Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)

by Rebecca Ross

For anyone who sought a different realm through a wardrobe door, Who wrote a letter and is still waiting for a reply, Or who dreams of stories and bleeds words

SCREECHING

“For I can grasp no other reason as to why my son would legally fasten himself to one such as you, a lowborn, freckle-faced girl who wants to drain him of his inheritance. Of course, Roman has his honor, although he often misplaces it—”

LEAVE HER AND HER FRECKLES ALONE YOU IDIOT

I’m becoming a girl made of regrets.

Girl same

continued to draw her in, like an eddy in the ocean.

The magic still gathers, and the past is gilded; I see the beauty in what has been but only because I have tasted both sorrow and joy in equal measures.

Was it a code? Who would ever have a pet snail?

I find that I am leaning more on the side of impossibility these days. I am leaning toward the edge of magic.

Soon. That promise was beginning to feel fragile, unattainable. A ship that was gliding farther and farther out to open sea.

made her think of her typewriter. The enchantment in small, ordinary things. She thought of the letters she had passed beneath her wardrobe door to Roman. Words that had spanned kilometers and distance, grief and joy, pain and love. Words that had made her drop her armor after years of clutching it close.

He thought about the owls, the herons, the albatrosses, the nightingales. The pages that had been worn down the most. Dog-eared and smudged, as if they had been touched by countless hands, read over and over again. He thought about the birds that had broken their wings, refusing to remain captive.

when she closed her eyes, she could still hear an echo of herself, speaking vows to Roman in a twilit garden. Even then, may I find your soul still sworn to mine.