Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

P.S. I’m talking about Chapter 34.

Now THAT'S a way to start a book before starting the book.

She could hardly see the train through the gloam, but she could taste it in the evening air: metal and smoke and burning coal, all woven together with a trace of petrichor.

It was eventide, the moment between darkness and light, when the constellations began to dust the sky and the city lamps flickered to life in reply.

“You know, this smells like the horologist’s shop,” she drawled. Forest laughed. “And what, exactly, does a horologist’s shop smell like?” “Like dusty, half-wound clocks and expensive oil and those tiny metal instruments you use to fix all the broken pieces.”

This was an old building, constructed before the gods were vanquished. A few of those dead divines were painted on the ceiling, and despite the cracks and the faint light of the low-hanging chandeliers, Iris always glanced up at them. Gods and goddesses dancing among the clouds, dressed in long gilded robes with stars gleaming in their hair, their gazes sweeping the ground.

the heavy doors to the Oath Gazette, greeted by a wash of yellow lamplight, the scent of strong tea, and the morning hustle of preparing the newspaper.

It began in a small, sleepy town surrounded by gold. Seven months ago, the wheat fields were ready for harvest, nearly swallowing a place called Sparrow,

It was dark beyond the windows; night had settled over the city, and the lights beyond bled like fallen stars.

Its streets meandered like a serpent’s path—some were hard-packed dirt and narrow, others wide and paved, and a few were haunted by trickles of magic.

As if the present was trying to cobble over the past.

A trace of winter lingered within it, but Iris welcomed its bite and how it made her skin pebble.

I hate you for leaving me like this. I hate you, and yet I love you even more, because you are brave and full of a light that I don’t think I will ever find or understand. The call to fight for something so fervently that death holds no sting over you.

Iris stumbled but found her bearings just as the oiled whoosh of a tram passed by, so close she could taste metal in her mouth.

Her arm brushed his chest; she heard him exhale, a hiss as if she had burned him, and she wanted to laugh. She wanted to taunt him, but she felt scraped clean of words.

She flicked on the desk lamp and carefully turned the pages, which were so old they were speckled with mold and felt like silk beneath her fingertips. Pages that smelled like dust and tombs and places that could be reached only in the dark. Pages full of stories of gods and goddesses from a time long ago. Before the humans had slain them or bound them deep into the earth. Before magic had begun to bloom from the soil, rising from divine bones, charming certain doorways and buildings and settling into the rare object.

Roman was reading in bed when the paper arrived. He had come to know the sound of Iris’s letters well, how they slipped like a whisper into his room.

He blamed this estate—it was an old, sprawling house, rumored to be built on a ley line of magic. Because of that, the Kitt mansion had a mind of its own. Doors opened and closed of their own volition, the curtains drew back at sunrise, and the floors shined themselves until they gleamed like ice. Sometimes when it rained, flowers would bloom in the most unexpected places—teacups and vases and even old shoes.

Someone's been watching too much Encanto and wishing they had a Casita of their own, hmmm?

Roman was so still, so quiet that Iris thought she had charmed him into stone.

For a moment, there were no blisters on her heels or heavy sorrows in her heart.

Perhaps it was because Aster’s fingers were gentle, coaxing memories to the surface.

Conversations with her often didn’t quite make sense, as if Mrs. Kitt belonged more with ghosts than the living.

Dacre Underling, hewn from white limestone with veins of blue-lit fire, decided he would capture one of his enemies because he was bored of living day after day, season after season, year after year. Such is the weight of immortality. As the god of vitality and healing, he craved a challenge,

he would call up his hounds from below. Sinewy, fire-hearted beasts, with translucent skin and teeth that spawned nightmares in dreams, the hounds roamed the land that night, searching for beauty and devouring those who got in their way.

he summoned his eithrals from the deep caves of beneath. Great wyverns with filmed eyes and membranous wings and poisoned talons. They could withstand the sun, and they flew through the sky, searching for beauty and destroying whatever moved beneath them.

“Your hounds and your eithrals have killed these people. With your power, you could have healed their wounds. But you did not, and now I must sing their souls into eternity, for your creatures took them before it was their appointed time.”

They see what they want to see in you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings.

On some days, I’m afraid, but most days, I simply want to achieve those things I dream of. A world where my brother is home safe, and my mother is well, and I write words that I don’t despise half of the time. Words that will mean something to someone else, as if I’ve cast a line into the dark and felt a tug in the distance.

A mist spun in the air, turning lamplight into pools of gold.

Iris let herself weep. She cried the memories into her mother’s pillow until she was so exhausted the darkness pulled her under again.

I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own. And I think I was always writing for myself, to sort through my loss and worry and tangled ambitions.

that was the hardest part—sharing the words she wrote. Words that could splinter steel, exposing the soft places she preferred to hide.

It was almost surreal to Iris, to return to something that felt outwardly so familiar when she felt inwardly so different.

When Roman finally looked at her, time seemed to stall. His eyes were keen, as if he could see everything that dwelled in her—the light and the shadows. Her threads of ambition and desire and joy and grief. Never had a man looked at her in that way. A shiver traced her bones.

Iris opened the door and crossed the threshold. She left the Oath Gazette and never looked back.

Following (1) the Inciting Incident of her brother going off to war; (2) the Invitation from the competing newspaper to go to the warfront; and (3) the Catalyst of her mother's death, our mc literally Crossed The Threshold, walking directly through Door #1, thereby leaving Act 1 and entering Act 2. Beat sheet much? I can't even.

could

*couldn't She COULDN'T care less. ffs

She quit the flat.

Did she? Did she QUIT the flat? Every time she leaves a place she QUITS it. Maybe use of this phrase was clever the first time — maybe — but now it just feels overused and silly. It's trying to hard to sound fancy.

She left his letter lying in a pool of sunlight on the floor.

This is absolutely going to be an important plot point later, and I hate it. READ THE DANG LETTER, IRIS. Leaving it there unread is so unrealistic and silly.

Your jumpsuit. There’s another one in the bag, for when you need to do laundry. Also socks, boots, menstrual supplies.

“I don’t want to wake up when I’m seventy-four only to realize I haven’t lived.”

Avalon Bluff tasted like hay and meadow grass and chimney smoke and mud.

he realized that he felt pierced by all the words she had written to him. They made him ache, and he didn’t know why.

um, are you really so out of touch with your emotions? unbelievable.

She had smiled only maybe three times in her entire life, and so Roman was shocked when he saw her pursed lips curve in a grin.

“I am seventy-five years old, Roman,” she began. “I’ve seen endless things throughout my life, and I can tell you right now that this world is about to change. The days to come will only grow darker. And when you find something good? You hold on to it. You don’t waste time worrying about things that won’t even matter in the end. Rather, you take a risk for that light. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

YOLO babe

The kitchen shadows felt deeper without her as Roman carried the pot and cups to the sink, realizing that he had never once in his life washed any dishes.

Snort

Private Winnow

Almost at the halfway mark and we appear to have hit the Midpoint — False Victory — Everything's going so well! Iris is doing work she can be proud of; she and her paramour have admitted they want to meet; and she has a lead to pursue in her search for her brother. Barf.

B. Bumgardener

LOLOL

Most people instantly think of an eyeball when they learn my name.

Literally no they don't. This is the weirdest assertion. You WISH they thought of an eyeball so you'd have something to complain about, you silly goober.

iris: transitive verb: to make iridescent.

huh. I didn't know iris was a verb. I looked it up to confirm. Interesting. I will allow it.

“You keep bringing me soldiers that I can’t heal,” the doctor was saying, her voice tinged in frustration. “There’s not much I can do for them.” “All I ask is they have some dignity in death,” the officer replied. “I refuse to leave them vulnerable on the battlefield.”

In bold type, the headline raced across the page: THE UNEXPECTED FACE OF WAR by INKRIDDEN IRIS

Terrible name. Terrible.