Chapter Fourteen #3
She likes his attentions, is comforted by his affections.
There’s a thrill in being touched, in being wanted.
In, possibly, being loved. It makes it all the more terrifying, because for all her fondness for him, Anna knows she doesn’t feel quite the same.
She appreciates his attentions, but doesn’t share them the way she knows she should.
So when they find themselves alone between the towering pines and hemlocks, and Frederick takes her hand and pulls her into a kiss, Anna is frozen. Torn between wanting his touch and wishing he were someone else.
Someone with a taller frame and darker hair.
Someone with eyes as blue as they are green.
Anna is the one to break the kiss, her pulse beating so fast, so loud, it sounds more like distant gunfire than a heartbeat.
Frederick’s fingers are threading through her hair, mussing the low bun at her neck. His eyes hooded, wanting. Anna wonders what she must look like—face flushed and eyes wide.
Anna could grow to love him, she’s almost sure of it. If only—
She thinks of Norwich.
Of the way the man she considered a friend flinched away from her the moment her skin was exposed.
“Eliza,” Frederick breathes, his fingers cupping the back of her neck. Anna can feel every syllable whisper against her lips. “I am irrevocably besotted with you.”
Eliza.
Never has a name felt more like a blade. Never has she been more angry with herself for forgetting.
Frederick doesn’t love Anna; he loves Eliza. The woman who doesn’t carry centuries of secrets, who has nothing to hide beneath the cloth of her dress. He loves the version of her that is capable of bearing his children and growing old beside him.
He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t even know her.
She pulls away.
“I’m sorry,” she says, the words heavy despite how softly they’re whispered.
The confusion in his eyes is as sharp as her regret. He shakes his head. “I don’t understand. I thought—you must feel the same. You must.”
There are a hundred things she could tell him. Some of them are truths. Most of them are lies. Hands twisting in front of her, she settles for one that feels like both and neither. “I can’t.”
A beat of silence, then a smile. “Do you wish to be wed first? Is that it? I will gladly give you my name and everything that comes—”
“Love you,” she blurts, stomach churning. “I can’t love you, Frederick. I’m sorry.”
He recoils, struck as if her words held physical form. “What are you talking about? What has all this been, between us, if not that?” Eyes narrowing, he retreats a step. “Is there someone else? Are you spoken for?”
Yes. No. The truth is too complicated. It sits, awkward and unspoken, on her tongue a moment too long. Frederick takes her silence and interprets it for her.
“I don’t believe this,” he mutters, words barbed. “All this time, and you’d have me following your every step like a love-sick fool!”
Anna closes her eyes, swallows down the prick of pain settling in her heart. She doesn’t correct him. Can’t. There is someone else, but that isn’t the reason he thinks. She is spoken for, but it isn’t so much a man as Time that claims her hand. Instead, she says, “You asked me to learn.”
Frederick scoffs, shaking his head. “You know that’s not all I wanted.”
Maybe she did. Maybe she saw all the signs and chose to ignore them because it was easier than addressing the truth.
Bracing herself, she straightens her spine and squares her shoulders.
“But that’s all I can give you,” she says, meeting his eyes with every spare bit of strength she can muster. “I’m sorry that’s not enough.”
Anna turns away and starts walking. Away from him and away from camp. At her back, there is nothing but silence. No words. No shuffling of following footfall.
It’s better that way.
From the ridge, the wind tangling in her hair, Anna watches the battle unfold. There is a knot of emotions tightening her chest, so desperately tangled she can’t tell one from the next.
It’s no surprise he finds her.
“Does it ever stop?” she asks.
Khiran sighs, folding his legs and resting his elbows on his knees. “Yes,” A pause, punctuated by a cynical breath of laughter. “Then they’ll do it all over again.”
“I don’t understand it,” Anna admits, the hollow ache in her heart growing. “How are they not sick of it?”
“It’s easy to be righteous, to be angry, when you weren’t there to see all the blood and misery that came before you,” he says.
“Most of these soldiers will only ever see one war firsthand in their lifetime. The ones who survive will grow old and sit in front of their hearths and pass stories of this battle to their children and grandchildren. They’ll romanticize it.
Sing praises of how bravely their battalion fought.
They won’t speak of the squelch of their fellow friend and soldier’s blood in their boots, or the fear that painted every soldier’s face. Enemy and ally alike.”
Khiran’s words are weighted with the kind of grudging acceptance that Anna feels. “Then those children grow. Eager to fight the way their forefathers fought, only to realize the lie of it all too late.”
Anna scoffs, a whisper of breath as weak as her heart.
Another round of musket fire cracks through the air, its echo ringing across the valley.
Anna closes her eyes, swallows down the disappointment.
She wonders how many men will stay alive long enough to return to camp and receive treatment. “And the cycle continues.”
“And continues, and continues.” Another crack fills the silence between them, followed by the deep, unsettling drum of cannons. Screams follow. “I’m sorry.”
Anna glances at him, but his attention is fixed on the battle below. “What for?”
“For many things,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “At the moment? I wish I could offer you a more hopeful outlook.”
“Honesty is your nature,” she murmurs, shrugging. It’s a truth she has come to appreciate. Khiran doesn’t mince his words, no matter how much he must know she’ll hate hearing them.
A short, huffed breath—more scoff than laughter—escapes him. “A bold statement, considering I lie more often than not.”
“Not with me.” In all their centuries together, she has never known him to lie or twist the truth. Even when he must know she will hate his answers. She trusts his word the same way she trusts he will always return.
“No,” he agrees softly, “Not with you.” He shakes his head, head tipping up to the sky in thought. “But sometimes, I wish I could.”
Anna smiles despite the heaviness in her heart. “What lies would the great trickster spin for me?”
His eyes hold shadows Anna’s becoming far too familiar with. “That the world would get better.”
She looks away, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’m not sure I’d believe you.”
Worse, she’s almost certain she wouldn’t. She’s not sure when that changed—when she lost that quiet hope that the future was brighter than the present.
“No,” he says, “you wouldn’t. For the same reason I don’t believe myself when I dare to hope for it.” The curling at the corners of his lips is bitter and sharp. “Time is the cruelest of teachers.”
Eira had told her something similar, once.
Anna had no concept of how true it would come to be.
She hadn’t expected the lessons to cut so deep.
Hearing the thread of pain in his voice, Anna takes a small amount of comfort in knowing she isn’t alone.
That it’s not that her heart is too fragile, but the world is too hard.
She turns her face up to catch the sunlight on her cheeks.
The clouds chase each other across a blue sky, wisps of white down so fragile they look a breath away from scattering.
If it wasn’t for the grotesque sounds of battle echoing over the hills, Anna could almost call the day beautiful.
“I don’t think I’ll stay here much longer,” she admits.
His glance is openly curious. “Oh?”
“A man confessed his love to me yesterday,” she admits. “I’m not sure it would be wise to continue working with him.”
Khiran’s gaze is weighted. “Do you love him?”
“I think I could have. In another life. Maybe.” She shrugs, plucking at a blade of grass. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t love me. Not really.”
A few heartbeats and his stare slips away. There’s a neutrality to his expression that feels foreign—a mask that he hasn’t bothered wearing for her in centuries. “You sound so certain. Is it so easy to write off a declaration of love?”
Eyes closing, Anna tries not to think of the flash of pain that crossed Frederick’s face when she pulled away.
Tries not to think of the sudden fleeting desire that he was the god beside her now.
She shakes her head, ready to blame the flush creeping up her neck on the heat.
“He loved Eliza. A different woman with a different name, with only a couple decades of baggage instead of centuries.”
A woman without secrets.
Sighing, she tosses the abused blade of grass aside to shrivel and rot. “It doesn’t matter.”
Khiran scoffs. “You’re upset. Of course it matters.”
“It’s not—” She trails off, struggling to find the right words. Finally, she settles for, “I don’t grieve for him.” Anna looks at the man who gave her immortality and hopes her eyes convey what her words lack. “I grieve because I know the future he envisioned is one I will never have.”
For a long moment, the only response he gives is a stare so searching it makes her fingers itch with the urge to break the intensity of it. In the end, she looks away. It feels like the cowardly way out.
“Is that a life you want?”
A lock of hair has escaped her low bun. It tickles her neck as she shakes her head.
The echoes of battle have grown softer. Anna knows it’s only because there are fewer men able to pull their triggers.
“It’s a life I’ll never be able to have.
It never has been.” Even before she tasted immortality.
Before her secrets could fill libraries.
“How could I want something that was never within my reach?”
The breathy laugh he gives is soft, his hand running through his dark curls.
“You have crossed over the canals of a city that was built on marshlands once believed to be unusable. Your family waited for you for a century, with nothing but the words of a father for proof that you existed at all. Yet, you think married life is beyond you?”
She flushes, shame prickling her skin. “A happy married life is beyond me.”
Whatever bliss is to be had from marriage would go no farther than the wedding night.
One look at the skin she has spent centuries hiding, and whatever attraction he once felt for her would fizzle into disgust. Worse, whatever affection would sour into resentment.
She would be the lying witch the town openly sneered at—the one that tricked her way into a marriage bed.
Even in the middle of a war, Anna has no doubts that they would be quick to throw her to fire.
She’s not eager to risk repeating the experience. Not for something she knows will fail. Something she knows will hurt.
Khiran’s gaze is heavy; she can feel the weight of it on her cheek. “You’re afraid.”
A statement, not a question. Anna finds it incredibly unfair. “I’m too old, too experienced, to hope for the things the world has always made clear to be beyond me.” She tips her chin, her jaw tight as she meets his eyes. “It’s self preservation, not fear.”
His silence is as loud as his stare is searching.
Anna is a moment away from filling the quiet herself when he finally speaks.
“My apologies. I … forget that your burdens weigh differently than my own. Perception is a tool for me—something to use. I forget that, for you, it must feel more like a burden.”
Anna swallows, throat tight. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She thinks of Frederick’s reaction—the way he stripped her words of meaning until they became skeletal shadows of what they were just so his would stand stronger. “For listening. For understanding.”
For acknowledging her burdens despite never having to carry them.