Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)(74)

They went deeper into the trenches this time. Iris’s legs were trembling as she realized the gunfire was beginning to ease. Did that mean Dacre’s soldiers had killed everyone at the front? Did that mean they would soon press closer? Would they kill her if they found her, stranded in the thick of the trenches? Did they take prisoners?

Before Dacre takes them. The captain’s words echoed through her, making her shiver.

Distracted, Iris tripped over something.

It brought her to her knees, and she felt stray pieces of shrapnel bite into her skin.

Stanley paused, glancing over his shoulder to look at her. “Get up,” he said, and he suddenly sounded afraid, because the gunfire was waning.

But Iris was scarcely listening to him, or the way the world was becoming eerily silent again. Because there on the ground was a leather bag that looked just like the one she was carrying. Scuffed and freckled with blood and trampled by countless boots.

Roman’s bag.

Iris slipped it onto her shoulder. It rested beside her own bag, and she felt the weight settle on her back as she rose to her feet once more.



* * *



“What are you still doing here, correspondent?” Captain Speer shouted at Iris. “Get in the lorry! You should have evacuated an hour ago!”

Iris startled. She was standing in Station Fourteen, uncertain what she should be doing. All she knew was there was blood dried on her hands and jumpsuit, and the scrape on her chest was burning, and her pulse was frantic, wondering where Roman was.

“Go!” the captain screamed when Iris remained standing blankly.

Iris nodded and stumbled through the dusky light to the back of the lorry. Soldiers were being loaded, and she waited, not wanting to push her way through. Eventually, one of the privates saw her and hefted her up into the crowded bed without a word.

She sprawled on top of someone groaning in pain.

Iris shifted her weight, unbalanced by the two bags on her back. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“Miss Winnow?”

She studied the bloodied soldier beneath her. “Lieutenant Lark? Oh my gods, are you all right?”

It was a ridiculous thing for her to ask. Of course, he wasn’t all right—none of them were all right—but she suddenly didn’t know what to do, what to say. She gently moved to sit beside him, wedged between his body and another soldier. The lorry jerked and rumbled forward, jostling everyone in the back.

Lark grimaced. In the faint light she could see the dirt and blood on his face, the shock haunting his eyes.

“Lieutenant Lark?” Iris glanced down at his hand. His fingers were splayed over his stomach, coated in bright blood. As if he were holding himself together.

“Miss Winnow, I told you to retreat. Why are you still here? Why are you in this last lorry with me?”

The last lorry? Iris swallowed the acid that rose in her throat. There had been so many other wounded soldiers at Station Fourteen. She shouldn’t have taken a seat. She shouldn’t be here.

“I wanted to help,” she said. Her voice sounded rough and strange. Like it belonged to someone else, and not her. “Here, what can I do to make you more comfortable, Lieutenant?”

“Just sit here with me, Miss Winnow. Everyone … they’re gone. All of them.”

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. That “everyone” was his platoon. The Sycamores.

She closed her eyes for a moment, to center herself. To tamp down her rising panic and tears. She was sitting in the covered back of a lorry, surrounded by wounded soldiers. They were driving east, to where Avalon Bluff lay, kilometers away. They were safe; they would reach the infirmary in time.

The cut on her chest flared.

Iris lifted her hand and pressed her palm over it. That was when she realized something was missing. Her mother’s golden locket.

She swore under her breath, searching around her. But she knew the necklace was long gone. The chain must have broken when the grenade’s blast hurled her forward along the ground. The remnant of her mother was most likely still there, in the place that had blown her and Roman apart. She could see it in her mind’s eye—the locket now trampled into the mud of the trench. A small glimmer, a faint trace of gold among shrapnel and blood.

Iris sighed, lowering her hand.

“Are you well, Miss Winnow?” Lark asked, bringing her back to the present.

“Yes, Lieutenant. Just thinking of something.”

“Where is Mr. Kitt?”

“He was wounded earlier. He’s already in transport.”

“Good,” Lark said, nodding. He clenched his eyes shut. Iris watched the blood continue to pool through his fingers. She could feel it slowly seep into the leg of her jumpsuit. “Good. I’m glad … I’m glad he’s safe.”

“Would you like to hear a story, Lieutenant Lark?” Iris asked quietly, not sure where the question came from. “Would you like to hear how Enva played Dacre for a fool with her harp beneath the earth?”

“Yes. I would like that, Miss Winnow.”

Her mouth was so dry. Her throat felt splintered and her head was throbbing, but she began to spin the myth. She had read it so many times in Carver’s letters; she had his words memorized.

When the soldiers in the lorry around her fell quiet, listening, she wondered if perhaps she should have chosen a different myth. Here she was, talking about Dacre, the author of their wounds and pain and losses and heartaches. But then she realized that there was power in this story; it proved that Dacre could be tamed and bested, that Dacre was not nearly as strong and shrewd as he liked to be perceived.