Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

I don’t think you realize how strong you are, because sometimes strength isn’t swords and steel and fire, as we are so often made to believe. Sometimes it’s found in quiet, gentle places. The way you hold someone’s hand as they grieve. The way you listen to others. The way you show up, day after day, even when you are weary or afraid or simply uncertain.

She unfortunately had to sit on Roman Kitt’s lap, nearly all the way to the front lines.

SERIOUSLY? just no.

The silence felt thick and strange. She was almost afraid to breathe too deeply, welcoming that heavy, chilled air into her lungs. The same air that the enemy was drawing and exhaling, mere kilometers away. It was a silence to drown in.

Become comfortable with a home of open sky and damp dirt walls, but never trust them. The sky is always a threat, and while the earth is your greatest shield when the hounds prowl and the mortar strikes, it can also be dangerous*

At last, there came a lull, but the air steamed and the earth seemed to weep.

Roman thought about her notes. All of the soldiers’ stories she had gathered over the past few days. The horror and the pride and the pain and the sacrifice and the victories. She had to carry those words back home. She had to live through this so she could type it out. So her words could be carried by train six hundred kilometers to the Inkridden Tribune in the glib city of Oath. She has to survive this, Roman thought. He didn’t want to live in a world without her and her words.

She tripped over one of the planks jutting up from the ground.

ugh of course the stupid helpless girl tripped. Good thing there was a man behind Iris to keep her safe. Girls can't survive on their own. They need men to protect them.

She and Roman would survive this war. They would have the chance to grow old together, year by year. They would be friends until they both finally acknowledged the truth. And they would have everything that other couples had—the arguments and the hand-holding in the market and the gradual exploration of their bodies and the birthday celebrations and the journeys to new cities and the living as one and sharing a bed and the gradual sense of melting into each other. Their names would be entwined—Roman and Iris or Winnow and Kitt because could you truly have one without the other?—and they would write on their typewriters and ruthlessly edit each other’s pieces and read books by candlelight at night.

She reached for his hand. Lark said, “I’ll have to say it over and over and over, now. If I live, I’ll be full of nothing but regrets and apologies, because I’m the last one. The Sycamore Platoon is gone, Miss Winnow. We woke up this morning to one world, and now the sun is setting on another.” When he closed his eyes again, Iris remained quiet. She held his hand, and the last of the light waned. Eventide was giving way to the night, and once she would have been terrified of Dacre’s hounds and the possibility of their attack. But now there was nothing to fear. There was only grief, raw and sharp. She was still holding Lieutenant Lark’s hand an hour later when he died.

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’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.

I grew something living in a season of death.

But that was before, a time that was gilded by a different slant of light, and this present moment was now

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.

If they exchanged vows today, they would be sharing a bed together tonight. And while she had imagined being with him before … she was a virgin. “Kitt, I’ve never slept with anyone before.” “Neither have I.” He tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. “But if that’s something you’re not ready for, then we can wait.” She could hardly speak as she caressed his face. “I don’t want to wait. I want to experience this with you.”

BARF.

She was about to say something more when the tree boughs rustled overhead. She heard the yard gate swing open, its rusty hinges whining. She heard the chimes Marisol had hanging at the terrace, a tangle of silver notes. Iris knew it was the western wind, a surprising burst of power, blowing from the front lines. A sense of unease came over her. It almost felt as if she and Roman were being watched, and Iris frowned, glancing around the garden.

Do you think we could live in a world made only of those things? Death and pain and horror? Loss and agony? It’s not a crime to feel joy, even when things seem hopeless.

you are worthy of love. You are worthy to feel joy right now, even in the darkness.

Iris smiled and nodded. And she thought, Even when the world seems to stop, threatening to crumble, and the hour feels dark as the siren rings … it isn’t a crime to feel joy.

“Someone came into the house,”

Welp, it's either Dacre or Forest.

Everything was changing. Iris could taste it in the air, as if the season had crumbled like an ancient page, skipping summer and autumn to usher in the creeping chill of winter.

Iris asked Roman and Attie to accompany her to the golden field. A slight breeze stirred, blowing from the east. Iris closed her eyes. Not so long ago, she had arrived at this place, full of grief and guilt and fear. And while those things still dwelled in her, they were not as sharp as they had been. I hope you see me, Mum. I hope you’re proud of me. She opened the lid and overturned the jar. She watched as her mother’s ashes were carried by the wind, into the golden dance of the grass.

Afternoon clouds were beginning to swell, blocking the sunlight, and Iris could smell a hint of smoke on the wind. She knew why when she reached the crest of the summit. In the distance, Clover Hill was burning.

He had nearly forgotten about Keegan with her little book of vows, and Marisol with the two rings, and Attie with her basket of flowers. But the stars were emerging overhead. The sun had retreated behind the hill; the clouds bled gold. It was almost dark.

The vows they spoke to each other were ancient. Words once carved in stone during a time when all the gods lived and roamed the earth. “I pray that my days will be long at your side. Let me fill and satisfy every longing in your soul. May your hand be in mine, by sun and by night. Let our breaths twine and our blood become one, until our bones return to dust. Even then, may I find your soul still sworn to mine.”

Gorgeous!

His breath escaped him, a tenuous unspooling, as if he had been holding it in years for her.

Kissing him in the dark was entirely different from kissing him in the light. When the sun had gilded them hours ago, they had been eager and clumsy and hungry. But now, in the shadows of night, they were languid and thorough and curious.