Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)(52)

Roman was quiet as the weight of her words unfolded. His fiancée was suggesting they would take their own lovers, then. Their marriage would be in title only. A sad binding with hollow vows.

You deserve this, a voice whispered to him. The voice of his guilt, which still flared brightly even four years after Del’s death. You don’t deserve to be happy or loved.

“As you want, then,” he said.

Elinor met his gaze for a brief, unguarded moment. She was relieved he had agreed to it, and it only deepened his despair.

She strode away, her heels clicking on the checkered floors. But Roman remained seated at the table as the dessert arrived. He stared at it for a long moment before his gaze wandered back to the statues, entwined in the corner.

He would soon be married to a girl who had no interest in knowing him. Her heart belonged elsewhere, and he’d never know what it would feel like to be loved by her.

It’s what I deserve, he thought again as he drank the rest of the champagne.

He left the restaurant and began the walk back to the Gazette, hands shoved into his pockets and a scowl on his face. There was a crowd on one street corner, and Roman began to divert his path until he realized it was gathered around the newsstand.

Quickly, he changed course, getting in line to purchase whatever paper it was that had stirred up a frenzy in the people. Of course, it wasn’t the Gazette. It was the Inkridden Tribune, and Roman paid for a copy.

He walked a few paces away, told himself to quickly glance over the front page and then toss it in the nearest rubbish bin. Zeb Autry would fire him on the spot if he knew his newly appointed columnist was entertaining the competition. Roman could skim and walk, and he snapped the creases from the paper as he read the headline.

He came to an abrupt halt.

His heart was suddenly thrumming, pounding in his ears.

In bold type, the headline raced across the page:





THE UNEXPECTED FACE OF WAR by INKRIDDEN IRIS


Roman stood in the sunshine and read every word of her article. He forgot where he was, where he was standing. Where he was going. Where he had just come from. He forgot everything when he read her words, and a smile crept over his face when he reached the end.

Damn, he was proud of her.

There was no possible way this paper was going into the rubbish bin. Roman carefully folded it, hiding it in his jacket. As he hurried back to the Gazette, he couldn’t think of anything else save for Iris and her words.

He thought of her as he waited for the lift. It was broken. So he took to the stairs, and his heart continued to race long after he had returned to his desk, and he didn’t know why.

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.

He shifted, listening to the paper crinkle in his jacket. A paper inked with her words.

She was writing brave, bold things.

And it had taken him a while, but he was ready now.

He was ready to write his own story.



* * *



Iris remained with Marisol at the infirmary that night. After all the mattresses had been laid down, the two of them had helped in the kitchen, preparing soup and bread. Then they had washed plates and linens and scrubbed blood off the floors and prepared bodies for burial.

The soldier Iris had helped off the lorry was one of them.

It was almost midnight now, and Iris and Marisol were sitting on a stack of empty crates in a corner, shredding bedsheets into bandages. Attie had been gone for hours, and Iris couldn’t help but wonder where she was, if she had reached the war front yet. How much danger she would be in.

“She’ll be safe,” Marisol said gently, as if she had read Iris’s mind. “I know it feels futile to say this, but try not to worry.”

Iris nodded, but her thoughts ran in a tight circle. She kept seeing the moment the lorry doors were opened, revealing the wounded soldiers.

“Marisol?”

“Hmm?”

Iris was quiet, watching her shred the sheets with precision.

“Is Keegan fighting in the war?”

Marisol froze. But she met Iris’s gaze, and there was a hint of fear within her. “Why do you think that, Iris?”

“My brother is fighting for Enva, and I recognize the same gleam in you that dwells in me. The worry and the hope and the dread.”

Marisol sighed, her hands dropping to her lap. “I was going to tell you and Attie eventually. I was just waiting.”

“What were you waiting for?” Iris asked.

“I didn’t want it to interfere with your work,” she replied. “Helena has no idea my wife is fighting. I don’t know if she would even send correspon dents to my door if she knew. You are, after all, supposed to be writing from a neutral perspective.”

“She knows my brother is fighting, and she still hired me,” Iris said. “I don’t think you should have to hide the fact that your wife is brave and selfless.”

Marisol was silent, her long fingers tracing the bandages on her lap. “She’s been gone seven months now. The day word broke out that Dacre had taken the town of Sparrow, she enlisted. In the beginning, I asked her—I begged her—not to go. But then I realized I couldn’t hold her in a cage. And if she felt so passionately about fighting Dacre, then I needed to support her. I told myself I would do whatever it took at home to help, whether that was making food for the infirmary or agreeing to house war correspondents, or even giving up my groceries to send to the soldiers on the front.”