Chapter Twenty #2
Because Khiran was right. Everything does change.
Now, more than ever, it feels like those changes are coming faster than she can keep up.
Discovery after discovery. Invention after invention.
Only a century ago, she was forced to sacrifice candles if she stayed up past dark.
Now, the city hums with electricity—the power of lighting a room as easy as pressing a switch.
Cars and trains make travel easier and more accessible than ever, and telephones allow family members to hear their loved one’s voice across cities.
The changes are nothing short of miraculous—dreams turned into realities.
All things she would have never seen, never experienced, had she not accepted a peach from a stranger’s hand.
And yet … there are times where she looks around at all the world’s progress—all the innovation—and feels an uncomfortable churning in her stomach.
Khiran walks with her, their arms linked, through Central Park.
September days are pleasant, but the mornings have begun to carry a chill, nippy enough for her to hold the collar of her light coat closed with her free hand to ward off the chill.
Most of the leaves are in the process of changing, painting the landscape in vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows and carpeting the ground.
The park is her favorite thing about the city—a breath of nature.
She feels more at home with leaves crunching beneath her feet than cobblestone; with birdsong instead of a sea of voices and machinery.
The world has become louder, with its cars and its radio. The city populations keep growing, the streets more crowded. Some days, it’s enough to make her miss the quiet and isolation that came with the countryside.
“You’re wearing the most thoughtful expression,” Khiran says, a smile in his voice. “What are you thinking?”
She leans her cheek against his shoulder, the wool of his coat tickling her skin. “The world is changing.”
“The world is always changing,” he counters, not unkindly. “You know that.”
“Yes, but it feels faster now. Sometimes it feels like it’s going so quickly, I can’t keep up.”
She expects him to laugh it off, to tell her she’s being silly.
Honestly, she should have known better. Khiran may hold the title God of Lies, but he has only ever been honest with her.
Even in times like these where she almost hopes he will.
“I’ll admit, this past century has seen more change than any that’s come before it. It’s as exciting as it is concerning.”
“Concerning?” she echoes, a frown pulling at her brow. “Why?”
“Everything is advancing. War. Weapons.” He frowns, regret pinching his expression. “I fear what it could mean for the future.”
Anna thinks of the tens of thousands of men that passed through St. John’s only to go home permanently disfigured, go back to the front lines, or leave in a body bag.
She thinks of the mustard gas that blistered their lungs.
A weapon that killed so indiscriminately, so ruthlessly.
She’s afraid to think about what worse could look like.
She shivers, her steps slowing. Khiran stops with her, looking down at her with such concern it makes her ache. “What will we do for the next one?”
Because there will be a next one. And one after that. And another after that. War is a certainty that can’t be denied. It’s as inevitable as every other disaster that haunts humanity. Famine, pestilence, and war: Death’s favorite playthings.
There’s a tension in him; a thread pulled so taut she can feel it threatening to snap through their linked arms. She looks up at him, catches the strained flex of his jaw as he chews on his answer. Her steps slow, her hand reaching for his. “Khiran?”
He squeezes her hand. Forces a smile. “Let’s go to lower Manhattan today. There’s a lovely little French place I’ve been meaning to take you to.”
A deflection, one he hasn’t even bothered to hide. Anna allows it. “Very well.”
They leave the park and hail a taxi. The restaurant Khiran takes her to is finer than she would have ever paid for, but he pulls money out of air as easily as any normal man draws a breath.
Over her crepes, Anna wonders where it all comes from.
When she asks, his silence paired with his smirk assures her she’s better off not knowing.
After, they wander through some of the shops and steadily tackle the to-do list she’s been putting off most of the month: thread to mend the hole she found in her favorite dress last week, a new hat to replace the one she lost on a particularly drunk night out along with a new pair of dancing shoes because the ones Khiran spins from magic are never quite as comfortable.
They’re leaving the bakery, a fresh loaf of sourdough tucked under Khiran’s arm, when it happens.
A blast so loud she feels it. Ringing in her ears. Glass raining on her shoulders like sharp-edged confetti.
Anna staggers, heart in her throat and eyes searching the sky for fighter planes that aren’t there.
Khiran’s grip on her arm is the only thing between her and the ground, his fingers so tight they bruise.
She looks at him, searching for answers in his expression, but he doesn’t meet her eyes.
His gaze is trained on the smoke rising up from down the street like a beacon.
She pulls away from his hold. Takes a step towards the destruction.
The ringing in her ears has faded. Everything is muted, like she’s underwater, but the street stares back at her with a vividness that reminds her of broken bodies and war-torn screams. Windows are shattered, people are running in every direction.
“Anna!”
Her name is an echo, a muffled slurring of syllables she’s only vaguely aware of. A stranger rushes past, his shoulder clipping her own and making her stagger. There’s blood on his coat sleeves, on his hands. When Anna looks down, she can see some of it smeared onto her blouse.
There’s a hand at her elbow, gentle and coaxing and familiar.
Khiran. He repeats her name, worry spilling into his voice like oil on water until it’s spread so far and so thin it feels more like a dream than reality.
But his grasp is firm, and the shell-shocked horror in the faces fleeing down the street is too familiar to be anything but real.
Anna knows this. She knows war, and she knows suffering. She knows how to help.
She pulls away from Khiran’s hold, ignores the frantic calling of her name, and runs down the street. Towards the smoke. Towards the screams.
There are bodies everywhere, some of them in pieces.
A woman sobs over the body of what must be the remains of her husband, her light skirts dark with his smeared blood.
Anna starts checking for pulses. There’s a young man—a paperboy no older than thirteen.
He’s unconscious but alive, bleeding from a gash in his leg.
She applies pressure—pushing away at an unfamiliar set of hands trying to coax her away.
A glance over her shoulder shows it to be an officer.
“I’m a nurse!” she snaps. Her hearing must be returning, or perhaps it’s just because the drumming of her heart isn’t quite so violent, but her words ring loudly. She must get her point across, because he no longer tries to pull her away.
Pressure.
She just needs it to stop bleeding. If she can make it stop, she can move on to the next person needing saving. Then she sees the blood seeping across the cobblestones, wicking up the cotton of his shirt, and realizes he’s bleeding from his back, too.
Hands, she needs more hands. Looking up, she searches for help, but every one brave enough to be there is either busy treating or being treated. Then her eyes snag on the shadow at her side. Khiran.
Hovering over her shoulder, he’s a statue in the storm. “Help me,” she breathes. “I need you to put pressure.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch. There’s a depth in his eyes; a shadowed regret. “I can’t.”
She stares at him, echoes his words under her breath in a futile effort to understand them. “No, but, this isn’t—I’m not asking you to save him,” she rushes, the words tripping off her tongue. “I’ll save him. I just need—”
“Anna, I can’t.” He kneels next to her, his expensive suit soaking up the blood puddling between the cobblestones as he pulls his belt loose and holds it out to her in offering. “You have to be my hands.”
Her eyes drop to the offered belt, hesitating only a moment before taking it and looping it around the boy’s leg.
There’s a bitterness on her tongue; feelings she knows better than to give words to.
Khiran has told her, time and again, that he cannot intervene in mortal lives.
He follows her from victim to victim, watching as her hands and sleeves grow dark with their blood, and Anna feels her chest tighten and her stomach sour.
She wishes he would have bent his rules, even just this once, if just for her.
That night when he helps her wash the blood from her skin, Anna says nothing of her shadowed thoughts.
Instead, she buries them under touch and taste—lets herself drown in the feeling of skin sliding on skin with nothing but water between them.
She goes to bed with damp hair and his arms wrapped securely around her waist and wakes to him gone; the pain of yesterday just one more terrible thing belonging to the past.
It’s nearly six months later when Anna sees it: a small foot trail peeking out from under the leaves. Framed by two magnificent budding cherry trees, it invites her in with a familiarity that nags her. She stops, brow creasing as she tries to place the feeling. “I don’t remember this trail.”
She has walked this path often, but she has no memory of it despite remembering all the others they’ve passed.
Khiran tugs her forward, his smile crooked. “Probably just a game trail,” he says, but Anna doesn’t miss the hint of tension around his eyes. “Come, you did promise to show me your favorite breakfast spot.”
Anna looks back at the path—feels something stirring in her gut—but licks her lips and nods. “Right, of course.”
Except, even as she walks away, she can still feel a pull. That night, as she tucks herself into the crook of Khiran’s arm and closes her eyes to sleep, it’s waiting for her—calling her by name in a voice that sounds so distantly familiar it takes Anna a few dream-filled moments to place it.
Eira.
Anna wakes, eyes staring up at the ceiling and heart drumming in her ears. She knows better than to believe it’s a coincidence. She turns and finds Khiran’s spot on the bed empty, the sheets cold.
Staring at the hollow imprint on the pillow, Anna knows she won’t be showing up to work today. Or tomorrow. Or the day after.
She gets up, gets dressed, and packs a bag. She doesn’t lock the door on her way out. Twenty minutes later, she stands in front of the trail—the morning breeze tussling her hair and whispering encouragements in her ear. Anna takes a deep, bracing breath, and steps onto the path.