Her breath hitched as she glanced over her shoulder.
Roman stood against the wall, gazing at her. His face was pale and lean, even more so than it had been the other night when she had slept in his bed. She wondered if he was eating, if he was sleeping. His expression was impassive, his eyes cold as the winter sea. He looked just like he had in the Gazette days, professionally stitched together on the outside in his freshly starched clothes and slicked-back hair. But she could see a muscle tic in his jaw. She noticed his hands were bunched in his pockets, hiding his fists.
“Yes,” she breathed, returning her attention to Dacre. “I remember Kitt.”
“He gave you my letter at the café, did he not?”
Iris accepted the teacup and saucer from Dacre. She was mortified by how her hand trembled. How small and weak she seemed, compared to the divine.
“He did,” she said, resisting the urge to look at Roman.
Act like you hate him again. Despise him. Like he isn’t the other half of you.
Dacre studied her as she poured milk and honey into her cup, taking her time as if it would delay the inevitable.
“I saw you last night at the Green Quarter,” he said.
Iris set down her spoon. “Yes, I was there.”
“I was the one who put your name on the invitation list. I wanted to meet you.” Dacre leaned closer, dropping his voice to a deep rumble. “Why did you run from me, Iris?”
“Sir?”
“I saw you through the smoke. I was coming to heal you, to help you. And you ran.”
“I didn’t feel safe there.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
Yes, she wanted to say. She was afraid of him. But she held his stare, her tongue pressed against her teeth.
“What did you think of my speech?” Dacre asked. “Before it was … interrupted?”
“Truthfully? You said everything those people wanted to hear. You were selling them a dream, not a reality.”
“You disapprove, then?”
“It simply doesn’t align with what I’ve heard of you.”
“And what, Iris Winnow, have you heard? And from where?”
Iris hesitated. She wasn’t sure how to answer. She felt like she was playing a game of chess with him, and there was no chance of her winning.
“I’ve heard plenty of stories,” she said, tracing the porcelain handle of her teacup. “From my time reporting on the front lines.”
Dacre was pensive, but it seemed he knew exactly what she implied. Had she not seen his destruction with her own eyes? Sometimes she still couldn’t sleep at night, for fear of seeing those memories again. The panic and blood of trenches under fire. The Bluff, broken after the bombings.
The silence stretched thin, uncomfortable. Iris forced herself to take a sip of tea, now lukewarm and far too sweet. She could hear the faint draw of Roman’s breath behind her.
We are trapped here, she thought, her stomach aching. We are trapped within his web, and I don’t know how to free us, Kitt.
“Why have you summoned me?” Iris asked.
“You know why, Iris.” Dacre’s lackadaisical demeanor was infuriating. And yet the tension was brewing between them, pulling taut as a rope that had almost reached its limit.
“If you want my answer from your previous query,” Iris said, “it’s no.”
“No…？”
“I will not write for you.”
“But you’ll write for Enva? That’s quite the, oh, what do you mortals call it? Roman, what word am I searching for?”
Roman was quiet, a beat too long. When he spoke, his voice was a rasp. “Hypocrisy, sir.”
“Hypocrisy,” Dacre repeated with a sharp-edged smile.
“I don’t see how that’s so,” Iris said. “We mortals have the freedom to choose who or what we worship, if we worship at all.”
“So you worship her?” His eyes narrowed, taking in Iris’s garments. The dark green shirt, the pearl buttons. Clothes that Enva had left behind for her.
Iris didn’t move. Could he sense it? That she had been with Enva through the night?
“What do you know of the divines?” Dacre said, his gaze returning to hers. Even then, Iris could hardly breathe. “Do you know that all of us, even the Skywards—Enva’s self-righteous kin—seek our own gains? We are selfish by nature. We will do anything, even kill our own children, our siblings, our spouses to survive. Why do you think so few of us remain after there had once been hundreds of us, above and below?”