Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment #1)

Her mother was asleep on the sofa when Iris got home that evening. A cigarette had burned through the threadbare cushion, and the candles on the sideboard had almost melted into stubs.

Iris sighed but began to clean up the empty bottles and ashtrays. She removed her boots, wincing to see that the blisters had bled through her stockings. Barefoot, she stripped her mother’s wine-stained sheets off the bed and then gathered a few garments to launder, carrying everything down to the common area. She paid a few coppers for water and a cup of soap granules and then selected a washboard and bucket and began to scrub.

The water was cold, pumped up from the city’s cistern, and the soap turned her hands raw. But she scrubbed away the stains, and she wrung out garment after garment, her anger fueling her long after her stomach ceased groaning its emptiness.

By the time Iris had washed everything, she was ready to write the This isn’t Forest person back. She returned to the flat and hung everything up to dry in the kitchen. She should eat something before she wrote them, or who knew what might come out of her. She found a tin of green beans in one of the cupboards and ate it with a fork, sitting on her bedroom floor. Her hands ached, but she reached for Nan’s typewriter beneath the mattress.

She’d kept the note she’d received last night, and it sat open by her knee as she furiously began to type a reply:

You claim who you are not, but without further introducing yourself. How many of my letters have you received? Do you make it a habit to read other people’s post?

Iris folded the paper and slid it beneath the wardrobe door.

Roman was reading in bed when the paper arrived.

He had come to know the sound of Iris’s letters well, how they slipped like a whisper into his room. He decided he would ignore this one for at least an hour, his long fingers hidden in the pages of the book he was reading. But from the corner of his eye, he could see the white patch on the floor, and it eventually bothered him so greatly that he rose from bed, shutting the tome with a sigh.

It was late, he realized as he checked his wristwatch. Shouldn’t she be in bed? Although if he were honest … he had been waiting for her reply. He had expected it last night, and when it failed to appear, he halfway believed she would cease sending letters.

He didn’t know if it would be more of a relief or a regret, to no longer have her letters mysteriously arrive to his room. He blamed this estate—it was an old, sprawling house, rumored to be built on a ley line of magic. Because of that, the Kitt mansion had a mind of its own. Doors opened and closed of their own volition, the curtains drew back at sunrise, and the floors shined themselves until they gleamed like ice. Sometimes when it rained, flowers would bloom in the most unexpected places—teacups and vases and even old shoes.

When Roman was fifteen—a year that he hated to remember—he had struggled with insomnia. Nearly every night, he would walk the dark corridors of the house, choking on heartache until he came across the kitchen. A candle would always be lit on the counter beside a warm glass of milk and a plate of his favorite biscuits. For that entire year, he thought the cook was the one leaving the meal out for him, until Roman realized it was the house, sensing his troubles and seeking to comfort him.

Roman now stared at Iris’s letter on the floor.

“Still trying to amuse me?” he asked the wardrobe door. Of course, the house would not only seek to console him at his lowest but also be fond of mischief.

He had instantly known the letters were from Iris. She had given herself away not in name but in other ways. Her employment at the Oath Gazette was the primary one, and then her exquisite, visceral writing style was the other. At first Roman thought the letters were a prank. She had found a clever way to charm the house and get in his head, to unsettle him.

Which meant he would ignore them both. Iris and her letters. He had tossed that first letter of hers in his dustbin. It had sat there for a few hours while he typed at his desk, but by midnight, when he was exhausted and bleary-eyed and certainly not thinking straight, he retrieved the letter and stuck it in an old shoebox.

Forest must be her lover, off at war.

But then Roman soon realized, no. Forest was her older brother, and it tore something up in him to read how angry and sad and worried she was. How much she missed him. By the vulnerability in her letters, Roman knew Iris had no inkling her words had found their way into her rival’s hands.

He had spent a full week pondering over this dilemma. He should let her know. Perhaps in person, one day at the office? But Roman lost the nerve every time he imagined it. So perhaps it was best by letter? He could write something along the lines of: Hello, thank you for writing, but I believe you should be aware that your letters have somehow found their way to me. And this is Roman C. Kitt, by the way. Yes, the Roman C. Kitt at work. Your competitor.

She would be mortified. He didn’t want to embarrass her, nor did he want to suffer a slow, painful death at her hands.

He had decided he would say nothing, and simply pick up her letters when they arrived and put them in the shoebox. Eventually she would cease writing or Roman would at last move out of this room, and it would no longer be a problem.

Until the letter had arrived last night.

It wasn’t addressed to Forest, which instantly hooked Roman’s interest.

He had read it, like he had read all the others. Sometimes he read them multiple times. At first it was a “tactic,” because she was his competition and he wanted to know as much about her as possible. But then he realized he was reading them because he was deeply moved by her writing and the memories she shared. Sometimes he studied the way she spun words and language, and it made him both envious and awed. She knew how to stir up feelings in a reader, which Roman found quite dangerous.

If he wasn’t careful, she would beat him and win columnist.

It was time he wrote her back. It was time he got into her head for a change.

This isn’t Forest was all he had typed last night, and a weight had slipped off his chest with the acknowledgment.

He had defied the logical side of his brain and slipped the words through his wardrobe door. This is ridiculous. Why am I doing this? he had thought, but when he checked his closet, the paper had vanished.

He was shocked but imagined Iris would be more so. To finally have someone write her back after three months. Someone who wasn’t Forest.

Roman now bent to gather her letter. He read and felt the insult within it, particularly the Do you make it a habit to read other people’s post? Scowling, he walked to his desk and fed a page into his typewriter. He wrote:

I’ve made a habit of picking up the stray pieces of paper that somehow appear in my room at random intervals. Would you prefer I leave them on the floor?

And then sent it back through the wardrobe.

He paced, impatient as he waited for her to reply. I should tell her now, he thought, dragging his hand through his hair. I should tell her it’s me. This is the point of no return. If I don’t tell her now, I will never be able to.

But the more he thought of it, it more he realized he didn’t want to. If he told her, she would stop writing. He would lose his tactical advantage.

Her reply came at last. Roman was strangely relieved as he read:

You could always be a lamb and return my previous letters. I wouldn’t want your floor to suffer. Or your dustbin.

It was like she knew he had tossed the first one in the trash. His face reddened as he sat at his desk. He pulled open one of the drawers, where the shoebox hid. Roman lifted its lid to stare at the host of letters within. Page after page. Words all written to Forest. Words he had read multiple times.

Roman should send them back to her.

And yet …

I’m afraid I’m unable to return them.

He sent the terse message. He paced again as he waited, and when Iris remained silent, Roman grimaced. This was it. She was done.

Until another page whispered over his floor.

You’re welcome for the good laugh, then. I’m sure my letters were highly diverting while they lasted, but I won’t bother you or distress your floor again.

Cheers!

Roman read it, three times. Here was his way out. No more annoying papers littering his floors. No more opportunities for Iris’s writing to haunt him. This was good. This was brilliant. He had put a stop to it without having to embarrass her or reveal himself. He should be pleased.

Instead, he sat at his desk. He typed, allowing the words to spill out of him like a candlelit confession. And he sent his letter to her before he could think better of it.

By all means, don’t stop on account of me or my floor. I claimed who I wasn’t, and you then—quite naturally—asked who I am, but I think it’s better this way. That we keep our identities secret and just rest in the fact that some old magic is at play here, connecting our doorways.

But just in case you were wondering … I’ll gladly read whatever you write.