CHAPTER THIRTY #2
“Someone must guard the carousel,” Cyrus confirms. “And if he was to free you of the duty, then he had to offer himself up in your place. Cheer up; I could have bartered for worse.”
Remember that I did not ask for your life.
I stick out my chin. “You can ask for it. For my life. I’ll guard the carousel.”
And it’ll be a choice I willingly make.
“So dramatic,” Cyrus tuts. His grin is as wicked as it is rare. “But my brother can handle it just fine.”
I’ll be fine, Everest had assured me. And maybe he would be alive and well, but all I’ve done is shift my burden onto someone else.
I’d taken his immortality at its value, told myself he would be okay, but I should know better by now that the length of one’s life is but a small part of the bigger picture.
“Don’t do it,” I demand, more frantic. I no longer care to feign composure or strength; I no longer want them to think of me as an immortal timekeeper. I’m nothing but a woman desperate to preserve what has always been mine.
But maybe it never was meant to be. Maybe you’ve learned no lesson at all.
I look to them, one by one. “Please.”
“It may already be too late,” Sienna says, and as if she’s cast a spell, the eleven gods shimmer, translucent, like I’m viewing them through a sheath of water.
Their skin glows in silver whorls and I realize what they look like: the river of memories and regrets that runs through the fair.
Their bodies shift together, and if they touch just a bit, they’ll merge into one magnificent being, out of reach, beyond any prayers.
My skin tingles with fervor, a static pressure pinching me all over.
It was them. They were the ones watching me in Darjeeling, in Churchill. Cyrus and the rest of them, tracking my every move.
“I don’t care,” I tell them. “I’ll give you anything.”
“You said that once before,” Cyrus says, and even his voice grows distant now, like he’s speaking at me through space. “And you spent an eternity regretting it.”
He’s right about that. But I’m not the person I was when I arrived at the fair, no matter how much I’ve clung to her. I’ve learned the cost of choice, and the rewards of love, and I know the weight of my word when it sits in my heart.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him. “I don’t regret it. I can’t regret what’s brought me here.”
I’ve always known this, but it’s freeing saying it out loud. Something long knotted in my chest loosens and gives way, and the next breath I take floods parts of me that have remained untouched.
The carousel shrieks again; one of the siblings appraises it from over their shoulder.
“I think it’s time,” another god says.
Sienna flashes me a smile as she steps out of my way. “You can go ahead now.”
I frown at her. “Will you not tell me what you want, then?”
“We’ll collect when we need to,” she says, quirking an eyebrow. “We just had to make sure of a few things first.”
“Before what?”
Sienna pushes me into the carousel.
This time, I’m not sucked into an alternate movie of my life. There’s a brief darkness, and then the sweet release as I’m spit out, my body flailing into the night until I crash into something hard.
The wind is knocked out of me so violently that I don’t realize I haven’t landed on the ground. I’ve landed on a person.
“Ryka?”
His voice is a music box, opened after years of disuse, only to envelop me in the kind of safety and love that I hadn’t thought possible.
It’s Everest’s body under mine, his face studying me like I’m a ghost, except our bodies are solid, hard.
He’s real under me, and it’s all I can do to not run my hands all over him.
For a second, all I can hear is the sound of our shallow heartbeats.
“You didn’t wait,” I tell him.
“I-I thought you weren’t coming back,” he says. He’s so speechless, he’s not moving, like if he breathes too hard I’ll vanish. His gaze is so intense that I melt under it and onto him. I can’t help it; I reach out and cup his beautiful face.
“I had to give your flowers away,” I tell him quietly. “It’ll make a little girl very happy. I’m sure of it.”
“I can get you a whole field,” he says hoarsely. I can’t stop myself from winding his hair around my fingers, from digging into every piece of him that I never thought I’d see again. “But, are you…how are you…”
“I want to know,” I tell him. “I want to know everything.”
He studies me. “Are you sure?” His voice is raw, nails running down my back. “Because if you walk away–”
“I won’t,” I tell him, and I mean every word. “I choose this place. I choose this life. I choose what I’ve built for myself today, and the future it brings. I choose you.”
My hands rest on his chest and I feel the hollow space within echo; the universe thrums beneath his ribs.
“I’ve spent the better part of my life staring at the stars, looking for new mysteries to unravel,” he says, his eyes softening. “Everything lost its shine a long time ago. I think I could spend an eternity unraveling you.”
I’m not sure I’m breathing.
He cups my cheek. “We’ve seen so many love stories play out over the years.
Ones that have lasted and ones that didn’t.
You know a secret that I’ve never told anyone about the eclipse?
Sometimes, our tampering doesn’t do anything, because the gravity of the people involved is so strong that they find their way back to one another again.
” He puts a finger to my lips, interrupting my response.
His eyes darken. “I know every word in every language across worlds, but none quite describe the way you make me feel. I love you, Ryka. The kind of love that keeps me up at night, aching to tell you about each second of my day. The kind of love that could shatter dimensions and put them back together. The kind that the ghosts could tamper with at the eclipse, but I know, deep down the timeline, that I would find my way back to you.”
“I love you, too,” I say, and it’s the easiest confession I’ve ever made. “I’ve loved you so long, in every time and space.”
I don’t know how I’ve spent centuries staying away, because when I kiss him, it feels like something I’ve been doing my entire life.
His hands slide up my back, one holding my neck while the other wraps around my waist, and I can’t get enough of him.
Time could dissolve into a streaming river, but he’s the rock to anchor me through it.
Tears run down my face, tinging our kisses with salt.
I laugh, drawing back to wipe them away.
“You may be stuck with me a while longer,” I tell him, rubbing at my nose.
He smiles up at me and says, “I couldn’t imagine anything better.”