Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1)

Iris knelt in the garden, watering the soil. In the days that she had been away at the front, a few green tendrils had started to break the ground, and the sight of their fragile unfurling made her heart soften. She imagined Keegan returning from the war soon, and the joy she would feel upon realizing that Marisol had ensured the garden was planted. It wasn’t the most beautiful or orderly garden, but it was slowly awakening.

I grew something living in a season of death.

The words echoed through Iris as she gently traced the closest stem with her fingertip. Her watering can was empty, but she remained kneeling, and the dampness of the soil bled into the knees of her jumpsuit.

She felt so tired and heavy. They had finished burying all the deceased the day before.

“Thought I might find you here,” Attie said.

Iris glanced over her shoulder to see her friend standing on the back terrace, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sunlight.

“Does Marisol need me?” Iris asked.

“No, actually.” Attie hesitated, kicking a pebble with the toe of her boot.

“What is it, Attie? You’re worrying me.”

“Roman just returned from the infirmary,” Attie said, clearing her throat. “He’s resting in his bedroom.”

“Oh.” Iris returned her attention to the soil, but her heart was suddenly pounding. It had been two days since she had gone to him, letters in hand. Two days since she had seen or spoken with him. Two days since they had kissed like they were each starving for the other. Two days that she had spent sorting through her feelings, trying to decide what to do. “That’s good to hear, I suppose.”

“I think you should go visit him, Iris.”

“Why?” She needed a distraction. There, a weed to pull. Iris made quick work of it, suddenly craving another task for her hands.

“I’m not sure what has come between the two of you, and I won’t ask,” Attie said. “All I know is that he doesn’t look well.”

The words chilled Iris to the bone.

“Doesn’t look well?”

“I mean … it looks like his spirit’s broken. And you know what they say about injured soldiers in low spirits.”

“Kitt’s a correspondent,” Iris argued, but there was a splinter in her voice. She couldn’t help but glance at Roman’s second-story window, remembering the day he had leaned on the sill, tossing a message to her.

His window was shut now, the curtains drawn over the glass panes.

Attie was silent. The lull eventually drew Iris’s gaze back to hers.

“Will you please visit him?” Attie asked. “I’ll take over the watering for you.”

Before Iris could scrounge up an excuse, Attie had scooped up the metal pail and was heading to the well.

Iris bit her lip but rose, knocking the dirt from her jumpsuit. She saw how filthy her hands were and stopped to scrub them in Marisol’s wash bin, only to give up with a sigh. Roman had already seen her at her dirtiest. Her messiest.

The house was full of quiet shadows as Iris ascended the stairs. Her heart quickened when she saw Roman’s bedroom door, closed to the world. She paused before the wood, listening to the ebb and flow of her breath, and then she scolded herself for being cowardly.

I won’t know what I want to do until I see him again.

She knocked, three times fast.

There was no answer. Frowning, she knocked again, harder and deliberate. But Roman was unresponsive.

“Kitt?” she called to him through the wood. “Kitt, will you please answer me?”

At last he replied in a flat voice, “What do you want, Winnow?”

“May I come in?”

Roman was silent for a beat, and then drawled, “Why not.”

Iris opened the door and stepped into his room. It was the first time she had been in his quarters, but her gaze went directly to him in the dusky light, where he was lying on his makeshift pallet on the floor. His eyes were closed, his fingers laced over his chest. He was dressed in a clean jumpsuit, his dark hair damp across his brow. She could smell the soap on his skin, which was uncommonly pallid. His face was shaved and his sharp cheekbones were sunken, as if he had become hollow.

And she was right; she knew exactly what she wanted to choose.

“What do you want?” he repeated, but his voice was a rasp.

“Good afternoon to you too,” Iris countered happily. “How are you feeling?”

“Peachy.”

A smile flirted with the corner of his lips, and the pit in her stomach began to ease. But his eyes remained shut. She suddenly longed for him to look at her.

“Ah, there’s the Second Alouette,” she said, her gaze fixing on his typewriter. Her heart warmed to see it. “Although it’s far too dim in here, Kitt! You should let the light in.”

“I don’t want the light,” he grumbled, but Iris had already parted the window curtains. He raised his hands to shield his face against the stream of sunshine. “Why have you come to torture me, Winnow?”

“If this is my torture, I would hate to see what my pleasure would be.”

Roman made no reply, his hands remaining splayed over his face. As if the last thing he wanted was to look at her.

She walked to the side of his pallet, her shadow spilling across his lean body. “Will you look at me, Kitt?”

He didn’t move. “You shouldn’t feel obligated to visit me. I know you hate me right now.”

“Obligated?”

“By Attie. I know she told you to come. It’s all right; you can return to whatever important task you were busy with.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to see you,” Iris said, and her chest tightened, as if a thread was wound about each of her ribs. “In fact, I came to ask you a question.”

He was quiet, but she could hear the curiosity in his voice as he said, “Go on, then.”

“Would you like to go on a walk with me?”

Roman’s hands slid away from his disbelieving face. “A walk?”

“Erm, maybe not a walk, exactly. If your leg … if you don’t feel like it. But we could go outside.”

“Where to?”

Now that his eyes had locked with hers, Iris felt seen, down to her bones. She could hardly breathe and she glanced at her dirty fingernails. “I was thinking we could go to our hill.”

“Our hill?”

“Or your hill,” she rushed to amend. “The hill that nearly bested me. Unless you think it’s destined to get the best of you now. If so, I think it can make the headlines by tomorrow.”

Roman was quiet, staring up at her. Iris couldn’t deny it a moment longer. She met his gaze and tentatively smiled, extending her hands to him.

“Come on, Kitt. Come outside with me. The sun and fresh air will do you good.”

Slowly, he lifted his fingers and wove them with hers—fingers that had typed letter after letter to her. And she raised him to his feet.

He was insistent on walking, and he used a crutch to avoid putting weight on his right leg. At first he moved with a strong rhythm, swinging himself forward. But then he began to tire, and their pace slowed. Fifteen minutes down the cobbled street, perspiration shone on Roman’s face from the heat and the effort. Iris instantly wished she had thought better of her offer.

“We don’t have to go all the way to the hill,” she said, glancing sidelong at him. “We can turn around halfway.”

He huffed a smile. “I’m not going to break, Winnow.”

“Yes, but your leg is still—”

“My leg is fine. I’d like to see the view again, anyways.”

She nodded but fiddled with the end of her braid, anxious about overworking him.

They turned onto the street that would gradually build to the crest. For the first time since she had met him, Iris didn’t know what to say. In the office at the Gazette, she always had a retort ready for him. Even when she was writing to him as Carver, the words had spilled out of her onto the page. But now she felt uncommonly shy, and the words were like honey on her tongue. She desperately wanted to say the right things to him.

Iris waited for him to speak, hoping perhaps he would break this strange silence between them, but his breaths became labored as the street steepened. She dwelled on that last letter of his, and suddenly Iris knew exactly what to say to Roman Carver Kitt.

She turned to face him, walking backward. He noticed, giving her an arched brow.

“Salty,” she said.

He chuckled, glancing down to the cobblestones as he crutched forward. “I know, I’m sweating.”

“No,” Iris said, drawing his eyes back to hers. “I prefer salty over sweet. I prefer sunsets over sunrises, but only because I love to watch the constellations begin to burn. My favorite season is autumn, because my mum and I both believed that’s the only time when magic can be tasted in the air. I am a devout tea lover and can drink my weight in it.”

A smile flickered over Roman’s face. She was answering the questions he had asked in his last letter to her.

“Now,” she said. “Tell me yours.”

“I have the worst sweet tooth imaginable,” Roman began. “I prefer sunrises, but only because I like the possibilities a new dawn brings. My favorite season is spring, because baseball returns. I prefer coffee, although I’ll drink whatever is placed in front of me.”

Iris grinned. Laughter slipped out of her, and she hurried to continue walking ahead of him, just out of his reach should he try to grab her. Because he had a hungry gleam in his eye, as if she were indeed a metaphorical carrot.

“You find my answers surprising, Winnow?”

“Not really, Kitt. I always knew you were my opposite. A nemesis usually is.”

“I prefer former rival.” His gaze dropped to her lips. “Tell me something more about you.”

“More? Such as what?”

“Anything.”

“Very well. I had a pet snail when I was seven.”

“A snail?”

Iris nodded. “His name was Morgie. I kept him in a serving dish with a little tray of water and some rocks and a few wilted flowers. I told him all of my secrets.”

“And whatever happened to Morgie?”

“He slinked away one day when I was at school. I came home to discover him gone, and he was nowhere to be found. I cried for a fortnight.”

“I can imagine that was devastating,” Roman said, at which Iris playfully batted him.

“Don’t poke fun at me, Kitt.”

“I’m not, Iris.” He effortlessly caught her hand in his, and they both came to a halt in the middle of the street. “Tell me more.”

“More?” she breathed, and while her hand felt hot as kindling, she didn’t pull away from him. “If I tell you anything else today, you’ll grow tired of me.”

“Impossible,” he whispered.

She felt that shyness creeping over her again. What was happening right now, and why did it feel like wings were beating in her stomach?

“What’s your middle name?” Roman asked suddenly.

Iris arched her brow, amused. “You might have to earn that morsel of information.”

“Oh, come now. Could you at least give me the initial? It would only be fair.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” she said. “My middle name begins with an E.”

Roman smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “And whatever could it be? Iris Enchanting Winnow? Iris Ethereal Winnow? Iris Exquisite Winnow?”

“My gods, Kitt,” she said, blushing. “Let me save us both from this torture. It’s Elizabeth.”

“Iris Elizabeth Winnow,” Roman echoed, and she shivered to hear her name in his mouth.

Iris held his stare until the mirth faded from his eyes. He was looking at her the way he had in Zeb’s office. As if he could see all of her, and Iris swallowed, telling her heart to calm, to slow.

“I need to say something to you,” Roman said, tracing her knuckles with his thumb. “You mentioned the other day that you think I’m only here to ‘outshine’ you. But that’s the furthest thing from the truth. I broke my engagement, quit my job, and traveled six hundred kilometers into war-torn land to be with you, Iris.”

Iris squirmed. This didn’t feel real. The way he was looking at her, holding her hand. This must be a dream on the verge of dashing. “Kitt, I—”

“Please, let me finish.”

She nodded, but she inwardly braced herself.

“I don’t really care to write about the war,” he said. “Of course, I’ll do it because the Inkridden Tribune is paying me to, but I would much rather that your articles live on the front page. I would much rather read what you write. Even if they aren’t letters to me.” He paused, rolling his lips together as if he was uncertain. “That first day you were gone. My first day as columnist. It was horrible. I realized I was becoming someone I didn’t want to be, and it woke me up, to see your desk empty. My father has had my life planned for me, ever since I could remember. It was my ‘duty’ to follow his will, and I tried to adhere to it, even if it was killing me. Even if it meant I couldn’t buy your sandwich at lunch, which I still think about to this day and despise myself for.”

“Kitt,” Iris whispered. She tightened her hold on his hand.

“But the moment you walked away,” Roman rushed on, “I knew I felt something for you, which I had been denying for weeks. The moment you wrote me and said you were six hundred kilometers away from Oath … I thought my heart had stopped. To know that you would still want to write to me, but also that you were so far away. And as our letters progressed, I finally acknowledged that I was in love with you, and I wanted you to know who I was. That’s when I decided I would follow you. I didn’t want the life my father had planned for me—a life where I could never be with you.”

Iris opened her mouth, but she was so full and overwhelmed that she said nothing at all. Roman intently watched her, his cheeks red and his eyes wide, as if he was waiting to hit the ground and shatter.

“Are you…” she began, blinking. “Are you saying you want a life with me?”

“Yes,” he said.

And because her heart was melting, Iris smiled and teased, “Is this a proposal?”

He continued to hold their stare, deadly serious. “If I asked you, would you say yes?”

Iris was quiet, but her mind was racing, full of golden thoughts.

Once, not long ago, in her life before the front lines, she would have thought this was ridiculous. She would have said no, I have other plans right now. But that was before, a time that was gilded by a different slant of light, and this present moment was now limned in the blue tinge of after. She had seen the fragility of life. How one could wake to a sunrise and die by sunset. She had run through the smoke and the fire and the agony with Roman, his hand in hers. They had both tasted Death, brushed shoulders with it. They had scars on their skin and on their souls from that fractured moment, and now Iris saw more than she had before. She saw the light, but she also saw the shadows.

Time was precious here. If she wanted this with Roman, then why shouldn’t she grasp it, claim it with both hands?

“I suppose you’ll have to ask me and find out,” she said.

And just when she thought she couldn’t be surprised by anything else, Roman began to kneel. Right there in the center of the street, halfway up the hill. He was about to ask her. He was truly about to ask her to be his wife, and Iris gasped.

He winced as his knee found the cobblestones, a glint of pain in his eyes.

Iris glanced down, beyond their linked hands. Blood was seeping through the right leg of his jumpsuit.

“Kitt!” she cried, urging him to stand again. “You’re bleeding!”

“It’s nothing, Winnow,” he said, but he was beginning to look pale. “I must have pulled a stitch.”

“Here, sit down.”

“In the road?”

“No, over here on this crate.” Iris guided him to the closest front yard. It must have been the O’Briens’ property, because there were multiple cats sunbathing on the dead grass, and she remembered Marisol talking about how most of Avalon Bluff worried those felines would get them all bombed one day.

“I must have failed to mention that I’m allergic to cats,” Roman said, frowning as Iris forced him to sit on the overturned milk crate. “And I’m more than capable of walking back to Marisol’s.”

“No, you’re not,” Iris argued. “The cats will leave you alone, I’m sure. Wait here for me, Kitt. Don’t you dare move.” She began to step away, but he snagged her hand, dragging her back to him.

“You’re leaving me here?” He made it sound as if she were abandoning him. Her heart rose in her throat when she recalled how she had left him in the trenches. She wondered if that day haunted him the way it did her. Every night when she lay in the dark, remembering.

You and I … we need to stay together. We’re better this way.

“Only for a moment,” Iris said, squeezing his fingers. “I’ll run and fetch Peter. He has a lorry, and he can give us a ride to the infirmary, so a doctor can look at your—”

“I’m not going back to the infirmary, Iris,” Roman stated. “They’re overworked and there’s no room for me with something as minor as a pulled stitch. I can fix it myself, if Marisol has a needle and thread.”

Iris sighed. “All right. I’ll take you to the B and B, so long as you don’t move while I’m gone.”

Roman relented with a nod. He relinquished her hand, albeit slowly, and Iris broke into a run, flying down the street and around the bend at a breakneck pace. She thankfully found Peter at home, next door to the B and B, and he agreed to drive up the bluff to give Roman a lift.

Iris stood in the back of the lorry beside a hay bale, holding on to the wooden side panel as the truck rumbled through the streets. She didn’t understand why her breath continued to skip, as if her heart believed she was still running. She didn’t understand why her blood was coursing, and why she was suddenly afraid.

She half expected for them to ascend the hill only to find Roman was gone. It felt like she was caught up in the pages of a strange fairy tale, and she shouldn’t be foolish but shrewd, preparing for something horrible to thwart her. Because good things never lasted for long in her life. She thought about all the people who had been close to her, the threads of their lives weaving with hers—Nan, Forest, her mother—and how they had all left, either by choice or by fate.

He was about to ask me, Iris told herself, closing her eyes as they began to lurch up the hill. Roman Kitt wants to marry me.

She remembered the words she had written to herself, nights ago. She reminded herself that even though she had been left, time and time again, by the people she loved, Roman had come to her.

He was choosing her.

The lorry began to slow as Peter downshifted. There was a pop of backfire, and Iris jumped. It sounded so much like a gun firing, and her pulse spiked. She winced, fighting the urge to cower, choosing instead to open her eyes.

Roman was sitting on the milk crate just as she left him, with a scowl on his face. And a cat curled up in his lap.

Dear Kitt,

Now that your stitches are set and you’ve recovered from your encounter with the cat, it’s time to settle two very pressing matters between us, as they both keep me up at night. Don’t you agree?

—I.W.

Dear Winnow,

I have an inkling as to one of the matters, which was rudely interrupted by my damn stitches. But the other … I want to make sure I know precisely what is stealing your sleep.

Alas, enlighten me.

Your Kitt

P.S. Is it odd we’re next door to each other and still choosing to send letters through our wardrobes?

Dear Kitt,

I’m surprised you don’t recall in vivid detail the previous debate you once shared with me. I was supposed to settle it once I saw you.

I think your nan will be happy with my choice.

My answer is firmly this: Knight Errant.

—I.W.

P.S. Yes, it’s odd, but so much more efficient, wouldn’t you agree?

Dearest Winnow,

I’m flattered. It must be the pointy chin. But as to the other matter? It must be done in person.

Your Kitt

P.S. Agreed. Although I wouldn’t mind seeing you at the moment …

My Dear Kitt,

You’ll have to wait to see me until tomorrow, when I plan to drag you out to the garden. No more cats and no more walks for the time being, however. Not until you heal. Then we can race to the hill, and I might beat you for once (but don’t go easy on me).

And you can officially ask me tomorrow.

Love,

Iris

P.S. If you see me too much, you’re bound to tire of my sad snail stories.

Dear Iris,

The garden it is.

Your Kitt

P.S. Impossible.