Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)

by Rebecca Ross

Iris stood amidst the hum, her gaze flickering to Roman’s desk. It was empty, and she was pleased until she glanced at the assignment board and saw him standing there, waiting for her to appear. As soon as their eyes met, he gave her a lazy smile and reached up to the board, yanking a piece of paper from a pin. The last assignment. Iris didn’t move, not even when Roman Kitt wound around the cubicles to greet her. He was tall and lithe with cheekbones that could cut stone, and he waved the piece of paper in the air, just out of her reach. The piece of paper she so badly wanted.

“Going easy on me, then?” He arched a brow. “That’s surprising. We’re supposed to duel to the death.” She snorted. “A hyperbolic turn of phrase, Kitt. Which you do often in your articles, by the way. You should be careful of that tendency if you get columnist.” A lie. Iris rarely read what he wrote. But he didn’t know that.

“Has anyone ever told you that you squint when you lie?” His scowl only deepened. “No, but only because no one has spent as much time looking at me as you do, Winnow.”

Iris stared at the pile, remembering her first day of work three months ago. How Roman Kitt had been the last to shake her hand and introduce himself, approaching her with a hard-set mouth and cold, keen eyes. As if he were measuring how much of a threat she was to him and his position at the Gazette.

Iris had sat hunched at her desk, reading what Roman had written about a retired baseball player—a sport Iris had never cared about but suddenly found herself ensorcelled by, all due to the poignant and witty tone of Roman’s writing. She was transfixed by his every word, feeling the stitches of the baseball in her hand, the warm summer night, the thrill of the crowd in the stadium— “See something you like?” Roman’s haughty voice broke the spell. Iris had startled, crumpling the paper in her hands. But he knew exactly what she had been reading, and he was smug about it.

She could hear Roman’s steady typing, like a heartbeat in the vast room. Fingertips striking keys, keys striking paper. A prodding for her to do better than him. To claim the position before he did.

She thought of an old proverb that Forest used to invoke: Turn a foe into a friend, and you’ll have one less enemy.

Back in the quiet of her chamber, Iris opened the window and listened to the rain. The air was cold, brisk. A trace of winter lingered within it, but Iris welcomed its bite and how it made her skin pebble. It reminded her that she was alive.

all the while waiting for Forest to write to her. He never had. And Iris could no longer bear the silence. She had no address; she had no information as to where her brother was stationed. She had nothing but a beloved tradition and she did as her nan would have done—Iris gave the folded paper to the closet. To her amazement, the letter had been gone the next day, as if the shadows had eaten it.

She drew the blankets to her chin but left the candle burning, even though she knew better. I should blow it out, save it for tomorrow night, she thought, because there was no telling when she would be able to pay the electricity bill. But for now, she wanted to rest in the light, not in the darkness.

This isn’t Forest. The words echoed through Iris as she walked down Broad Street the next morning. She was in the heart of the city, the buildings rising high around her, trapping cold air and the last of dawn’s shadows and the distant ring of the trams.

She had almost been hit. The realization made her knees quake. And someone was still holding her arm. She glanced up to behold Roman Kitt with his fashionable fawn-colored jacket and shined leather brogues and slicked-back hair. He was staring at her as if she had sprouted a second head.

“Pardon me, Kitt.” Roman didn’t move. His gaze was fixed on her as if he wanted to read her mind, and Iris fought the temptation to smooth the stray tendrils of her hair, to anxiously roll her lips together.

He had come to know the sound of Iris’s letters well, how they slipped like a whisper into his room. He decided he would ignore this one for at least an hour, his long fingers hidden in the pages of the book he was reading. But from the corner of his eye, he could see the white patch on the floor, and it eventually bothered him so greatly that he rose from bed, shutting the tome with a sigh.

He had instantly known the letters were from Iris. She had given herself away not in name but in other ways. Her employment at the Oath Gazette was the primary one, and then her exquisite, visceral writing style was the other. At first Roman thought the letters were a prank. She had found a clever way to charm the house and get in his head, to unsettle him.

Forest was her older brother, and it tore something up in him to read how angry and sad and worried she was. How much she missed him. By the vulnerability in her letters, Roman knew Iris had no inkling her words had found their way into her rival’s hands.

Until the letter had arrived last night. It wasn’t addressed to Forest, which instantly hooked Roman’s interest. He had read it, like he had read all the others. Sometimes he read them multiple times. At first it was a “tactic,” because she was his competition and he wanted to know as much about her as possible. But then he realized he was reading them because he was deeply moved by her writing and the memories she shared. Sometimes he studied the way she spun words and language, and it made him both envious and awed. She knew how to stir up feelings in a reader, which Roman found quite dangerous.

By all means, don’t stop on account of me or my floor. I claimed who I wasn’t, and you then—quite naturally—asked who I am, but I think it’s better this way. That we keep our identities secret and just rest in the fact that some old magic is at play here, connecting our doorways. But just in case you were wondering … I’ll gladly read whatever you write.

The streetlamps were beginning to flicker to life, illuminating his face with amber light. She hated how handsome he was. She hated how her heart softened when he looked at her.

“Let me guess. He’s young, handsome, suave, and knows you write better than him, so he’s doing all he can to distract and worry you.”

No letter from Iris. But of course, she probably wasn’t home yet. Roman had a terrible inkling that she didn’t take the tram but walked to and from work, and that was why she was late sometimes. It wasn’t his problem, but he kept envisioning her limping. As if something was wrong with those godsawful boots she was wearing.

He took Enva below. But little did he know what her music would do once it was strummed deep in the earth.

“I always thought the two of you would make such a striking pair. A few of the editors—not me, of course—cast bets that you would end up together.” “Me and Kitt?”

Roman Coddled Kitt was engaged, then. Which was fine. People got engaged every day. Iris didn’t care what he did with his life. Perhaps he had been up late last night with his fiancée, and she had made him run late.

Iris knew it was Roman without looking at him. She recognized his cologne—some heady mix of spice and evergreen.

“I don’t hate sandwiches,” he said, and he sounded more like his old self. “You dislike them, though,” Iris stated. “I’m simply too busy for them. They’re a distraction. And distractions can be dangerous.”

She suddenly had no idea what they were discussing—if it truly was about sandwiches or about her or about how he regarded her or about this tentative moment they were sharing.

“It feels like wearing shoes that are too small,” she whispered. “With every step, you notice it. It feels like blisters on your heels. It feels like a lump of ice in your chest that never melts, and you can only sleep a few hours at a time, because you’re always wondering where they are and those worries seep into your dreams. If they’re alive, or wounded, or sick. Some days you wish that you could take their place, no matter the cost. Just so you can have the peace of knowing their fate.”

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

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.

The knocking came again, insistent. And then his voice—which was the last voice she wanted to hear—called through the wood: “Winnow? Winnow, are you there?” Roman Kitt was at her flat, knocking on her door.

Iris froze as his eyes raced over her. For a split second, she was so relieved to see him that she could have wept. But then she realized two horrible things. The first was that her blouse was gaping open, the buttons undone halfway to her navel. She glanced down and saw the white lace of her bra, which Roman no doubt had also noticed by now, and she gasped, holding the fabric closed with a trembling hand.

And that was when the second terrible revelation hit her. Roman Upper Class Kitt was standing in her home. Her rival was standing in her flat, beholding the disarray of her life. He could see the melted candles on the sideboard from all the nights she couldn’t afford electricity, and the stray wine bottles that she had yet to gather and dispose of. How barren the living room was, and how the wallpaper was faded and falling apart.

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.

I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.

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. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams. You are not alone.

Grief is a long, difficult process, especially when it is so racked by guilt.

Roman was quiet but his face flushed, and she had the frightening inkling that while she made it a point to never read anything of his, he might be reading everything she touched. Including the dry classifieds and tragic obituaries. Perhaps he did it to see if she’d left a typo behind, to taunt her with after it went to print. Perhaps he did it because she was his competition and he wanted to know who, exactly, he was up against.

“Don’t go, Iris,” he said. She had never heard him say her given name. It seeped through her like sunlight, warming her skin and her blood, and she had to glance away from him before he saw how much it affected her.

He should be thrilled. He had solidified himself as the new columnist. He no longer had to worry about the things on his desk being rearranged. He no longer had to race to the bulletin board for assignments. He no longer had to pretend he was too busy for sandwiches. If this was the life he wanted, then why did it feel so hollow?

It isn’t the wardrobes connecting us. It’s our typewriters.

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

“They’re not even my sisters by blood, but I choose them. And that sort of love is everlasting.”

her gaze fixed on the narrow wardrobe door on the other side of her room. She wondered if this threshold would work just like the one in her bedroom. If she typed on Nan’s typewriter, would her letters still reach the nameless boy she had been writing? Iris wanted to find out how strong this magical bond was. If six hundred kilometers would break it.

“I’m Prairie,” the girl said, glancing at Iris. “Like the grass.” “I’m Iris. Like an eyeball.”

She went soldier to soldier after that, offering to write a letter for each of them. She didn’t ask for details about the war, or why they had chosen to fight, or how they had sustained their injuries, or if they knew of a private named Forest Winnow. All of them had someone to write home to, and Iris tried not to think of her brother as she scribed letter after letter, as her notepad soon brimmed with homesick words and memories and encouragement and hope.

Roman sent the message through his wardrobe not long after Iris sent her abrupt one. He knew something unexpected and terrible must have happened, for her to misspell three different words. He paced late into the night, his eyes straying to the closet, to the clean-swept floor before it. Hour after hour passed, dark and cold, and she didn’t write. What was happening? He was desperate to know.

“Iris,” he spoke into the lamplight. “Iris, write to me.”