Roman’s face crumpled, as if she had just struck him.

“No. I would never do any of those things to you, and if you think that I would, then you don’t—”

“You lied to me, Kitt!” she cried.

“I didn’t lie to you. All the things I told you … none of them were lies. None of them, do you hear me?”

Iris stared at Roman. He was red-faced and holding her letters to his chest, and she suddenly had to add new layers to him. All the Carver details. She thought of Del, realizing that Roman had been an older brother; he had lost his sister. He had pulled her from the waters after she had drowned on her seventh birthday. He had carried her body home to his parents.

A lump rose in her throat. Iris closed her eyes.

Roman sighed. “Iris? Will you come here? Sit beside me for a while, and we can talk more.”

She needed a moment to herself. To process this snarl of feelings within her.

“I need to go, Kitt. Here. Take your letters. I don’t want them.”

“What do you mean, you don’t want them? They’re mine.”

“Yes! And that’s the other thing you lied to me about!” she said, pointing. “I asked you to send my old letters back. The ones I wrote to Forest. And you said you couldn’t.”

“I said I couldn’t, because I didn’t want to,” said Roman. “Did you finish reading my last letter? Although by the looks of it … I don’t think you can even begin to understand what your words mean to me. Even if they were addressed to Forest in the beginning. You were a sister writing to her missing older brother. And I felt that pain as a brother who had lost the only sibling he ever had.”

Iris didn’t know what to do. With her pain or with his and how they were suddenly fused. A warning flashed in her mind; she was dancing too close to the fire, about to get burned. Her armor had been stripped away, and she felt naked.

“Here,” she said, handing him the last of the letters. “I need to go.”

“Iris? Iris,” he whispered, but when he reached for her hand, she evaded him. “Please stay.”

She took a step back. “There are things … things I need to do so I need to … I need to leave.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, but that was never my intention, Iris. Why do you think I’m here?”

She was almost to the door. She paused but avoided meeting his gaze. She stared at her letters, clutched fiercely in his hands.

“You’re here to outshine me again,” she said in a detached tone. “You’re here to prove your writing is far superior to mine, just like you did at the Gazette.”

She turned to flee but hadn’t made it two steps when she heard a clatter—the sound of a cot creaking and a grunt of pain. Iris glanced over her shoulder, eyes widening when she saw it was Roman, standing on one foot and ripping the intravenous needle from his hand.

“Get back in bed, Kitt,” she scolded.

“Don’t run from me, Iris,” Roman said as he began to hobble toward her. “Don’t run from me, not after what we’ve just lived through. Not without granting me one final request.”

Iris winced as he struggled to reach her on one foot. She moved forward, hands ready to catch him, but he took hold of the doorframe and found his balance, his blue eyes piercing hers. There was only a slender amount of space between their bodies, and Iris almost backed away, fighting the taunting pull she felt toward him.

“What is this request, then?” she asked coldly, but it was only to hide how her heart ached. “What is so important to you that you had to act like a fool and yank a needle from your vein, and possibly tear your stitches, and—”

“I never lied to you,” Roman said. His expression softened but his eyes remained keen, and he whispered, “You asked me this once, months ago, and I refused to answer. But I want you to ask me again, Iris. Ask me what my middle name is.”

She gritted her teeth, but she held his stare. Her memory began to roll like a phonograph, and she heard her past voice, snide and amused and full of curiosity.

Roman Cheeky Kitt. Roman Cantankerous Kitt. Roman Conceited Kitt …

Her breath caught.

“The C is for Carver,” Roman said, leaning closer to her. “My name is Roman Carver Kitt.”

He wove his fingers into her hair and brought his mouth down to hers. Iris felt the shock ripple through her the moment their lips met. His kiss was hungry, as if he had longed to taste her for some time, and at first she couldn’t breathe. But then the shock melted, and she felt a thrill warm her blood.

She opened her mouth against his, returning the kiss. She felt him shiver as her hands raced up his arms, clinging to him. When he shifted their bodies, Iris sensed they were falling and she was utterly helpless to it until she felt the wall at her back. Roman pressed against her, his lean body blazing as if he had caught fire. His heat seeped into her skin, settled into her bones, and she couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her.

Roman cradled her face in his hands. Yes, he had wanted her for a long time. She could feel it in the way he touched her, in the way his lips claimed hers. As if he had endlessly imagined this moment happening.

Iris hardly knew the hour or the day or where they stood. They were both caught in a storm of their own making and she didn’t know what would happen when it broke. She only knew that something ached within her chest. Something that Roman must need, because his mouth and his breath and his caresses were trying to draw it from her.

Someone cleared their throat.

Iris suddenly returned to herself, feeling the cool, astringent air of the infirmary. The lightbulbs, shining overhead. The metallic sounds of bedpans and lunch trays being moved.

She broke away from Roman, panting. She stared up at him and his swollen mouth, the way his eyes brimmed with dangerous light as he continued to stare at her.

“I’m going to have to restrict your visiting hours if snogging is bound to happen again, Mr. Kitt,” said a tired voice. Iris glanced around Roman to see a nurse was holding the intravenous needle and tube he had torn away from his hand. “You need to be in bed. Resting.”

“It won’t happen again,” Iris promised, face flaming.

The nurse only arched her brow. Roman, on the other hand, exhaled as if Iris had punched him.

What am I doing? Iris thought and slipped under Roman’s arm. This is foolish. This is …

She paused on the threshold, glancing back at him.

Roman continued to lean against the wall. But his gaze was wholly consumed by her, even as the nurse moved to help him.

Iris left him with the tingling memory of her kiss and her letters scattered across his bed.

Dear Iris,

What were you thinking?

How could you let your heart cloud your mind?

You should have known!!!

How did you miss this? How could you let him get the best of you? Roman “C.-is-for-Carver” Kitt has played you.

Kitt: 2 (1 point for columnist, 1 point for elaborate deception)

Winnow: 0

I just … I don’t even know what to think anymore. I’m embarrassed, I’m angry. I’m sad and strangely relieved. Attie and Marisol keep inviting me to the infirmary, but if I see Kitt right now I don’t know how I’d react to him. I made an idiot of myself this morning, so I think it’s best I stay away. I’m volunteering to dig graves in the field instead. I dig, hour after hour. I give all my anger and helplessness and sadness to the ground. And I help the people of Avalon Bluff take the names of soldiers before we bury them.

It’s backbreaking work. The blisters have burst on my hands, but I don’t even feel them. So many have died, and I’m just so tired and sad and angry, and I don’t know what to do about Kitt.

I reread all his letters last night. And I don’t think he tried to play me. At least, maybe he did at the very beginning, but not anymore. I also don’t know how to fully describe how I’m feeling. Perhaps there are no words to explain such a thing, but …

Sometimes I still feel his hand in mine, drawing me through the smoke and terror of the trenches. Sometimes I still feel him lifting me up as if I were weightless, spinning me around as if we were dancing. Or how he came between me and the grenade, and I still can’t breathe. Sometimes I remember how my heart stopped when I saw him sprawled on his back, staring up at the sky as if he were dead. When I saw him walking through the field during the eithral siren. When we collided in the golden grass. When his lips touched mine.

I am coming to love him, in two different ways. Face to face, and word to word. If I’m honest, there were moments when I longed for Carver, and moments when I longed for Roman, and now I don’t know how to bring the two together. Or if I even should.

He was trying to tell me. And I was too distracted to put the pieces together. It’s my own fault; my pride is simply wounded, and I need to let it go and continue with my life, with or without him.

I’m just furious mortified upset seething afraid.

I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me. I’m afraid to lose someone I love again. I’m afraid to let go. To acknowledge what I feel for him. And yet he has proven himself to me. Over and over. He found me on my darkest day. He followed me to war, to the front lines. He came between me and Death, taking wounds that were supposed to be mine.

There is something electric within me. Something that is begging me to remove the last of my armor and let him see me as I am. To choose him. And yet here I sit, alone, typing word after word as I seek to make sense of myself. I watch the candlelight flicker and all I can think is …

I am so afraid. And yet how I long to be vulnerable and brave when it comes to my own heart.