“Very well.” Iris drank the last of her tea before setting the cup aside. “Is there anything else you’d like to say to me?”
Roman stared at her. There were hundreds of things he wanted to say to her, and yet he couldn’t voice a single one. Not here, in public. Not as he longed to do, as if it were just the two of them on an ordinary date, and after this they would take a stroll in the park, hand in hand.
Maybe one day.
“No,” he said. “And I’ve kept you longer than I should.” He rose and drew on his coat, putting the bill on his father’s tab.
Iris also stood, although that worried gleam had returned to her eyes. She pressed her lips together as she donned her coat, buttoning it tight this time.
“I suppose that’s it, then?” she asked.
It killed Roman to resist eye contact. To act like she was nothing more than a former colleague. He drew in a sharp breath, smelling a hint of lavender. He knew it was her skin, the soap she used.
“That’s it,” he said, hollow. “Good day to you, Winnow.”
He turned and strode away, shoving the café door open so hard that the bell above almost rang itself loose.
He walked, hands clenched in his pockets, until the city had swallowed him whole.
* * *
Iris stared at Roman’s retreating backside.
It felt like her heart had impaled itself on one of her ribs. That if she reached beneath her coat and sweater and touched her side, her fingers would come away bloodstained.
The dark spell was broken by the waiter, who began to gather up the dirty dishes.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Iris gave him a weak smile and stepped out of the way, but her mind was like a hive, humming with thoughts. She reached into her pocket and felt the sharp corner of the envelope again. Turning, she walked down the lopsided hallway to the lavatory.
It was empty, and Iris locked the door behind her.
She grimaced as she lowered the toilet lid and sat on it, bringing the notes out into the dim light. She stared at them both, as if caught between the starkness of the two. The blue one with her name in elegant ink—Iris E. Winnow—or the plain one, with Roman’s endearing scrawl—My Iris—over the face of it.
She had always preferred bad news first, and she tore open the blue envelope.
Dear Iris E. Winnow,
I confess that I had never heard of you, or taken proper interest in your journalism, until your most recent article in the Inkridden Tribune, by which I was deeply moved. Forgive me, for overlooking you in the past. In all my years, I have discovered that the most precious of things are often taken for granted, and that we tend to let time wheel forward at such a pace that we cannot catch every detail that makes the whole. We miss a multitude of opportunities, and so we ask ourselves, decades later, what could have been.
I do not wish the same for you—it is a constant flame I see in mortal kind—and hope you learn from my wisdom. For I would offer you the world reforged if you would be brave enough to stretch out your hand and take it. A writer such as you, with words like iron and salt, could change the very course of time if you only had the right support.
Come write for me. Come write about the things that are most important. The things that are often overlooked, and what lurks just beneath the surface of what we see. Join me and my forces as we build a stronger realm above, one of healing and restoration. One of justice for old wounds. I would like to hear your thoughts, face-to-face. I would like to see what other words hide within that mind of yours, and how we may use them to sharpen the world around us and usher in a new and divine era.
Think on my offer. You will know when to give me your answer.
Dacre Underling
Lord Commander
Iris released a tremulous breath as she lowered the paper to her lap.
She sat numb for a moment, staring at a painting that hung crooked on the wall. Dacre’s words spilled through her thoughts, permeating everything until it felt like she was about to sink into a bog.
“Later,” she whispered, tucking Dacre’s letter back into the envelope. “I’ll deal with this later.”
A bad idea to delay something that would only grow to become a stronger monster. As if her indecision and terror would feed it.
But Iris still had Roman’s note to read. She held it up, admiring his handwriting before she unfolded it. Her palms were damp, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might tear its way free, through bone and muscle and veins.
She would always take bad news first, and Dacre’s letter was one of the most sinister things she had ever read. But after her strange meeting with Roman, this could also be something terrible. Something she was not prepared for, just as she had not been prepared to hear his voice on the line, and Iris closed her eyes, afraid to read his words.