Chapter Eleven #3
Khiran sits, stiff and silent, beside her as she answers Akar’s questions and makes small comments just to show she’s listening.
His hands are fisted in his lap, tendons straining as his eyes flit over the moving landscape.
The twisting mountain roads have given way to a level stretch of dirt and rock, the lingering dusting of winter snow slowly melting as they lost altitude.
They make it an hour before everything goes wrong.
There is a woman in the road.
Khiran curses, his arms wrapping around her, cradling her head to his chest just as their driver shouts.
Swerves. The tires skid on the gravel before they lift.
For an extended moment in time, gravity becomes more theory than law.
She is suspended, lap belt cutting into the tops of her thighs as the world outside the windows goes upside down.
The roof hits the ground first, steel crunching and windows shattering.
Glass showers over them, pelting her skin and tangling in her hair like crystal confetti.
The car rolls again, and again, and again.
It rolls enough times that the movement stays with her like an echo even after everything goes still.
For a moment, everything is suspended. Quiet.
When she looks, Anna finds Akar dead. The roof is crushed in, jagged steel pinning him to the seat, his eyes open and sightless as the blood saturates his shirt.
Anna thinks of the picture of his children that was on the dash, placed with care beside the speedometer.
The two girls he took this job for. The two girls who will never again welcome their father home.
Anna forces a breath, the air rattling in her lungs, as shaky as she feels.
She’s not sure what’s happened—not sure whether to feel shocked or afraid—not until the feel of Khiran’s grip registers.
When she looks down at the hand clutched in the fabric of her shirt, his knuckles are white and his expression is frantic.
Anna does not bleed. She does not bruise.
She knows it’s not her physical wellbeing that has made his face pale and his eyes wild.
Beside her Khiran, wheezes. “The belt,” he urges, his hands already fumbling with the catch. “Undo the seatbelt!”
It’s the pain in his voice that startles her back into the moment.
She turns to him so quickly, it takes a moment for her vision to catch up and her palms to find his cheeks.
There are a dozen tiny cuts on his hands and face.
One at the hollow of his neck bleeds enough to stain the collar of his kurta.
His fingers are slippery with it as he finally succeeds in unbuckling the latch. “Khiran—”
“Later,” he hisses. “Right now, we need—”
A voice calls out to them from outside the wreckage, familiar in ways that haunt Anna’s nightmares.
“Khiran, I’m surprised at you!” Marcia croons, a cruel tsk sharpening the edges of her voice.
“It’s not like you to miss an opportunity to run.
You must be getting rusty. Living like a mortal the way you’ve been. ”
He curses under his breath, eyes flitting over the crushed interior of the car, before winding his arm around her waist. “Hold on!” The words are a harsh whisper against her ear, the only warning she receives before the pit in her stomach drops, and the crushed steel shell around them twists, threads of color spinning until there is only open sky above them.
Anna recognizes this feeling, can almost taste his magic on her tongue.
Her vision doesn’t have time to settle before Khiran jerks back—a blade a hairsbreadth away from her face.
Marcia laughs, deep and rolling as thunder, pale blonde hair framing her angular face like a storm.
Anna fears the strike of lightning that’s sure to follow.
She thumbs the blade of her dagger, her flinty eyes alight with the thrill of the hunt.
For every cautious step they take back, she saunters forward with a feline grace.
There’s a promise in the way her mouth curves, sharp and wicked, that she’s here for more than their death.
She’s here for their pain. “That’s more like it. ”
Khiran says nothing, but his arm tightens around her as if he’s a moment away from fleeing. The line of his jaw is rigid, his stare cool and calculating in ways that contrast the heart beating wildly beneath Anna’s palm.
Marcia’s eyes roam over him, tongue rolling over her teeth.
“I admit, I thought that was rather clever of you—giving up your magic. It took me a few years to figure it out. I thought I might be losing my touch. So did The First, for that matter. You know how I hate disappointing him. I’ll be making sure you pay for the embarrassment you caused. ”
Her gaze slides to Anna, the edge of her smile growing feral. “Tell me, do you really think this human girl will be worth it?”
Khiran shoves her further behind him, his chest rising and falling and his lip curling in a sneer. “She has nothing to do with this.”
A lie, but he still manages to make it sound like the truth. Even if The First doesn’t realize it yet, Anna knows she has everything to do with it. In her coat pocket, her hand curls against cold iron—ready to free the blade from its sheath.
Only, the longer Marcia stares at her, the more her serrated smile dims and her eyes narrow.
Anna can practically see her mind turning—cataloguing her lack of injuries and tallying up the years and trying to make them match the youth still lining Anna’s face.
It’s only been six years since she first saw her face; six years since Eira’s heart and home burned to ash in front of their eyes.
It shouldn’t be long enough to suspect the absence of crow’s feet and laugh lines…
but it hasn’t been just six years. It was six years of running—of living a life that should have turned her skin leathery and her hands rough.
Anna sees the exact moment Marcia comes to the same conclusion.
She bristles, lips pulling back into a snarl. “No.”
It’s the only warning Anna gets before Marcia rushes toward them, her blade drawn and her eyes lit with fury.
Khiran grabs Anna by the waist, blinking them out of Marcia’s warpath only for her to follow the thread of magic faster than Anna can get her bearings.
She doesn’t know what’s happening—can only make out the flash of her blade and bits of earth and sky before Khiran flits away again.
And again.
Again.
Again, until Marcia screams. “You filthy coward! It’s been you all along! You’ve ruined everything!” Her blade comes down, the tip aimed at Anna’s throat before Khiran physically shoves her back.
The blade nicks his raised forearm before he tackles Marcia to the ground, grappling with the knife in her hands as he shouts over his shoulder. “Run!”
Anna staggers back, still dizzy from his magic, and her heel catches on something—sending her to the ground. She yelps, her shoulder crashing painfully against a strip of steel. It takes another moment for her vision to clear enough to realize where she’s landed.
Train tracks.
Staggering, she gets back on her feet, searching both sides of the track until she spots the train station in the distance—smoke curling lazily from the smoke box as it boards.
Anna thinks about how many times Khiran blinked away from Marcia’s strikes, despite knowing how easy it is for her to follow his magic and knows it can’t be a coincidence.
Run, he’d said.
He wants her to run for the train.
Dust kicks up like a whirlwind, a storm of sand and grit that stings her flesh and robs her of her vision. One of Khiran’s illusions, cast with so much magic it feels real. A smokescreen to shield her while she flees.
He should know better.
Nearly a decade ago she had stood in front of him, the barrel of a shotgun pressed to her chest and Jiro’s finger trembling on the trigger. Nearly a decade since he asked her to never put herself in harm’s way for him again.
Nearly a decade since she told him that she can’t (that she won’t) make such a promise.
Anna can barely make out the shape of them on the ground—can only tell Marcia is on top of him because of her halo of hair whipping around her face. As Anna stumbles closer, she can hear the other woman’s voice over the roar of sand.
“I told him! I told him he should cull you from the beginning! You’ve never been anything but a filthy liar and a thief!
” she snarls. Her hand is around Khiran’s neck pinning him to the ground effortlessly as he writhes beneath her.
His arms tremble, fighting against the blade pressing dangerously close to his chest.
Over his heart.
Fear is a fire in her chest, striking her with molten heat and crackling beneath Anna’s skin.
Khiran’s head snaps in her direction, pulled by the emotion lancing her heart.
His eyes are wide with a horror that matches her own.
He doesn’t speak—can’t with the hand around his throat—but Anna doesn’t need words to interpret the look he gives her.
You were supposed to run.
But she is running. Has been from the moment she saw how close she is to losing him. The blade in her pocket burns like a lifeline—his lifeline—the edge of unpolished iron biting hungrily against her palm as she grasps it. Ready to unsheathe it. Ready to use it.
Khiran’s expression twists, desperation fueled fury momentarily eclipsing the fear. A blink and he’s gone, Marcia’s blade stabbing through empty air and into the earth.
Anna’s steps falter, waiting for the inevitable moment Marcia follows his trail to wherever he’s gone.
It’s not until the fair-haired woman screams, hands tearing at her eyes, that she sees the cobra coiled and spitting venom beneath her.
Scales ripple back into flesh, Khiran’s hand grasping the blade Marcia abandoned.
He drives the steel between the cage of her arms and into her stomach.
Marcia’s savage howl is equal parts pain and outrage.
Khiran blinks away a split second before she strikes, the force of it making the ground tremble and leaving a crater in the shape of her fist. He reappears at Anna’s side, grasping her hand with an unspoken command.
Run.
Marcia screams at their backs. “You sniveling coward! Face me!”
Anna can hear the train. Hear the wheels on the track and the clunking heartbeat of pistons before she sees it. The beat is steadily increasing, the slow buildup of momentum before it goes barreling full speed down the track. The last car is in sight, a beacon of hope if only they can reach it.
The stitch in her side protests angrily, but she only pushes herself to go faster. They’re almost there. The pain she feels is only temporary. A lie when the threat behind them is terrifyingly real.
Khiran reaches it first, hoisting her up onto the platform.
Anna grips the railing, turning to offer him her hand and pulling him up.
She looks up, sees Marcia staggering after them and then the flash of a blade, bloody metal winking like death in the sunlight, a moment before Khiran cries out and falls at her feet.
There is a knife lodged between his ribs, its polished handle gleaming in the sun and blood blossoming, wet and hot and crimson, over his kurta.
Anna shouts his name, dropping to her knees.
He answers by pulling the knife out himself, biting back a curse and eyes flashing.
Pressing his hand over the wound, blood seeps around his fingers and paints his pale knuckles red as he throws the blade from them as if it burns.
Above them, the metallic chink of metal on metal cries out a warning.
The train is putting distance between them and the threat, but they aren’t out of range. Not yet.
Shelter. They need shelter before another blade finds its mark.
Frantically, her hands scramble for the door latch as she winds her arm beneath Khiran’s shoulder.
She ignores the way his lips twist in agony.
Ignores the way his blood drips from him like rain.
Another flash of metal, a stinging pain at her calf where the point sharpened edge kissed her skin.
Anna ignores that, too. There’s only a few feet and a door between them and safety, and she’s determined to meet it.
Khiran’s shaky in her arms, but he helps her drag his body through the threshold.
Anna takes one last look, meeting Marcia’s rage filled stare just as her knees hit the dirt.
Anna tips her chin up, hopes the other woman can see the victory in her eyes despite the distance between them, and closes the door.