Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)(80)

Roman began to rinse the shampoo, pleased when she groaned. “Did I?”

“The electricity could be out on the winter solstice, and I would know the moment you stepped into the Gazette. I hated you for it too.”

He grinned as he drew circles on her back with the bar of soap. The scent of evergreen and meadow grass spread across the eaves of her shoulders. The curve of her spine. “And look where that disdain has brought you.”

“I would have laughed if you had revealed my fate to me then.”

“I know,” he said.

Iris was quiet. The water continued to fall, filling the chamber with a mesmerizing drone, when she turned to face him. His gaze dropped, following the line of her body to her legs, where his attention stopped and held.

Roman had noticed when he had eased down her stockings. The bruises and scabs on her knees. And he hadn’t told her, but he had watched her run through the meadow of Hawk Shire from the second-story window. He had seen with his own disbelieving eyes how she had dodged the gunshots. How a motorcar’s headlights had cut through the darkness, carrying her away.

Run, Iris.

He had felt those kilometers like an illness, spreading through him. Blood to bone to organ. The distance that waxed like the moon. The wondering and the worries as to where she was going and if he would ever see her again.

Roman set down the soap.

He sank to his knees before her, his hands touching those tender marks on her skin. They told him she was strong and brave, but also that she was his. Their souls weren’t mirrors but complements, constellations that burned side by side.

I want you to see me, he had once written to her. I want you to know me.

He pressed his face to her legs. He felt her bruises as if they were his own and he traced them with his lips, tasting the water on her skin. His blood was pounding, hot and fast. A summer thunderstorm in his veins, and yet the moment Iris touched his hair, Roman’s mind stilled.

He looked up at her face, rosy and dark-eyed.

“I was so worried,” Iris whispered.

“And what had you worried?”

“That you and I would never have another moment like this again.”

Roman swallowed. He could have said a hundred things, but he realized she was shaking. He realized he was as well.

“You’re trembling,” he said. “Is the water too cold? Do you want me to stop?”

“Gods, no. I was only thinking how strange it is. To think how many people we cross paths with in our lives. How someone like me has found someone like you. And if I had never written that essay and sent it to the Gazette on a whim … would we still be here?”

“Are you getting philosophical on me, Iris?”

“I can’t seem to help it. You bring out the very best and the very worst in me.”

“I certainly bring out the best. But the worst?”

She only held his stare, water dripping from her jaw like tears. But then she caressed his hair again, a soft touch that he felt down to his toes. It wasn’t power or fear or magic that cleaved his heart open but her hand, gentle with adoration.

“And the answer is yes, by the way,” he said, kissing the curve of her knee. “I would have still found you, even if you had never written that essay.”



* * *



The hot water went out three minutes later.

Roman grappled with the lever, shutting off the valve as frigid water sluiced over them. Iris gasped, but he didn’t know if it was from the shock of cold or from the way he stood and took her in his arms, carrying her from the shower.

This wasn’t what he had envisioned for the night, but when Iris wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him, Roman decided that, for the first time in his life, he preferred to live in the moment.

He walked her to the bed and laid her down. His breaths were ragged; water dripped like rain down his back. But the sight of her chased away the lingering cold.

The way Iris gazed up at him, her eyes dark as new moons, drawing him in like the tides. The way she held to him, whispering his name against his throat. How she moved with him, in the light as well as in the darkness. The feel of her skin against his; the sensation of being bare and yet whole. Safe and complete.

She saw him as he saw her. With eyes open, with eyes shut.

As the stars faithfully burned beyond the window, Roman had never been more certain.

He could wake in the deepest region of Dacre’s realm, as far from the moon and sun as divinity could shackle him. He could wake and not know his name, forgetting every word he had ever written. But he would never forget the scent of Iris’s skin, the sound of her voice. The way she had looked at him. The confidence of her hands.

And he thought, There is no magic above or below that will ever steal this from me again.





{36}

Guests, Indefinitely




Iris dreamt of the Revel Diner. She sat at the bar with a book and a glass of lemonade before her, watching as her mother waited on tables. It felt like any other day, a page torn from her past, for she had often visited the diner before the war. Before Aster had started to drink heavily. That was how Iris knew she was dreaming. Her mother looked vibrant and whole again, quick to smile and laugh, her eyes bright as she moved around the café.

“Another lemonade, Iris?” Aster said as she returned behind the bar.