Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)(111)

Enva turned to regard her. “Hello, Iris.”

“Are you truly here, or am I dreaming?”

The goddess didn’t reply in words, but when she reached for the steaming kettle, the pot melted in her hands.

A dream, then, Iris thought. “Why have you come to visit me again?”

Enva straightened, as if she suddenly felt uncomfortable in a kitchen, seeking to do mortal tasks. “I wanted to see you again. Before you made the descent below.”

Iris studied her a long moment. “How many other dreams have you walked?”

“More than I could count.”

“You’ve visited Attie.”

“Yes,” Enva replied carefully. “I wanted you both to hear the lullaby.”

“What about Forest?”

“A few times.”

“And Kitt?” Iris asked. “Have you visited his dreams?”

“Not in the way you think.”

“How, then?”

Enva waved her hand over the cooker. The kettle reappeared and remained solid as she gripped it, pouring hot water into a teacup. “I helped him remember who he was.”

Iris was silent, recalling the words Roman had typed to her. Every night when I dreamt, I was trying to bring all the pieces back together. I was trying to find my way back to you.

“By which you undermined Dacre,” said Iris.

Enva kept her gaze on her teacup as she doled out a spoonful of honey. “There were a number of soldiers from Oath who I inspired to fight. Your brother was one of them. I hoped they would give enough aid to the west so that Dacre could be killed by a mortal’s hand. But many of these soldiers died in graves I have yet to sing over, and some my husband healed and used for his forces in a twisted way. I could not leave the city in my corporeal form, but I could use Alva’s magic to reach these soldiers in dreams. To help them remember who they were.”

“Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?” Iris asked quietly. “If you killed Mir, Alva, and Luz in their graves, why not Dacre?”

At this, Enva turned away. Her posture was rigid as she breathed, and Iris wondered if she was about to dissolve from the dream, choosing to wane rather than answer.

“Have you ever given someone a vow, Iris?”

Enva’s question was so unexpected that Iris merely blinked. But when she closed her eyes, she could still hear an echo of herself, speaking vows to Roman in a twilit garden.

Even then, may I find your soul still sworn to mine.

“Yes,” Iris said.

“When I went below to rule beside him, I gave him my vow as he gave me his. But I didn’t realize that Skyward promises are vastly different from those of Underlings. With my words, I vowed to never end his immortality, but he didn’t grant the same to me. I didn’t fear that he would kill me in those honeymoon days, even as I wandered deep in his domain. I knew that he was charmed by my presence, but one day he would grow weary of me. One day, I would find him holding a blade to my throat, hungry to steal my magic and be rid of me.” Enva drank the tea and set the cup on the counter. She looked over her shoulder and held Iris’s gaze. “I could wound him, though. Humiliate him. Leave his realm if I could outsmart him. But I could not break my vows and kill him.”

Iris let the words sink in. She wondered if upholding immortality was woven into Skyward vows to prevent spouses from marrying and then killing each other. To prevent gods from stealing more power from the ones they were closest to. The ones they were supposed to love.

“I lied to my husband many times,” Enva continued. “And I lied to Alzane, your mortal king, when he asked me to kill the other four divines. We had an agreement that I could be the last goddess in the realm—the last vessel of magic—but I needed to give another vow and stay in Oath so the king could keep me within his clutches. The song I sang over Mir, Alva, and Luz was like a blade to their sleeping throats. They were trouble, and it was good to see them gone. But Dacre? I could not kill him, and so I sang for as long as I could, to hold him in a grave for centuries. Alzane never knew it; he thought all the gods dead save for me, and he spun a story that we were all sleeping, so his people could continue to worship and live in blissful magic and peace.”

Iris studied Enva’s face. She wondered what it would be like to hold a lie for so long. To be sworn to a husband who yearned for bloodshed. To be immeasurably powerful but trapped in a city. To find only anguish in magic that had once been incandescent with joy.

“He’s in Oath,” Iris said. “At the Kitt estate.”

“I know.” Enva glanced away. “I found him in a dream. It was then I knew he would stop at nothing until he held my severed head in his hands.”

“Iris.”

It was Forest’s voice, distant but laced with urgency. Iris could feel his hand on her knee, shaking her.

The dream began to waver, threatening to break. Iris gritted her teeth, striving to keep it intact for a moment longer, even as the floor began to vanish in patches beneath her.

“Why did you come to me as my mother?” she dared to ask. “Why not show me who you were to begin with?”

Enva smiled. It was a sad crescent of a moon, and her hair began to whip around her as if she were being drawn into a storm.

“You mortals are slow to trust. And I needed you to trust me, Iris.”