Chapter Two
His hatred for them is a raw, burning thing kept alight by all the ways they’ve wronged him. Right now, he hates them for putting fear in her eyes. For forcing him to be the one to put it there.
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
The state battles record flooding that winter.
The newspapers print stories about levees breaking—water spilling into valleys and leaving homes and farms under water.
Khiran has already warned her not to attempt going into town—the San Lorenzo river has spilled over into the lowlands and completely cut her off.
Even once the water recedes, it will be weeks before the ground dries enough for the skinny wheels of her cart to make it without sinking.
Spring, she knows, will arrive faster than she’s ready (it always does). As soon as the storms ease and the soil begins to resemble dirt more than mud, she forces herself to go out and start clearing some of the garden beds.
Anna rises, leaning on her heels and adjusting the scarf around her neck.
The morning is clear and cloudless, but the wind is bitterly cold.
Looking over her shoulder, she’s unsurprised to find Khiran watching her.
The pages of his newspaper lie forgotten in his lap, the corners fluttering.
It’s a game he’s made—reading the papers just so he can point out the fallacies.
One point for every omission, five points for shameless propaganda, and ten points for blatant lies.
Yesterday he had awarded himself ten points when The Alabama Journal went as far as to claim Montgomery police were “protecting” participants of the bus boycott.
Anna crosses her arms over her chest, raising an eyebrow. “If you’re not reading, you might as well help.”
He hums, tilting his head. “I could.”
“But you don’t want to,” she says, filling in the part he purposefully left unsaid.
The grin he wears is crooked, but the warmth in his eyes softens the teasing edge. “Not in the least.”
Anna huffs on a laugh, shaking her head and brushing the dirt from the knees of her overalls. “Yet you still sit there and watch me.”
“You’re a pleasure to watch.” He folds the paper and sets it aside, the breeze teasing the pages. “You enjoy this life. It looks beautiful on you.”
“I’m covered in dirt.”
When she steps close enough, he laces his fingers with her own, not shying away from the soil blackening her fingernails. Despite being without a jacket, his hands feel blissfully warm. “Hence why I have no plans of joining you. I will, however, happily run you a bath when you’re finished.”
“How chivalrous.”
“My motivations are much more selfish, I’m afraid. I have high hopes of joining you.”
She shakes her head, but her cheeks ache from the force of her smile. “I haven’t finished clearing out the beds. I want them to be ready for spring.”
“Spring is months away.”
“But it’s dry now.” She grants him a quick kiss before returning to her work. “I only have a few more to do, anyway.”
The sigh he gives is petulant. “Very well.” He eyes the way she’s bundled in her coat, the scarf high on her neck, and the humor in his voice drains away. “You look cold.”
“It is cold,” she laughs, already wrapping her hands around a stubborn stalk and pulling it up by its roots. “But I’m fine.” She sets it aside and moves to the next one. “I’m just thankful the temperature never drops low enough for it to snow.”
She can feel his eyes on her, but the weight feels different. More studious than admiring. “Gloves would help,” he suggests, the offer unspoken but audible all the same.
He would bring her everything she could ever need or wish for if she let him.
Since he’s returned to her, the garden has become more of a passion project than a chore; the food she gathers more for pride than necessity.
She’s already had to remind him several times that she likes providing for herself in at least some capacity.
Likes the way it fills her days and rewards her efforts with results she can measure.
“They’re cumbersome,” she says, but the words don’t fully capture her feelings.
Her hands feel clumsy in gloves and, while they would provide her with warmth, they do little as far as protection.
She can sink her hands into the earth without fearing what might be hiding beneath it.
Once, her hand closed on a rock so sharp she’s certain her palm would have split if not for the immortal magic that flows through her.
The prick of pain only lasted a second. She’d much rather risk the occasional jab if it means being able to take comfort in the feel of soil parting around her fingers. Gloves may save her some discomfort, but they rob her of the feeling of connection, too.
“Why don’t you tell me a story?” she says, sending him a smile, her cheeks flush from the chill. “It’ll keep my mind off the cold.”
“You just want to keep me busy so I’ll stop needling you about going inside.”
Anna doesn’t bother denying it. “That had crossed my mind.”
His lips thin, but he leans his chin on the heel of his hand as he watches her. He’s silent for so long, she begins to think he’ll refuse. When he does finally speak, his voice holds a weight that makes her go still.
“The First’s favorite son is his strongest,” he says.
“Malik controls fire, births it from his palms and breathes it off his tongue the way dragons of myth and legend burned cities down to ashes.” He shrugs, leaning further into his seat and looking out over the horizon.
“Dragons aren’t real, of course, but the damage he left in his wake was.
He would burn his way across countries before The First finally put him on a shorter leash. He is the weapon he cannot control.”
“He’s also what Eira feared I would become,” he confesses with a wince.
“The First gave him power before he was old enough to wield it. A child prone to destruction. No one could touch him without paying a price for it. According to Eira, he set fire to everything he touched his first century, and with everything that burned his anger grew.”
Anna swallows. Her hands lie limp in her lap. She’s not sure when they stilled, when she became more engrossed with Khiran’s words than the work in front of her. “Why are you telling me this?” The story feels too pointed, too random, to be without purpose.
“Because that’s one of the soldiers he will send.” The answer is wrapped in resignation. His gaze slides away. “And because I realized I have allowed my bitterness to leave you completely unprepared. You should know who we will be facing.”
Anna turns, sits with her back against the wooden trusses of her raised bed. The cold from the ground seeps through her denim, but with the anxious, prickling heat she feels in her chest it’s almost welcome. “Who else?”
He tells her of The Huntress and her ability to track magic the way a hound tracks a scent with just a touch.
The Bladesmith who melds metal with her own blood to create weapons that can pierce gods.
The Heartsinger who can snare any heart and play them like a puppeteer plucking and pulling at strings.
The Timekeeper who can make a moment stand still.
Something nags at her. “Does Malik not have a title?”
He pauses, eyes dark with memories she’s afraid to know. “The Calamity.”
There’s an edge in his voice, a tightness in his expression, that sets her on edge. “You fear him.”
“We all do. He’s quick to temper and always catastrophic. There’s no controlling him. No reasoning with him. He’s a bomb waiting to go off and none of us are immune to his flames.”
“The First, too?”
He goes quiet. “No. I suspect fear is an impossible feeling for someone whose power is beyond everything.”
Anna frowns. Khiran’s words are soft, but they ring with the bitter edge of belief. Still, she can’t help but feel that they don’t ring quite true. “Not everything,” she muses, her eyes tracing the limbs of the branches overhead. “How could he possibly be stronger than the source?”
Khiran follows her gaze. “A tree is still just a tree, Anna.” He shakes his head, his words laced with regret. “Even when its roots cradle the world.”
Anna keeps staring, watching the way the naked branches sway, a whisper in the wind. “I disagree.”
There are questions in his eyes, but they lack the serrated edge of skepticism that would make his gaze feel mocking. His voice is soft, open and curious, when he asks, “What makes you say that?”
It’s silly, but she knows he’ll trust the truth of it, anyway. “It’s just a feeling.”
He tilts his head, studying her. “Try to explain it to me.”
Anna sighs, looking up at the sky as if she could find the answers in the clouds.
“Power isn’t always loud; sometimes it’s quiet.
Subtle. You have the ability to sway the course of history with the right face and some well placed words.
Maybe you aren’t a soldier, but not all battles are won by brute force alone. ”
“Try,” he corrects, voice soft. “I have the power to try to change minds. My failures outweigh my successes.”
“Your successes save more than my hands ever could,” she counters. A reminder, because there are moments where she’s certain he forgets. It must be hard to measure lives when he saves them from so far—when they are numbers and not names. Not faces.
His expression darkens. “And my failures lose twice as many.”
Anna has stopped thinking of the moments he was unsuccessful as failures. Every life saved is a life that would have been lost were it not for his influence. The only way he could fail, in her eyes, would be to sit by and do nothing.
She nods toward the old oak at the back of the house.
“That tree has stood for at least a century,” she murmurs.
“It’s survived that long without magic and on its own strength.
It has shaded this patch of land, has sheltered and fed generations and generations of wildlife, which in turn fed countless people.
There’s a power in that. Even if it’s quiet.
Even if we can’t see it.” She turns back to him.
“Maybe The Tree is like that. Like you.”
For a moment, he’s silent, his eyes measuring hers. “Maybe,” he concedes. “But it isn’t sentient. It doesn’t choose the hands that pluck its fruit from its branches any more than it can choose to do something about it. In The First’s care, it is a tool and nothing more.”
Anna doesn’t argue. He’s right on every point and she has nothing to counter with. Still, she can’t seem to shake the doubt rooted in her heart for reasons she can’t explain.
That night, she dreams.
She’s in the ground, thick roots twisting and spider webbing through the earth.
They’re everywhere. Tangling in her hair, twining between her fingers.
She can feel them fanning across her back and curling around her chest like a rib cage fashioned of gnarled wood instead of bone.
She looks down, feeling some of the fine roots along her jaw snapping like a thread pulled too tight.
A root, as thick as her arm, coils across her chest and over her shoulder, pinning her in place.
Beneath it are clothes worn thin and centuries out of style.
Her toes curl, sockless, in shoes that feel three sizes too big.
She hasn’t seen it in nearly a millennium, but she knows with a level of certainty only possible in dreams that it is the exact same thing she wore when Khiran offered her forever in the shape of a peach—henna swirling over his hands and bangled bracelets winking as brightly as his dark gaze when he promised death would never come for her.
Around her, the roots pulse.
The rhythm is too familiar to mistake—she hears it every time she presses her cheek to Khiran’s chest.
A heartbeat.
It is not roots that surround her, but veins. Arteries.
They all lead back to her.