Chapter Seven
He knows the woman who raised him. He knows, without a shadow of doubt, that she chose this path for a purpose. Can see the direction she’s leading him in as clearly as if she pointed it out with her own gnarled hand. It is only because he knows her, trusts her, loves her, that he follows.
BALKAN MOUNTAINS, BULGARIA
Grief is a strange thing. Some moments it’s a weight on her chest, a pressure behind her eyes and glass in her throat.
Then, when the tears slow and her breath no longer feels like it’s being torn from her lungs, everything starts to feel less.
Numb. It’s the difference between fighting against the current and letting the river sweep her away. Struggle and surrender.
Anna thinks it feels a little bit like drowning.
Limbs weightless and cold. Suspended in time while the world continues to turn.
It’s hours before they resurface. Anna only knows because the shadows have lengthened, reaching across the landscape like the grasping fingers of a ghost chasing the last rays of light.
Khiran’s breath fans over her collar. His arms encircle her, but his hold lacks the urgent pressure that left phantom bruises on her skin. “We can’t stay here.”
Anna swallows, eyes drifting shut. She doesn’t know how she can possibly move when it feels like she’s still being dragged down, down, down. How can she run when it feels like she’s still pinned down by the weight of an ocean?
He lifts his head from her shoulder, the palms of his hands sliding along her jaw. Red rims his eyes, making the blue of his irises look glassy. “We have to.”
“I’m so tired,” she says, but the words crack and crumble. They feel as weak as she is.
“Look at me,” he murmurs, a thread of a command lacing his voice. It sounds strained. Fragile.
One wrong move and it feels like they both will shatter, but there are no hands Anna trusts more than the ones that hold her now. She looks at him. Sees all the ways his pain matches her own.
His thumbs brush over her cheeks, wiping at tears that have long since dried.
“It can’t be for nothing, Anna. You have to try.
If you don’t, if they find us here and they take you, I will never forgive you.
Do you understand?” Gently, as if the pressure alone could break her, he kisses her.
“Please,” he murmurs, the word whispering against her lips. “Tell me you understand.”
Raising her hands to grasp his wrists feels like moving through mud. It’s so heavy. She’s so tired. Still, his pulse is a steady beat beneath her fingertips, a reminder that giving up now means giving him up forever. “Where should we go?”
A moment of silence, and Anna feels the fracture on her heart widen. He doesn’t know either.
She wets her lips, giving his wrists a small squeeze. “Pick a direction,” she offers, with more faith than she feels. It sounds frail even to her own ears, but she’s trying. Perhaps that’s the first step. Blindly choosing a path and pretending to hope there’s something brighter at the end of it.
He scans the trees, as if looking for an answer in the maze of swaying branches. “East. We’ll head East.”
East, Anna thinks, where the setting sun will be at their backs and they can avoid watching the last glimmers of light slip away.
Khiran says little while they walk, but he tells her what she needs to know.
The woman hunting them has a name and limits just as he does.
Marcia can follow magic to its maker, can twist it into a pathway she can travel, but only if she’s ready to catch it while it’s in use.
As long as he doesn’t use his magic, she’ll only have mortal means in which to reach them.
It means they have time, but Khiran warns that Marcia will know where Eira’s path ended.
If she gets close enough, she’ll still be able to track them the way a dog follows a scent.
They only stop once it becomes too dark to travel.
Wherever they are, the night is warm even when the moon paints the landscape in cool silver.
It’s a small blessing… Anna isn’t sure she could have summoned the willpower to build a fire even if it were freezing.
Laying on a bed of pine needles, she curls into Khiran’s side in a desperate attempt to find some comfort in his touch.
“Do you know where we are?” The murmured question sounds loud in the dark.
The silence that answers her is long enough to make her doubt if he’s awake, but the sigh she feels beneath her palm gives him away before his voice does. “Bulgaria. Judging by the beech trees, I’d guess we’re in the Balkan Mountains.”
She’s unfamiliar with this part of the world. If she’s ever stepped foot here, it was only ever under Eira’s powers. The trip too short to ever get her bearings. “Is one of your hideouts here?” She can’t bring herself to say the word home.
“No.”
Anna remains silent. There’s a question burning on her tongue, but she can’t bring herself to speak it. Not when they’re suffocating beneath the weight of their grief. Not when the sound of Eira’s name still twists at her heart.
Somehow, Khiran hears the question she’s left unsaid. A grimace pulls at his mouth, the hand on her hip clenching in the fabric of her dress. “We’re going to Const—no, they’re not calling it that anymore. Istanbul. We’re going to Istanbul.”
Anna studies his face, measures the way his heart pounds beneath her open palms. “What’s in Istanbul?”
Beneath her hand, his chest moves around a sigh. “Cassius.”
Anna stares, the meaning behind his words slowly sinking in.
It can’t be a coincidence that Eira would send them here—so close to where Silas urged them to seek shelter.
Anna thinks of Eira’s hand, outstretched and disintegrating like ashes on the wind, and feels her throat close and her stomach sour.
She suspects the path would have led them all the way to Turkey had the flames not interrupted.
That the path stayed open long enough for them to get this far…
Eira’s magic must have held by sheer will alone even after her body couldn’t.
She tries to hide the hitch in her breath, fists her hand in the lapel of his coat to disguise the trembling. It doesn’t work. In the moonlight, the pale ivory of her ring glows against the charcoal fabric twisted in her grip, and Khiran folds himself around her. Holds her closer.
Anna wonders how it must hurt—feeling her pain curling in his chest when he’s already drowning in his own.
They find a road the next morning.
Khiran convinces an elderly woman into driving them five hours to Istanbul with charm and a few pieces of gold. The truck is cozy, certainly not ideal for three adults. Anna spends most of the ride on Khiran’s lap just so the woman—Albena—has plenty of room to change gears.
Khiran does all the talking, his tongue curling around a language she doesn’t understand as they approach the city.
He must say something amusing, because Albena’s lips pull into a leathery, wrinkled smile as her head tips back.
Grey hair peeks out beneath the red scarf tied securely over her head and knotted beneath her chin.
She drops them off in front of the arched entrance of the Bazaar, the network of winding streets filled with swaths of people and the heavy scent of spices.
Khiran bids Albena farewell for the both of them, their lone bag slung over his shoulder. The smile he wears drops the moment she pulls her truck back onto the busy street. Replaced by a fatigue so bone-deep, Anna worries it might cripple him.
She takes his hand, their fingers lacing. It’s not enough to erase the shadows under his eyes, but she hopes it’s enough to remind him that he’s not alone. Not here and not in his grief. He gives her fingers a gentle squeeze. It feels like gratitude.
“We need some provisions.” He glances down at her, a frown creasing his brow. “When was the last time you ate?”
The smells wafting from the various restaurants have been teasing her since she opened the truck door. “Yesterday morning.” She doesn’t remind him that it was his last meal, too. She suspects she’s not the only one whose hunger was swallowed by despair.
He nods. “Food first, then.” A moment of consideration, and he adds, “And coffee.”
She’s not sure what she was expecting, but the Baazar is huge.
A network of brightly painted domed ceilings and a labyrinth of narrow streets filled with everything from a kaleidoscope of mosaic glass lanterns to spices.
Large arched windows let in a stream of light over their heads.
Cats roam freely, some of them curling up contently in the booths—napping on heaping stacks of vibrantly colored rugs.
Anna takes it in, momentarily breathless by the unexpected beauty of it.
“It’s grown over the years, but the oldest parts of the Baazar have been here since the 15th century.” Khiran tells her, allowing her a moment to let her eyes wander.
“Grown?” Anna echoes, turning to him curiously. “How large is it?”
He frowns in thought. “If memory serves, there’s over several thousand shops.” Anna blinks, stunned, and his eyes soften—the corners of his mouth twitching in a shadow of a smile. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to appreciate it fully. Not today.”
She nods, her eyes scanning the faces in the crowd. “Do you think we’re safe here?”
Khiran hesitates. “Marcia will have already followed us as far as the Balkan Mountains. She’ll be tracking us from there. As long as I don’t give her magic to trace, time is on our side. Our dear friend, Albena, did us a greater service than she realizes in driving us as far as she did.”
“Good. That’s good.” The tension in her shoulders, the unspoken fear coiled around her heart like a noose, goes slack. “Because food sounds like a really good idea.”
He breathes a laugh, the sound weak and rough around the edges, but honest.