These Immortal Truths (Peaches & Honey #1)

Chapter One

There is beauty in the struggle, the way life pushes when the world says pull. He sees it in the way she gasps, fumbles, chokes. Clothed in ashes and rebirth, he watches as the terror in her eyes slowly gives way to wonder.

ENGLAND

The only keepsake Anna has of her childhood home is the memory of being dragged out of it.

The cloying smoke burning her eyes, blackening her lungs, and the bruising pain in her arm as the warrior pulled her from the threshold.

She remembers the heat feeling so close that she thought her loose chestnut hair might catch and burn with the rest of it.

She was little more than a child, then. A blessing, Fanny used to remind her—if she were any older, she’d be dead.

Anna knows it’s a lie.

Fanny was all rough edges and sharp words, but she was merciful where it mattered.

Anna learned early that lies can be kinder than truths, and that some fates are crueler than death.

The maidservants had never been as discreet with their gossip around her as Fanny was, and Anna grew up overhearing the horror stories of young women being abducted and forced to warm the beds of their captors across the North Sea.

Anna used to believe she was perhaps at least a bit luckier than most, in that regard. Her servitude under her lord was exhausting but bearable, and Fanny was always kind in her own way. There’s no doubt there were worse houses to serve under.

Then she turned fifteen.

It started on her chest—pale shadows that grew more defined at the edges—before it crept over her shoulders and onto her back.

She didn’t know what it was, only that the jagged lines of discoloration scared her the same way she knew it would frighten others.

She was able to hide it for a year before a chambermaid spotted it.

Another, before word got to the lord of the house.

It didn’t matter that there was no proof of any type of contamination; didn’t matter that two years went by with no harm to show for it. What mattered, was that the harvest that season was weak, and the sickness that spread throughout the village was terrible.

What mattered, truly mattered, was that she existed. Easy to blame. Easy to exile.

Perhaps, Anna thinks, in some ways she’s still lucky.

Her life is a cage, the bars melded from poverty and exile.

Ripped from her roots and transplanted onto foreign soil and expected to be grateful for it.

There’s a quiet grief in not knowing who she was or where she came from before they raided her home and packed her into a ship like cargo to be sold at the next port.

But she’s alive. She’s healthy.

She knows there are many in her situation who can’t say the same.

Many who would have been put to death instead of exiled, who would have found nothing but suffering and starvation past the line of the forest instead of shelter in an abandoned cabin and donations of scraps from the old cook they used to work under.

Those meager offerings that Fanny slipped her were the only reason she survived the first few winters.

It gave her time to learn the forest—to learn its language and to use its gifts.

The winters are still harsh, her cabin still bitterly cold and her food supplies almost always teetering the edge of dangerously low, but she makes it through to spring.

And even though she never feels full, she tries to remind herself that a hungry belly is better than an empty one.

Her fingers pluck hawthorn berries from the bush, nimbly dropping them into the folded hollow of her tunic.

She’s yet to prick herself on the thorns, but this grove has seen plenty of her blood over the past decade.

She had stumbled on it her first summer in exile; the gnawing hunger in her gut so great she had grabbed at the bright berries by the fistful and paid a price in blood.

It seems she can’t go a season without giving at least a few drops.

Perhaps that’s why the grove yields so well.

Her stomach groans, a familiar sound. Anna appeases it with a few berries and no more. Summer is forgiving, but winter isn’t. She’s learned that surviving the cold months demands saving what gifts she can during the warm ones.

Voices filter through the trees. Anna stills.

This part of the forest isn’t frequented by the villagers—never has been. It’s too far off the road, too long a walk from the town. The only reason Anna can bring food to her table is that the places she gathers are places the townspeople don’t.

The voices grow loud enough for her to recognize them as men shouting. There’s an angry edge to it. A threat.

They’re looking for someone.

If they succeed, Anna knows nothing good will come to the person they find.

A rustle of leaves behind her, the quiet sound of footfall. Anna starts, holding her berries to her chest and turns, heart in her throat and ready to run. Dark eyes, framed with dark lashes, stare back at her.

The stranger stands as still as a doe, swathed in richly colored silks as deep as the berries gathered in Anna’s dingy, thread-bare tunic.

Eyes so deep and dark they feel as endless as the night sky, her braided ebony hair long and thick over her sun-kissed shoulder.

She’s beautiful in ways that make Anna’s heart ache.

Because she knows why they’re searching for her. Knows why she’s running.

Another shout, closer than the last, and Anna knows time is short.

The hawthorn berries she’s collected all morning fall to the ground as Anna reaches forward and grasps the woman’s smooth palm in her stained, callused hand—eyes wide and begging.

She doesn’t know if she speaks English, doesn’t know if she’ll follow, but there’s not enough time for questions or doubts. “Hurry!”

She pulls, relieved when the stranger doesn’t resist. Berries burst beneath Anna’s feet, but it doesn’t matter. The woman follows. They run.

There is no place Anna knows better than this patch of forest. She has learned its every landmark, watched the saplings grow into trees over the course of years.

Every day she’s gathered logs for her fire, leaves and branches to thatch her roof, and food for her table.

They pass her favorite spot for foraging mushrooms, wet their skirts running through the stream where she bathes and washes the filth from her clothes.

Anna’s lungs burn with every step, but the pulse drumming in her ears urges her onward. The pain in her chest is no different from the hunger in her belly; there is comfort and there is survival. There is no doubt what fate awaits them both if the men—soldiers, she realizes with a pang—find them.

Seeing the roof of her cabin through the trees has never brought her so much relief, but she doesn’t allow her steps to pause or her grip on the woman’s hand to weaken. Not until they are under her roof, the door shut tight against her back, does Anna allow herself to just breathe.

Legs weak, she slides down the door as she struggles to find the air she needs to push against the black spots in her vision.

In the middle of her dirt floor, the stranger stares back at her—not a hair out of place.

Anna wipes the sweat along her temple, but can do little for the bead rolling between her shoulder blades. She wets her lips.

“Do, do you speak English?” she asks between gasping breaths.

The woman’s head tilts, dark eyes curious. Anna wonders how she can be so composed when she’s struggling to breathe. “Yes.”

Anna nods, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wood as she wills her breathing to slow. “Good,” she rasps. “That’s good.”

“Thank you for helping me.” Her voice is a song; lyrical and sweet.

When Anna opens her eyes, she finds the stranger crouched in front of her—tan, slender arms braced against her silk-wrapped knees and chin resting on her knuckles.

There’s gold rings adorning nearly every finger; patterns inked into her skin there. “What’s your name?”

“Anna,” she breathes, gaze tracing over the unfamiliar designs. Her eyes lift to her face. “Yours?”

There’s a wicked curl to her lips as she stands, holding out a hand in offering. “I have many names.” Her head tilts, amusement flickering in her eyes. “Which would you choose for me?”

Anna fumbles, baffled by her strange answer (and even stranger request) but takes the offered hand. “You wish me to give you a name?”

“It’s only fitting,” she says, pulling her up effortlessly. There’s a strength that seems unusual for her slender frame. “Tell me, who shall I be to you?”

It’s such a bizarre request, Anna shakes her head. “I don’t—” She catches the direction of the stranger’s gaze, and her voice catches.

Her chest.

Her marked skin.

Anna flushes, pulling her collar closer to her neck. It must have shifted, the stays loosening, during the mad run home. “It’s not catching,” she assures her, but it sounds weak even to her own ears. “They think it is, but it’s been there since I was a girl and I’ve no pain or lesions.”

Sun-kissed hands cover her own, coaxing them away. Anna is too stunned by her proximity, by the gentleness of the taller woman’s touch, to resist. Her lips twist into a frown. “They believe it to be leprosy.”

Anna nods, throat tight. Her hands tremble, waiting for the look of disgust. For the pulling away. For the abandonment.

The sigh she breathes is soft, but weighted with disdain. “Fools.”

It’s so unexpected, it takes Anna a moment to recognize rejection isn’t coming. The relief is nearly enough to make her sick. “You’re not afraid?”

“There are many things worth fearing,” she says, meeting her eyes. “This is not one of them.”