Chapter Seven
He knew it would come—the tears, the pain. He knew it would hurt her in ways that left a mark. What he didn’t expect was to feel his heart ache in response.
Genoa
The vows are said, the marriage blessed, and the wine has been generously poured.
There is an abundant number of guests that have come to give their well wishes.
The bride’s family is particularly well connected and well liked.
They’ve been very successful in their business, selling their baked goods from commoner to noble and everyone in between.
It is a good family for Piers to marry into.
She’s already had several guests congratulate her on such a good match. Anna smiles and nods, but the truth is there was never a match for her to make. Piers’ love for Maria was all his own.
Anna stands off to the side, trying to find a moment of solitude but unwilling to remove herself from the celebration completely.
Piers’ smile, even from all the way across the terrace, is bright enough to warm her heart.
She believes, truly, that he will be happy.
Right now, with the weight of an imminent goodbye looming ahead, it’s enough.
“Quite the party.”
An unfamiliar voice to match his unfamiliar face.
Dark blonde hair curls softly around his ears, his brown eyes sharp.
Anna has never seen him in her life, but the finery of his clothing gives him away.
In a wedding of a midwife’s son and a baker’s daughter, and he does anything but blend in.
She relaxes, her smile bittersweet. “I’m glad you’re here. ”
Khiran raises a brow, his mask still perfectly in place. If it weren’t for his attire, he might have convinced her she was wrong. “Oh?”
Anna looks over the crowd and spots Piers dancing with his bride.
She’s a sweet girl. Anna couldn’t wish more for them.
“He’s alive,” she breathes, and in that moment she feels the wonder of it.
“He’s healthy and happy, and his life is only just starting.
You gave that to him.” She looks to him, hopes he sees the truth of her words reflected in her eyes. “Thank you.”
He shakes his head. “I gave you some things to get you by, nothing more.” Subtly, his hand gestures to the dancing and the wine-drunk laughter. “You are the one who fed him—who raised him. This life was given to him by the grace of your hands, not mine.”
Anna could argue, but she feels like it would be wasted. Instead, she says, “I didn’t know you to be humble.”
“I’m not.” His gaze briefly lowers, and Anna realizes she’s openly fiddling with the ring—his ring—on her finger.
She flushes, dropping her hands and hiding them behind her back. “I thought I’d see you sooner.”
His head tilts, appraising. “You had no need of me.”
A laugh leaves her, but it’s brittle at the edges. “And I do now?”
He stares in that unnerving way that makes her feel stripped bare. Funny how he’s always been able to see right through her when she wears a mask so convincingly for everyone else. “Yes, I think you might.”
The smile she wears withers. “It’s my son’s wedding.” Repeated words, a shield she knows has failed her.
“And yet you’re watching the festivities instead of joining them.” His arms cross over his chest, looking over the crowd. Anna’s relieved to be out from under his stare. “When are you leaving?”
Anna closes her eyes, the fight leaving her with a trembling sigh. “Tonight.”
“Does he know?” At her answering silence, he shakes his head. “No, of course he doesn’t. That would mean saying goodbye.”
Flinching, she fights the urge to argue what they both know is true. “I’ve stayed here too long. Some of the women are already talking.” Little whispers about what secrets she must be hoarding for her face to stay so youthful and unchanged.
She should have left years ago—the moment Piers got a job at the docks—but she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone. After tonight, Anna knows he won’t be. He’ll have Maria and, in time, children of his own to fill his home and fill his heart.
“It’s never hurt to leave before,” she confesses, voice as shaky as her heart. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Khiran sighs, offering a gentle touch to her shoulder for comfort. “Then wait. What is a few more days? A few more weeks?” He tips his head to the party at her back. “Enjoy this moment and save the goodbyes for a time that won’t leave either of you bitter.”
Except she can’t. To stay longer will only strengthen her wish to stay forever.
“You could always tell him the truth.”
The suggestion is even more horrifying than the last, but before she can respond, Piers’ voice reaches her.
“Maman?”
Piers stands behind her, his face flushed with drink and happiness even as he looks between them curiously.
Anna knows he’s waiting for an introduction she won’t be giving.
She gives Khiran a final, parting nod as she takes Piers’ arm and leads him back into the crowd.
“Where is Maria? Don’t tell me you’ve gone and lost your bride so soon. ”
Piers frowns, looking over his shoulder. “Maman, who was that?”
“An old friend.”
The bridge of his nose creases skeptically. “You don’t have any old friends.”
“Don’t be rude.”
“It’s not rude, it’s the truth,” he mumbles, looking at her oddly. “You didn’t have to stop speaking to him on my account.”
“The conversation was over, anyway.” She pats his cheek fondly, the way she did when he was a child. “Come now, it’s your wedding! Let’s have a dance.”
Piers doesn’t seem convinced, but he lets her lead him into a dance. Anna forces a smile and pretends it isn’t their last.
She should have known he wouldn’t let it rest; should have known he’d come find her the moment he saw her missing.
Piers’ voice is soft with accusation, a shadow in the doorway of the home they’ve made together. “You’re leaving.”
Anna jumps, hand flying into her chest and covering her racing heart. She needn’t have bothered. Seeing his expression stops it cold. “It’s not—”
Except she can’t bring herself to finish the excuse, because she’s certain it’s exactly what he thinks. The only difference is in the details, but what does it matter when the outcome is the same?
She swallows, tries again. “Why aren’t you with Maria? It’s your wedding night.”
Carefully, he closes the door behind him. There’s a shadow of hurt in his eyes, but no hint of anger. It only makes the pain in Anna’s chest double. “You were acting strange. I was worried.”
Over the years his pale curls have darkened to a light brown, but in his face she still sees the little boy in the forest with dirt and tears streaking his face.
Khiran’s words come back to her, an echo over her heart.
You could always tell him the truth.
It feels too hard and too easy all at once, but the hurt shadowing Piers’ eyes is so much worse than any kind of judgment he could cast on her. “Come sit,” she says, voice as fragile as she feels. “I have a story to tell you.”
She starts from the beginning, tells him of the smoke that stung her eyes and the taste of ash on her tongue when she was stolen away from a home she can’t remember.
She tells him of the years of servitude, of exile and solitude, before a beautiful sun-kissed stranger handed her a warm golden fruit that tasted of summer and honey.
Of the fire and the pain she felt at the stake; the fear and wonder when she rose from the ashes unharmed.
She tells him of the day she found him, nearly two-hundred years later, abandoned and hungry, waiting for a mother that would never come. Of the shape shifting god that came in the night, gifting them with everything they needed to survive the winter so they could thrive in the spring.
The ring on her hand is cool against her fingers as she turns it, round and round, an anxious habit she’s had too long to forget.
“I love this life with you in it,” she whispers, throat tight.
She thinks of the pity in Eira’s face the moment Anna realized carrying a child was out of reach—how the old god had warned her that some costs were mercies.
There is no pain like outliving a child.
Staring into Piers’ face, Anna believes her. Because he isn’t even gone, but nothing has ever hurt so much as telling him, “But I have to go.”
“Go,” he echoes, before the furrow in his brow smoothes and alarm replaces the worry. “Maman, no. You can’t—”
She cuts him off before he can finish, because he’s wrong. It’s not that she can’t, it’s that she must. “I’m not aging, Piers. I will never age, never die. People are beginning to notice.”
There is a horrified realization lighting his brown eyes, and Anna can see him tracing her face with newfound understanding, but it only feeds his panic. “Then we’ll travel with you. Go somewhere new.”
Anna shakes her head. “No, your life is here.” She takes his hand in hers and remembers how small it once felt. Now, it feels large. Strong. “You’re not alone anymore, Piers.”
“But you will be,” he murmurs, jaw clenching. “How can you expect me to stay knowing you’ll be out there all alone?”
“I won’t be. Not always.”
His lips part, an argument ready to fly off his tongue, but understanding reaches him first. “Your old friend.”
Anna nods, squeezing his hand. “My old friend.”
“He’s a god?” He shifts, uncomfortable. Anna knows he’s probably thinking of all the things he should have said—thinking of all the sermons that preached of one god and one god only. Of the damnation that would come to any soul who believed anything different.
“He’s complicated,” she says, smile weak. “We both are.”
Piers swallows, tension in his shoulders and red staining the whites of his eyes. “We could still go with you.”
“No.” She presses her palm against his cheek, catches his gaze in time for him to see the tears spilling over hers. “I can’t watch you die. Please don’t ask me to.”
She watches her words sink, settling over his heart with the same kind of aching horror she feels. Sees the pain that comes with knowing she’s right. “I’ll never see you again, will I?”
Anna hugs him, her arms wrapping around his middle and squeezing tight enough to ground them both. She can feel his every shaky breath as easily as the lean arms returning her hug. “No.”
Hours later, when the goodbyes run too short to stretch any longer, Anna leaves the home they’ve made just as the day’s first light touches the earth.
Each step feels like heartbreak, another fissure cracking and spreading until she feels like she’s just a touch away from shattering.
When she rises over the city, steps away from disappearing into the mountain pass, she turns.
Looks over the city that she has called home for thirteen years, eyes following the ships coming in and out of port, and thinks of the son she’s leaving behind.
She’s rooted, her very being tangled in the soil and refusing to let go.
A gentle hand rests on her shoulder. Anna’s too numb to even jump.
“Come,” Khiran encourages. He wears the same form he showed her that night so long ago, when the winter was cold and things felt hopeless. The one she asked him to wear when it was just them, when he could look like himself. His blue-green eyes are soft with pity.
“It hurts,” she rasps, the words as raw as the pain lancing her heart.
“I told you it would.”
She shakes her head, because no warnings could ever amount to this. “Not like this,” she whispers. She thought her tears had run dry, but she feels them slipping down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. “I didn’t think it could hurt like this.”
He says nothing, only takes her shoulders and steers her away with hands so gentle, Anna thinks he must know how close she is to breaking.
They walk the mountain pass till the shadows become too deep to see by.
She doesn’t expect him to stay, but he does without any explanation.
When night spreads its wings across the sky, dotting her vision with stars and a crescent moon on the horizon, Khiran makes a fire from nothing with little more than a snap of his fingers.
A bedroll she never packed gets unrolled, a pheasant she didn’t bring appears between one blink and the next over the fire.
Its fat sizzles as it hits the flames, the smell making her mouth water despite the fatigue in her heart.
He asks nothing of her, only turns the bird so it cooks evenly and hands her a plate of it once it’s done. Perhaps he realizes she has nothing to give.
She isn’t hungry, but she eats even though she can hardly taste it.
The silence presses on her, but it’s comfortable instead of straining.
Grounding and familiar. Anna’s grateful for the weight of it.
She feels like a ghost of herself, a paper thin piece in danger of blowing away at the smallest breeze.
She stares at Khiran’s hands, the long and elegant fingers folded loosely together as he stares into the fire and feels something in her shift.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, waiting until his eyes lift to hers. “For being here.”
For a long moment, he says nothing, but it’s a thoughtful kind of silence.
The kind that speaks of contemplation and not dismissal, and Anna knows he is only considering which words to say.
“The pain you feel … it’s something I am at least partially responsible for.
It would be cruel to let you suffer it alone. ”
She’s not sure if she believes that, but she doesn’t have the energy or the heart to argue. “Why me?” she asks, voice soft. Her eyes raise, imploring. “Why did you choose me?”
He shakes his head and prods the fire, the sparks that fly up reflect in his eyes. “That isn’t a story for tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because tonight you are grieving.” He sighs, regarding her carefully.
As if he knows his next words could break her.
“Ask me again, on a day when the gift I’ve given you doesn’t weigh on you like a curse.
” He must catch the flash of doubt in her eyes, because his answering smile is soft. Reassuring. “It will come.”
She scoffs, holding herself tighter. Bitterness drips from her lips, a slow poison. “In time?”
“Yes,” he answers. The sincerity touching his eyes soothes the sting. “In time.”
That night, Anna goes to sleep unsure if she believes him, but drawing comfort from his words anyway.