Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

His gaze lifted and found her on the other side of the room, over the sea of desks and paper and conversations. For a breath, Iris couldn’t move. And whatever mask he had been wearing for everyone else—the smile and the merry eyes and the flushed cheeks—faded until she saw how exhausted and sad he was. It struck a chord within her, music that she could feel deep in her bones, and she broke their stare first.

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.

Let us make our names exactly what we want them to be.

this weighted sense of peace she felt as she gave the earth seed after seed, knowing they would soon rise. It quieted her fears and her worries, to let the soil pass through her fingers, to smell the loam and listen to the birdsong in the trees above. To let something go with the reassurance it would return, transformed.

Her eyes were wide and wild as she stared at him. He could lose himself in those hazel eyes, in wanting to calm the fear that blazed within her. But he had never felt so terrified or powerless himself, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to get them both out safely. Soldiers began to flow around them like a current, preparing rifles and screaming orders. Yet there was such stillness between him and Iris. As if time was stopping. “Get your bag, Iris,” he said. Calmly, as if they had experienced this together before. She grabbed the strap of her leather bag. It took her a moment to slip it over her back, her hands were quivering so violently. 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.

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 prefer sunsets over sunrises, but only because I love to watch the constellations begin to burn.

“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.”