“Here, start with the cocoa,” Attie said, offering a steaming cup to Iris.
Iris took it gratefully, sinking into her usual chair. Marisol continued to set down plates on the table. She had made some sort of cheesy hash, full of comforting ingredients, and gradually, Iris was able to begin taking a few bites. The warmth trickled through her; she sighed and felt herself slowly returning to her body.
Attie and Marisol sat and ate with her, but they were quiet. And Iris was thankful. She didn’t think she could speak of it yet. Just having them close beside her was all she needed.
“Can I help you clean, Marisol?” Attie asked, rising to gather the dishes when they were done.
“No, I’ve got this. Why don’t you help Iris to her room?” Marisol said.
Iris’s eyes were heavy. Her feet felt like iron as she rose, and Attie took hold of her arm. She hardly remembered ascending the stairs, or Attie opening her door and guiding her inside.
“Do you want me to stay with you tonight, Iris?”
Iris sank to her pallet on the floor. The blankets were cold.
“No, I’m so tired I don’t think sleeping will be an issue. But wake me if a siren sounds.”
She hardly remembered falling asleep.
* * *
Iris woke with a start.
She didn’t know where she was at first. Sunlight was streaming in through the window, and the house was silent. She sat forward, her body stiff and sore. The B and B. She was at Marisol’s, and it looked to be late morning.
The events of the past few days returned to her in a rush.
Roman. She needed to go to the infirmary. She wanted to see him, touch him. Surely he was awake by now.
Iris stood with a groan. She had fallen asleep with wet hair, and it was a snarled mess now. She was reaching for her comb when she saw her bag on the floor nearby, Roman’s directly next to it. Both were scuffed and streaked with dirt. And then her gaze roamed to her jumpsuit, discarded by her desk where her typewriter sat, gleaming in the light.
Carver.
His name whispered through her, and she eagerly glanced at her wardrobe, expecting to find letter after letter on the floor.
There was nothing. The floor was bare. He hadn’t written to her at all while she was away, and her heart sank.
Iris closed her eyes, her thoughts swimming. She remembered his final letter to her. The one she had shoved in her pocket and tried to read before Roman interrupted her twice.
She dove for her jumpsuit, searching the pockets. She half expected the paper to be gone, just like her mother’s locket, as if the battle had also torn it away from her. But the letter was still there. A few specks of blood had dried on one of the corners. Iris’s hands trembled as she smoothed the page out.
Where had she left off? He was asking her questions. He wanted to know more about her, as if he felt the same hunger she did. Because she wanted to know him too.
She found the place. She had almost been at the end when Roman had rudely tossed that paper wad at her.
Iris bit her lip. Her eyes rushed along the words:
I want to know everything about you, Iris.
I want to know your hopes and your dreams. I want to know what irritates you and what makes you smile and what makes you laugh and what you long for most in this world.
But perhaps even more than that … I want you to know who I am.
If you could see me right now as I type this … you would smile. No, you’d probably laugh. To see how badly my hands are shaking, because I want to get this right. I’ve wanted to get it right for weeks now, but the truth is I didn’t know how and I’m worried what you might think.
It’s odd, how quickly life can change, isn’t it? How one little thing like typing a letter can open a door you never saw. A transcendent connection. A divine threshold. But if there’s anything I can should say in this moment—when my heart is beating wildly in my chest and I would beg you to come and tame it—is this: your letters have been a light for me to follow. Your words? A sublime feast that fed me on days when I was starving.
I love you, Iris.
And I want you to see me. I want you to know me. Through the smoke and the firelight and kilometers that once dwelled between us.
Do you see me?
—C.
She lowered the letter but continued to stare at Carver’s inked words.
What is a synonym for sublime? Roman had once asked her from his second-story window. As if he were a prince, trapped in a castle.
Divine, she had grumbled from below, where she had been watering the garden. Transcendent, Attie had offered, assuming he was writing about the gods.
Iris’s heart pounded. She read through Carver’s letter again—I love you, Iris—until the words began to melt into each other, and her eyes were blinking back a sudden flood of tears.
“No,” she whispered. “No, it can’t be. This is a mere coincidence.”
But she had never been one to believe in such things. Her gaze snagged on Roman’s bag, lying in the center of the floor. He had been so insistent that she grab his bag after he had been injured. She could still hear his voice, vividly.
Iris … my bag … I need you … need to get my bag. There’s something … I want you—
The world stopped.
The roaring in her ears returned, as if she had just crouched through an hour of artillery fire.
Carver’s letter slipped from her fingers as she walked to Roman’s bag. She bent down and retrieved it, dried dirt cascading in clumps from the leather. It took her a minute to get the front untethered. Her fingers were icy, fumbling. But at last it was open and she turned it upside down.
All his possessions began to spill out.
A wool blanket, a few tins of vegetables and pickled fruits. His notepad, full of his handwriting. Pens. A spare set of socks. And then the paper. So many loose pages, fluttering like snow down to the floor. Page after page, crinkled and folded and marked by type.
Iris stared at the paper that gathered at her feet.
She knew what this was. She knew as she dropped Roman’s bag, as she knelt to retrieve the pages.
They were her letters.
Her words.
First typed to Forest, and then to someone she had known as Carver.
Her emotions were a tangled mess as she began to reread them. Her words stung as if she had never once typed them sitting on the floor of her old bedroom, lonely and worried and angry.
I wish you would be a coward for me, for Mum. I wish you would set down your gun and rend your allegiance to the goddess who has claimed you. I wish you would return to us.
She had thought that Carver had thrown away the very first of her letters. She had asked him to send them back to her, and he had said it wasn’t possible.
Well, now she knew he was lying. Because they were here. They were all here, wrinkled as if they had been read numerous times.
Iris stopped reading. Her eyes were smarting.
Roman Kitt was Carver.
He had been Carver all along, and this realization struck her so hard she had to sit down on the floor. She was overwhelmed by a startling rush of relief. It was him. She had been writing to him, falling for him, all this time.
But then the questions began to swarm, nipping at that solace.
Had he been playing her? Was this a game to him? Why hadn’t he told her sooner?
She covered her face, and her palms absorbed the heat of her cheeks.