Chapter Fourteen #2
“Good,” he soothes, taking another step back. And another. She follows. “Just keep looking at me.”
She wets her lips, following his every step, and tries not to think of how the light is fading because the water above their heads is growing deeper. “I hate this.”
“I noticed.”
“Please tell me this is a short trip.”
A moment of silence, a skipped heartbeat. “Khiran?”
The tiniest hint of a smile plays across his lips, eyes shining despite the dim. “Kaia’s magic works in similar ways to Eira’s paths. It will be far, but it won’t be long.”
“Good. Because I hate this. It’s terrifying.”
Khiran glances up, thoughtfully. Anna has to force herself to focus on the hollow of his throat instead of following his gaze. “I can’t say I disagree.” His eyes meet hers. “I was afraid the first time, too.” It shouldn’t, but somehow the confession makes her feel a little bit better.
After a few minutes, her heart gradually slows to a pace that is almost normal, and the crushing weight on her chest floats away. In a moment of bravery, she begins glancing over Khiran’s shoulder as they walk. Testing the strength of her courage.
Goosebumps dot her arms, her breath fogging. “It’s getting colder.”
“Yes.”
“Is that because of the depth or the destination?”
He thinks about it. “Both, actually.”
The sand under her feet has turned rocky and slick. She’s not entirely sure when that happened. With a feeling of unease, she realizes it’s slanting down instead of up. “Does… does she live under the water?”
“Yes.” At her look of alarm, he chuckles. “Magic, Anna. You’ll feel perfectly at ease once we get there.” His eyes crinkle in the corners, mischief in his grin. “Other than the feeling of thousands of tons of water being magically suspended over you, it’ll feel just like you’re on land.”
She glares. “Mean.”
“A taste of how I felt on that disgrace of a ship.”
“There was nothing wrong with the ship,” she huffs. Her breath curls into clouds with the force of it. “You just have a frighteningly weak sto—” Movement catches her eye, a shadow moving through the water just over his shoulders. Large and getting larger. Colossal.
The hands around her wrist tighten. “Anna—”
“I’m okay,” she murmurs. And, for the first time since watching the tide rise around her, she truly feels it.
As the shadow comes closer, the details the water masks become clearer and wonder overshadows the fear.
It’s not one creature, but many. A pod, her mind supplies, fishing the word from somewhere in the corner of nearly forgotten bits of knowledge.
They swerve, the pod splitting around their bubble of air, swimming through the wall of water on either side of them. So close, Anna could reach out and touch their white and gray mottled sides if she were brave enough. Flashes of tusk, a wand of spiraled ivory on some of their heads.
“Narwhals,” Khiran says, standing beside her, shoulder to shoulder, as he watches them glide past. “Unicorns of the sea.”
Anna wonders, awe stricken, how an everyday creature could feel more magical than the forces allowing them to walk the ocean floor.
Anna isn’t sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.
The mouth of the cave yawns open, icicles lining the top like rows of teeth. Perhaps it is Cassius’ influence, but part of her had expected something more opulent. Which is silly, really. Eira and Silas hardly lived in luxury.
Khiran prods her forward, shaking his head. “We still have a little ways to go. The caves are part of the journey, not the destination.”
“Caves,” she echoes, under her breath. “There’s multiple?”
“It’s an entire system. A labyrinth for anyone she wishes to keep out.
” His hand goes to the small of her back as they step through the entrance, his eyes raised to the icicles above them until they’ve safely stepped past. “Before I became immortal, I’m told she drifted much like Silas.
Traveling between the seas, slumbering on the isles, as it pleased her. ”
Anna watches a crab scuttle across the cave floor, pincers searching for its next meal. “Why the change?”
“If I had to guess?” He sighs, eyes clouded in memory. “I always thought it might be for Eira.”
Anna frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“Eira’s meadow, it was fixed. Once Marcia forced an invitation from her, there was no going back.
No locking her out. Kaia… her gift isn’t tied to a place.
She doesn’t need a home at all. I think…
I think this place was an apology. Maybe even her repentance.
If Eira ever needed a place to run to where she couldn’t be found—”
“She’d at least have here,” Anna finishes, heart aching. “Did Eira ever forgive her?”
“In her heart? I like to believe so. In the ways that mattered?” Khiran shakes his head, a scoff laced with fondness escaping him. “And now she’s gone, and it’s too late.”
Time is a fragile thing.
Once, Anna had a better sense of just how fragile.
Those years she struggled to find her next meal.
The nights that were so bitterly cold, she wasn’t sure she’d wake come morning.
Then Khiran placed that peach in her hand, and she stood in the flames but did not burn.
Years turned to decades and decades into centuries, and somewhere along the line Anna forgot how it felt to feel afraid of running out of time.
It wasn’t until she took Piers under her wing and called him son—when the years became a countdown instead of a tally—that she had a taste of that feeling again.
Being immortal, having forever stretched before her, robbed her of that.
How easy it must be to hold on to an apology when you think you have an eternity to make it.
Anna leans her head against his shoulder. “Do you think she knows? About Eira?”
A moment of silence, filled only with their breathing and footsteps. Then, so quietly she nearly misses it, Khiran answers. “No.”
He doesn’t offer any further explanation. Anna doesn’t ask for one. There’s a hollowness to his eyes that indicates he’s more focused on his thoughts than what’s in front of them. She wonders if he’s going over the dozen different ways that conversation will go, the way she is.
If he’s right—if Kaia truly doesn’t know of Eira’s passing—then she will soon.
As much as she’s sure he hates to be the one to tell her, she knows Khiran will.
Sometimes, lies can feel kinder than truths, but secrets can fester—a bitter, subtle poison.
He won’t risk silence when he knows it will only sharpen the lancing pain of the truth.
Anna can’t help but wonder why he didn’t call on this favor before, when they were in Istanbul—a city settled on a strip of land cradled between the Black Sea and Marmara Trough.
It would have been so easy to run straight from the temporary shelter of Cassius’ generosity to Kaia’s uncharted fortress protected by the ocean itself. She wonders, but she doesn’t ask.
How can she when the answer wears the shape of Eira’s parting smile?
The temperature continues to drop.
Soon, Anna’s jacket doesn’t feel nearly warm enough to protect her from the cold.
Her teeth chatter, the sound obnoxious even to her, but she can’t bring them to stop.
Khiran gives her his coat, but it still doesn’t completely shield her from the chill.
She tucks it around herself firmly, ducking her nose and chin under the collar so she can at least feel the warmth of her breath.
“Almost there,” he promises. The cold barely touches him. It’s only the goosebumps dotting his arms and the breath curling like smoke from his lips that convinces her that he feels it at all.
“Will it b-be warmer?”
“… Do you want the truth?”
Her answering glare is as bitter as the cold.
Khiran chuckles, pulling down the collar of his coat just enough to place a kiss on the reddened tip of her nose. “Don’t fret. Kaia would turn me out before she let you freeze. Some of the rooms are colder than others, but she’ll have some spare furs for you to wear to ward off the chill.”
Anna nods, ducking her face back into the collar of his coat.
It’s hard to gauge how far they’ve traveled—the cave walls leave little room for landmarks, but they walk another fifteen minutes when Khiran’s steps slow and Anna realizes the tunnel has opened up into a cavern.
At its entrance, a woman who can only be Kaia stands as if she’d been waiting for them.
She’s beautiful.
Her thick, black hair gleams. Even braided, it’s still long enough to reach past the woman’s lower back.
Then she turns, and Anna sees her face. She understands how a young Khiran would see the moon in her.
Her face is full, glowing and soft. When she smiles, her dark, hooded eyes are like twin crescent shadows.
“Khiran.” She says his name like a song, her voice melodic and deep. Ancient. “It has been many years since you journeyed here.”
“I’m afraid mortal perils rarely find their way this deep.” The corner of his lips curl, a subtle smile that feels as tired as she feels. “Hello, Kaia.”
When she walks, she’s so fluid and silent she almost floats.
Intricately carved hooks pierce her ears, flashing pale and iridescent against her tan skin.
Shells, Anna realizes, they’re carved from shells.
As she gets closer, she gets a closer look at the design and notices that the carved scrolling framing her face looks like waves.
Kaia reaches up, placing a hand on Khiran’s cheek.
A string of shimmering shells dangle from her plump wrist, ringing out like the world’s only wind chime beneath the waves.
“I’m happy you’re here.” Her eyes slide to Anna, head tilting.
“And not alone.” The pleased smile she gives is as soft as she is.
“My, things must be changing in the world above.”
Khiran’s knuckles brush her own. “This is Anna, my…” he falters, eyes meeting hers. “My person,” he says, voice soft. “My heart.”