Chapter Four
She’s still a sparrow of a woman. Hollow-boned and fragile. Easily broken. He wonders how long it will take for her to realize that the thing that makes her weak is the same that will allow her to fly.
THE MEADOW
She doesn’t leave the cottage.
Not at first.
The summer days are long and lonely. Anna fills them by plucking weeds from the garden and harvesting food from the vines. She cooks. She cleans. She sleeps. Sometimes, she dreams.
The villagers don’t come—the path that once led to the meadow grows overgrown with moss and ferns seemingly overnight. More magic, Anna realizes. Somewhere in the world, there will be another trail leading to another cottage door. The thought is as devastating as it is comforting.
Anna grows used to the quiet; numb to the solitude. It’s like stepping back into an old, tattered shoe—its sole painfully thin, but familiar. The meadow and its surrounding forest is bountiful, the garden sustainable. Even alone, this life offers far more leniency than the one she lived before.
Fall touches the earth with the first frost, turning the landscape red and golden, and Anna doesn’t fear the coming winter.
Her stores are plenty and her body is strong.
When the snows come, she busies herself with whatever her hands can find.
She knits blankets and sweaters, socks and leggings, before unraveling the yarn and doing it again.
She experiments in the kitchen, trying different methods and combinations of food.
Some taste decent, others terrible. She eats all of it.
Then the snow thaws and the trees bud, and Anna draws a breath and braces herself to do it all over again.
She’s sowing the seeds from last year into the soil, carefully making note of what she’s planting where, when the hairs on the back of her neck rise—a feeling of being watched trailing up her spine only a mere moment before he speaks.
“There’s an entire world outside this meadow, you know.”
Anna stills. It’s been a decade since she’s heard that voice, but she recognizes the low, smooth timbre as easily as if it had only been yesterday.
She rises from the garden bed, dirt dusting the folds of her dress.
The face he wears is different—always different—but it still holds that devastating beauty that captured her attention the first time they met.
Brown eyes stare back at her under a raised brow, his chestnut hair falling around his sharp jaw. “Don’t you wish to see it?”
Anna looks away, readjusting the basket on her hip. “I have everything I need here.”
He hums, unconvinced. “Is that so?”
“What do you want from me?” She blurts, turning on him. Her hand goes to her chest, burning with a pain that’s more than skin deep. “It may be easy for you and Eira, but where is someone like me to go? They will cast me aside, again and again, the moment they catch sight of it.”
“If that happens you move on. The same way Eira does,” he says patiently. “Do you think she leaves because it’s easy? She stays long enough to help and leaves before the questions can start.”
“Another price,” she sneers, tears threatening.
“Yes.” He looks over her garden with a distracted eye. “This isn’t an easy way to live, but Eira taught you well. Use what she gave and the world will teach you the rest.” He meets her eyes. “But you have to let it.”
She blinks back the burning in her eyes. There’s a snake coiling around her lungs, constricting with every shaky breath. She knows what it is before she names it. “I’m afraid.”
The whispered confession falls like iron, Anna can feel the shame of it burning a path across her cheeks as easily as his gaze.
“Fear is for mortals, Anna. Not for us.”
Us.
The word feels strange, foreign for reasons she can only begin to name.
She doesn’t feel like she’s one of them, with their wisdom and their strength.
They feel so much more than she could ever hope to be.
And yet … she doesn’t feel quite human, either.
She is in that strange, familiar place of in-between. Of other.
“I’m not like you,” she murmurs. “I’m not strong.”
“Strength is learned, not given.” He offers a hand, palm up in invitation. “I’ll show you.”
Anna stares, tracing the lines of his palm before hesitantly placing her hand in his. He tilts her wrist, the subtle engravings of her ring catching the light, and his chin dips in approval. “Don’t remove it.” The command is soft, but there’s an edge in his eyes that speaks of warnings.
“I can’t.” She knows. The first night she stayed in the cottage alone, after she had discovered the ring’s origins, she had tried to rip it from her finger in a fit only to find she couldn’t slip it past her knuckle no matter how long, or how hard she tried.
She looks away from him, the accusation bitter on her tongue. ”You should know.”
If he feels any hint of remorse, he doesn’t show it.
Instead, he shrugs as if admitting guilt to something as harmless as a distasteful joke, and drops her hand.
“Magic is a funny thing. It’s impenetrable if you face it head on, but there’s always a back door somewhere.
” His gaze hardens, serious. “Don’t try to find it. Just leave it on and leave it be.”
Anna’s lips thin at the order. “You tricked me into wearing it.”
“I merely gave it to you,” he corrects, fingers plucking a bud from the overhead branch of a plum tree, twisting the flower between his fingers. “It was you who chose to wear it.”
She bristles. “I didn’t know it was you.”
His head tilts, curious but with a hint of challenge she’d be blind to miss.”Had you, would you have refused it?”
No, but she might have asked more questions before accepting. Somehow, she gets the sense that he knows it as well as she does. “Why? What does it do?”
He hesitates long enough for her to feel suspicious, but answers before she can ask again. “It helps to ensure your safety.”
It feels like only a partial truth. Anna fidgets, turning the ring around her finger thoughtfully. “I wasn’t aware I was in danger.”
“You won’t be, so long as you keep it on.” His brows rise. “Do we have an understanding?”
There’s more questions burning in her chest, but his patience seems to be thinner than the strength of her resolve. She nods.
“Good.” He tips his chin toward the cottage. “If there’s anything of value to you, I suggest you grab it now. It’s unlikely you’ll find this place again.”
It sounds like both a promise and a threat.
Anna doesn’t ask where they’re going. She’s not sure she cares.
She follows him regardless.
He is as quiet as she remembers him. There’s an anxious humming in her bones, a crawling under her skin, at the thought of starting a new life when the one she just left behind felt so safe.
It was lonely, but it was comfortable in ways she knew would continue to feed and warm her for years to come.
By the second day, she’s so eager to break the silence even if she isn’t entirely sure she wants the answer. “Where are we going?”
His pace doesn’t falter. Anna wonders how long he must have been waiting for her to ask. “The other side of the country.” His gaze slides to meet hers. “Sometimes a change of scenery is helpful.”
Anna frowns, thinking of the old maps Eira kept stashed beneath the bed before she left. She never bothered to study them closely, so preoccupied with other things, but now she wishes she had. She doesn’t have the knowledge to discern how long a journey he’s suggesting. “How long?”
His shoulders shrug. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Traveling by foot is a relatively new experience for me. It’s much slower than I anticipated.”
Anna eyes the expensive looking fabric donning his sleeves, the rings glittering on his fingers. She’s not entirely surprised by his confession.
“There’s a small town I’ve visited recently—they’re lacking a midwife.
” He pauses, head tilting as if considering.
“There may also be a position for a cook’s servant.
But between us, I believe that may not be worthy of your skills.
Eira doesn’t particularly like confiding anything to me, but she was impressed with your abilities. ”
The pain in her chest is lancing. “I asked for her to take me with her.”
For the first time since setting out that morning, his steps pause and he turns to her fully. Brow furrowed, he seems to stare into her—weighing her expression. “You’re hurt that she didn’t.”
A statement, not a question. Anna flushes, embarrassed to have been read so easily. “I could have helped.”
“I’m sure you could have.” He says it softly, with mercy. “But Eira doesn’t need help.”
Anna knows this—of course she knows—but the truth of it still hurts. It’s a wound over her heart, open and raw, and the longer she carries it the more it festers. “I needed it,” she snaps. “She was the first one since—”
Since before pale patterns began ghosting across her skin. Since before she was abandoned to the wilds and blamed for everyone else’s hunger.
Her arms cross over her stomach, hands clenching at her covered arms, and looks away. “They won’t accept me.”
He doesn’t understand. How can he? He is a god among men, changing the face he wears with little more than a thought and changing people’s perception with it.
He is the seductress, the soldier, the nobleman.
He can pose as anyone, lie with a look, and slip through the world without consequence.
Just a twist of magic, and he’s someone else.
And Anna is stuck living as herself. Alone.
Khiran is staring down at her, a statue among a moving landscape. Wind is whispering through the trees, rustling the fields; sounds she hadn’t noticed until his answering silence amplified them.
There’s something growing in his eyes, blue breathing into the brown of his irises. Then his head tilts, and the tall, muscular form he wears shivers and fades until Anna is looking directly into a mirrored reflection of herself.