Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, #2)(86)

“Looks like we’re going to be late to work,” Attie was saying.

“I can still get you there on time,” Tobias replied.

Iris stopped abruptly in the grass. There was a slight rumble in the ground; she could feel it through the soles of her boots.

“Wait…” Attie also sensed it, coming to a halt. “Is that what I think it is?”

Iris couldn’t speak. Time suddenly felt like it was rushing along too quickly, as if a clock had lost a gear, losing minutes by the hour.

But it was exactly what Attie thought.

Dacre’s forces had almost reached Oath from below.



* * *



It had been a long, surreal day. One that had seen Roman essentially under house arrest, with Dacre, his select officers, and his best soldiers milling through the rooms, invading all the spaces that had once felt safe to Roman.

His typewriter remained on the war table in the transformed parlor, as if Dacre had decided it was his. Everything in the estate, actually, seemed to be his now, and Roman’s father had let him take that ownership without batting an eye. Even the books that had been on Roman’s shelves, Dacre had confiscated to leaf through.

All morning, Roman had watched as Dacre tore some pages out, tossing them to burn in the fire. Pages of myths that could never be reclaimed. Pages that Dacre didn’t like because their ink limned his true nature.

It made Roman’s head ache. All those pages, lost to ash. His grandfather’s books ruined.

Dacre had only been interrupted when a covered motorcar with black drapes shielding its windows pulled into the Kitts’ drive. It was the chancellor, covertly arriving for a meeting, as Dacre’s presence in Oath was still a heavily guarded secret. Roman was sent away from the room then, to sit with his mother and nan in the west wing of the estate. As far from the god and the war as his father could put the women.

But by sundown, Roman had still failed to come up with a clever way to get the typewriter back in his possession.

Exhausted, he retreated to his room.

It was dark, save for the moonlight that flooded in through the windows. Roman stared at the very window he and Iris had crawled through—had it only been that morning?—before he sighed and stepped deeper into the chamber.

From the corner of his eye, he could see a patch of white on the floor, just before the wardrobe.

It caught his attention; his breath hissed through his teeth as he realized what it was. A letter, from Iris. He rushed to it, his knees hitting the hardwood as he gathered the paper into his hands.

“Light the lamp,” he whispered hoarsely, and the house obeyed. His desk lamp flickered on, washing the room in golden light.

Roman trembled as he unfolded the paper. It looked creased, worn. There were smudges of dirt on it, but he was so relieved that he couldn’t think straight. He didn’t wonder how this impossibility had happened, since his typewriter was still in the parlor and not his room. He didn’t wonder why this letter looked so tattered, and he read as if starved for the words:

I’ll return most likely when the war is over.

I want to see you. I want to hear your voice.

P.S. I most certainly don’t have wings.

Roman froze.

He knew these words, intimately. He had read them, over and over. He had carried them in his pocket; he had borne them in the trenches. Iris had both tossed these words at him in the infirmary, and then breathed life into them on their wedding night, giving the ink her voice.

This was an old letter. A letter she had written to him weeks ago, and one he had believed to be lost.

“How?” he marveled aloud, sitting back on his heels. His knees twinged in protest, but the pain turned into crackling static when he heard footsteps. When he saw a figure emerge from the lavatory.

Roman gazed up at Lieutenant Shane. Wide-eyed. Unable to breathe. Clutching Iris’s letter to his chest like it was a shield.

Shane held up a stack of paper. Worn and crinkled and full of typed words. He threw the letters down; they spread across the rug. White as apple blossoms, as bone, as the first snowfall.

Shane’s voice was pitched low, but his accusation burned through the air.

“I know you’re the mole, correspondent.”





{38}

By Invitation Only




“What do you mean?” Roman asked.

He knew he sounded dense, but he was struggling to breathe. To think his way through this unforeseen encounter, one that could end either with him tortured and hung from his father’s gate or with him coming through the night with the most unlikely of allies.

Shane stepped closer, his boots crinkling the letters on the rug. Roman winced but didn’t break their stare. He didn’t move or cower when the lieutenant reached into his pocket, but it was only to procure another folded sheet of paper.

He held it out to Roman, daring him to take it.

Swallowing, Roman accepted.

This paper was crisp, fresh. But he could see the inked words within, and he unfolded it to read:

This is a test to see if the strike bars E & R are in working condition.

EREEERRRRR

E



“You find this incriminating?” Roman asked, but it felt like ice had lodged in his stomach. “I type these messages out occasionally before I start work, because the strike bars E and R often get stuck, and I don’t want to—”