Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

“Enva’s music was never something to be afraid of,” Roman said before he could stop himself. “In myths, she strummed her harp over the graves of mortals who died, and her songs guided souls from their bodies to the next realm, whether it was to live above with the Skywards or below with the Underlings. Her songs are woven with truth and knowledge.”

Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you’ve so carefully encased yourself in? 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. They see all the times you’ve made mistakes, all the times you’ve failed, all the times you’ve hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes. How do you change something like that? How do you make your life your own and not feel guilt over it?

I think we all wear armor. I think those who don’t are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I’ve learned anything from those fools, it’s that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can’t risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there’s also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that tells me, “You will miss so much by being so guarded.” Perhaps it begins with one person. Someone you trust. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel.

One person. One piece of armor. I’ll strive for this. Thank you.

Sometimes I’m afraid to love other people. Everyone I care about eventually leaves me, whether it’s death or war or simply because they don’t want me. They go places I can’t find, places I can’t reach. And I’m not afraid to be alone, but I’m tired of being the one left behind. I’m tired of having to rearrange my life after the people within it depart, as if I’m a puzzle and I’m now missing pieces and I will never feel that pure sense of completion again.

But 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.

This has gone longer than I anticipated, but I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. To feel as if you’re left behind, or like your life is in shambles and there’s no guidebook to tell you how to stitch it back together. But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you—a shadow you carry in your soul—but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal.

But I think there is a magical link between you and me. A bond that not even distance can break.

Some moments, I feel okay. And then the next, I’ll be struck by a wave of sadness that makes it hard to breathe. I’m learning how to navigate it, though. Just like you once said to me.

He sat on the floor and reread them, and while he had always been moved by her words to Forest, 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.

It didn’t feel like fate; Roman didn’t quite believe in such fancies. But it certainly felt like something. Something that was now stealing his sleep and making his chest ache with each breath.

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?”

Relief, shame, admiration, sadness, hope, encouragement, dread, faith. And why such things are there in your bones, when you’ve yet to give yourself up to something so selfless. It’s wondering what tomorrow will bring. What the next hour will bring. What the next minute will bring. Time suddenly feels sharper than a knife grazing your skin, capable of cutting you at any moment.

It was that ache again. The one that tasted like salt and smoke. A longing he feared would only grow stronger with each passing year. A regret in the making.

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.

Now, onto the news you won’t like: I’m going to be away for a while. I’m uncertain how long at the moment, and I won’t be able to write to you. That’s not to say I won’t be thinking of you often. So please know that, even in the silence that must come between us for a little while.

She has to survive this, Roman thought. He didn’t want to live in a world without her and her words.

There was a click … click … ping behind them as she turned the corner first. “Iris,” Roman whispered, desperate. His grip on her tightened just before the explosion blew them apart.

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.

“I’ll find you,” she whispered and kissed his knuckles. He tasted like salt and blood.

I want to know everything about you, Iris. I want to know your hopes and your dreams. I want to know what irritates you and what makes you smile and what makes you laugh and what you long for most in this world. But perhaps even more than that … I want you to know who I am.

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 love you, Iris. And I want you to see me. I want you to know me. Through the smoke and the firelight and kilometers that once dwelled between us. Do you see me? —

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.

There is something electric within me. Something that is begging me to remove the last of my armor and let him see me as I am. To choose him. And yet here I sit, alone, typing word after word as I seek to make sense of myself. I watch the candlelight flicker and all I can think is … I am so afraid. And yet how I long to be vulnerable and brave when it comes to my own heart.

“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.”

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.

“The truth is I have my pride, and I feared my feelings. And so I left you with many things unsaid, and then I put what I thought was a cushion of days between us. Time to protect myself, to put all my armor on again. But then I realized that I’m not guaranteed anything. I should know this well by now, after being in the trenches. I’m not promised this evening, let alone tomorrow. A bomb could fall from the sky any moment, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to get to do this.”

“You see, Kitt,” she began. “I’m quite fond of Carver. His words carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life. He was a friend I desperately needed, someone who listened and encouraged me. I have never been so vulnerable with another person. I was falling in love with him. And yet my feelings became conflicted when you arrived at Avalon, because I realized that I halfway liked you.”

“I’ve wanted to get it right for weeks now, but the truth is I didn’t know how and I’m worried what you might think. 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 should say in this moment—when my heart is beating wildly in my chest and I would beg you to come and tame it…”

had never wanted someone so fiercely—it nearly felt like she was falling ill—and she caressed his hair.

She kissed him—a light brushing of her lips against his—and he was still, as if she had enchanted him. But soon his mouth eagerly opened beneath hers, his hands tracing the curve of her spine. It sent a shiver through her, to feel his fingertips memorize her, to feel his teeth nip at her bottom lip as they began to explore each other.

“Marry me, Iris Elizabeth Winnow,” Roman whispered, drawing back to look at her. “I want to spend all my days and all my nights with you. Marry me.”

“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. Iris, look at me. You deserve all the happiness in the world. And I intend to see that you have it.”

“Iris,” said Roman, “you are worthy of love. You are worthy to feel joy right now, even in the darkness. And just in case you’re wondering … I’m not going anywhere, unless you tell me to leave, and even then, we might need to negotiate.”

She needed to trust him. She had doubted him before, and he had proven her wrong. Again and again.

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.

But now that his tears were falling, it was like a dam had been breached. A small crack, and those old feelings of guilt flowed forth. He wanted to let them go; he didn’t want to bring all this baggage into his marriage with Iris. But he didn’t know how to be free of it, and he realized she would simply have to take him as he was.

“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.”

She wanted to simply enjoy the present. This was the life she wanted—slow and easy and vibrant, surrounded by people she loved. If only she could bottle this moment. If only she could drink from it in the days to come, to remember this feeling of warmth and wholeness and joy. As if all of her pieces had come back together, far stronger than they had been before she had broken.

She felt full and complete; she felt the wholeness in the dark, this weaving together of vows and body and choice.

In spite of all of that hope, my fear is sharper. It’s a knife in my lungs, cutting me a little more, a little deeper with each breath I take. I fear I will never see you again. I fear that I won’t get the chance to say all the things I never said to you. I don’t have my typewriter. I don’t even have pen and paper. But I have my thoughts, my words. They once connected me to you, and I pray that they’ll reach you now. Somehow, someway. An old trace of magic in the wind. I’ll find you whenever I can.

I never told you how relieved I was to discover you were Carver. I never told you how much I loved those morning runs with you. I never told you how much I loved to hear you say my name. I never told you how often I reread your letters, and how I now feel agonized, to know they are lost to me, scattered somewhere in Marisol’s B and B. I never told you that I think the world of you, that I want to read more of your words, that I think you should write a book and publish it. I never thanked you for going to the front lines with me. For coming between me and the grenade. I never told you that I love you. And I regret that, most of all.