Chapter Eight #2
His voice is close, just to her left. She cranes her neck to see him, mildly surprised that she didn’t notice him before. He’s sitting just beside her head, his chair wedged into the corner. She licks her dry lips, searches for her voice in the depths. “What happened?”
He hands her a glass of water. Anna can feel his gaze as she clumsily gulps it down. Some escapes her lips, running down her neck and soaking into the front of her nightdress.
A nightdress that isn’t hers.
He must catch her alarmed look, because a soft chuckle leaves him as he reaches for the empty glass in her grasp.
“Magic, Anna. Don’t fret. As for what happened.
Well,” he trails off, refilling the cup before handing it back to her.
“You died. Or, would have?” He shakes his head.
“The details are complicated, I’m afraid. ”
Anna brings the glass to her mouth, trying to still the trembling in her hand.
She can feel the water sloshing unpleasantly in her stomach, and forces herself to take only a small sip.
She wonders what being more disturbed by his uncertainty than the news that she may have died says about her. “Where are we?”
“A tiny, inconsequential corner of France.” He shrugs. “I’ve found it’s more convenient to be closer to nowhere than somewhere. Less looters.”
Anna frowns, looking at the items decorating the tiny cottage with a closer eye. “This is yours?”
He stands, stretching. “Try not to sound so skeptical. Did you think I’ve moved through time with nothing to my name?”
The opposite, actually. “I thought you’d have an obnoxiously showy castle.”
A laugh, as breathy and light as the breeze flowing through the window, leaves him. “Well, I may have one of those stashed away as well.” He walks to the other side of the room, tapered fingers wrapping around the handle of the single door. “Wait a moment.”
Anna isn’t capable of doing anything else—her limbs are too weak.
Still, she cranes her neck so her gaze can follow him as far as the open door will let her.
When he returns, she’s mildly surprised to see a wooden bowl cradled in his palms. With the rise of steam comes the scent of what she recognizes to be some version of stew.
He places it on her lap with a gentle command. “Eat.”
She picks up the simple wooden spoon, stirring the contents. “How long have I been out?”
“Long enough to be hungry. Now eat.”
She looks down into the bowl. It’s a stew of some kind—she can see bits of meat and what looks to be carrots and potatoes—but it smells off. “What is it?”
“Food.”
She takes a tentative bite before shuddering. There’s an ungodly amount of garlic; she has to physically force herself to swallow it down. “Are you sure?”
Khiran scowls, taking the bowl back and trying a spoonful himself. He blanches. “I … am not practiced in this particular skill. I am now remembering why I gave up on it.”
He says it as if it means nothing, but Anna feels her chest tighten. “You cooked this … for me?”
Scoffing, he sets the bowl aside with a dark scowl in its direction. “I certainly didn’t do it for myself.”
Anna shakes her head, fidgeting. “But why? You didn’t have to.”
He shrugs. “You asked me to stay. It would have been poor manners to neglect your would-be-dying wish.”
If it weren’t for his teasing grin, Anna would almost take the sentiment as sweet. Her brows crease, trying to draw on the memory, but everything is a blur of bridges and the faint impression of a guiding hand. “You said we’re in France?”
“I did.”
“But that’s—” She almost says ‘impossible’ before remembering he has no concept of the word. Instead she asks, “How?”
“Well I certainly didn’t walk.” His gaze is steady, appraising. “I can be anywhere I wish, but it tends to be rather taxing on any guests that tag along. If you weren’t already flirting with the grave, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
Anna thinks of the way he always disappears, between one blink and the next—of how sometimes the masks he wears are from a part of the world she’s never come close to seeing.
She’s not sure why it never occurred to her that he was merely somewhere else.
Still, she struggles to wrap her mind around the concept. “Anywhere?”
What a gift, to only wish for a place and find your feet touching its soil.
Khiran shrugs, as if it’s nothing. For him, it probably is.
Anna thinks of a run down cabin in the French wilderness and cold hungry nights.
Remembers the way she endured just so Piers could eat—of the struggles and the suffering—and feels herself grow hot.
There are words, bitter and tough, sitting on her tongue.
She chews them until they soften. “You could have gotten us out of France yourself?”
He could have saved her from so much heartache.
“You? Yes,” he says, sitting down across from her. “The child, no.”
Anna stares, but no amount of searching finds any hint of a lie. “Why?”
“His life isn’t mine to meddle in.”
She doesn’t understand, but she’s too tired to stay angry over what has already happened. Still, she shakes her head. The motion makes her dizzy. “You gave us supplies. How is that any different?”
“No,” he says, voice soft. “I gave you supplies. What you did with them is out of my hands.”
“That just makes it sound like you don’t want credit.”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
There’s no inflection in his voice, no change in his expression, to hint at his thoughts. “I don’t understand you,” she confesses, soft as the breeze through his open window.
Khiran smiles, but all Anna can see is the loneliness touching his eyes. “Perhaps you’re not meant to.”
Anna’s not certain if he means it, but she knows he’s wrong.
If there is one person worth understanding, it’s him.
The god that saves her at one turn and lets her suffer the next.
He is the riddle she’ll ponder over every lifetime, never knowing if she’ll learn the answer but struggling to solve it all the same.