Chapter Twenty-One #2
She wakes to the sound of a hushed argument on the other side of the bedroom door. She sits up, arms wrapping around her knees, as she strains to hear.
“You shouldn’t have done it.” Khiran’s voice, thick with frustration. “She doesn’t need to be here.”
“I need help,” Eira responds shortly.
He scoffs, the edge in his voice sharpening. Anna can hear his steps pacing the room. “Her heart is too soft for this, Eira. This kind of suffering—these horrors—they are too much to ask of her.”
A bark of laughter, raspy and brimming with skepticism. “You say this as if she has not already lived through war and famine—through plague and cruelty. Do you think I would ask this of her if I believed her unprepared?”
“This is different.”
“Of course it is. It’s always different. Every war, every sickness. Time changes everything. If it didn’t, we would be far more successful in our efforts.”
“But this—”
Eira cuts him off, sharp and scolding. “Is this not why you saved her? To serve as your hand where you cannot?”
“Have you no mercy left or do you just refuse to understand?” he hisses. “She will destroy herself trying to save them all!”
“Then it will be one for the survival of many. Why would this rule bend for her?”
There is a pause, heavy enough for Anna to feel it through the door. Her hand curls up against the wood, her breath shaky as she peers through the crack. Khiran’s back is to her, but she can clearly see Eira’s face darken with a mixture of disappointment and horror.
“What have you done?” Dread drips from each word, her aged hand reaching behind her to grip a chair as if suddenly overcome by weakness.
“Eira—”
“How could you be so foolish?” she snaps, but there’s more worry than anger sharpening the words. Khiran’s answering silence is suffocating. Eira sits, her hand at her temples. “Why do you never learn?”
“I didn’t intend for it,” he murmurs, taking the seat opposite of her. In the firelight, his expression is soft. “But I can’t bring myself to regret its happening, either.”
She laughs, the sound rasping and hollow. “This could spell the end for you.”
“It could.”
“I told you from the beginning that it’s dangerous to care too much.”
“And I believe I may have mentioned the hypocrisy of that statement coming from you.”
“There is a difference between having mercy and loving. My heart was never at risk. Yours is.”
His chuckle is brittle, chipping away at the edges. “Oh, Eira. It’s too late for that. My heart is already in her hands and at her mercy.”
Eira shakes her head, the hand at her temple dropping to the table. The way she looks at him—with such concern and such heartbreak—makes something click in place. A missing piece of a puzzle she never thought to try solving.
She looks at him the way a mother looks at a son.
The way she once looked at Piers when she was worried for his safety. The revelation rocks her, makes it so she nearly misses her next words.
“He can’t find her,” Eira warns. Anna’s heart drops.
“He hasn’t yet.”
“Yes, nifty piece of ancient magic you picked up. Tell me, how much did you bleed for that ring on her finger?”
“It’s effective. That’s all that matters.”
“For now,” she says, the words brimming with fear and warnings. “Khiran, how long will she stay hidden from him when you are not?”
“I’m being careful.”
Anna can’t listen anymore, not when she has questions that are burning to be answered.
The hinges creak as the door opens, a quiet scream in a silent room.
Eira seems suspiciously unsurprised to see her, but Khiran’s head snaps to hers, eyes rimmed with secrets.
She can see the exact moment he realizes that she’s heard far more than he’d wish.
“What are you talking about?” she asks, voice shaking. There are a million implications dancing around her. She’s lightheaded—dizzy—trying to focus. “Who can’t find me?”
His hands find hers. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
She steps out of his hold, ignores the flash of hurt that plays across his face.
After their argument that afternoon—after he has already admitted to hiding truths to keep her from walking Eira’s path—it feels like the hand that gently held her heart only yesterday has her in a chokehold, nails digging into the softest parts of her.
She feels manipulated.
How many omissions has he fed her? How many paths did he steer her away from?
He has reminded her from the very beginning that she’s no longer mortal, but right now she wonders if she has fallen into the same traps of influence and trickery that he has used to shape the human world for centuries.
How foolish of her to believe that she would be any different.
Holding her ground, she takes her hurt and lets it simmer into bitterness. “Like Eira’s call?” she challenges, the words hissing past her teeth.
His hands drop to his sides. She hates the way he’s watching her—like she’s fragile. Like she’ll break. “I thought we had laid that to rest,” he offers, careful and measured.
“What good is an apology—how real can it be—if you stand here now and do the same?” Flushing, her chest heaves and her nails bite into her palms. “There is someone out there you fear finding me. Someone who, apparently, would wish to bring me harm. How can you claim honesty while shoving me in the dark?”
He hardens, gaze turning flinty. “This isn’t about you.”
It’s the drop of rain that breaks the dam; the subtle breeze that turns a flame into a blaze. She feels it, igniting her blood and spilling over her eyes. The words that leave her lips are liquid heat, cracking through the air between them like lightning. “Of course it’s about me!”
The room goes silent. A quick glance shows Eira’s seat empty. Anna’s not even sure when she excused herself. Khiran stands, the embodiment of stillness before a storm. Anna can feel the warnings crackle against her skin. Once, his power—his ancientness—scared her. It doesn’t now.
She carries her own strength, forged with time and melded with experience. There may never come a time where she can match his knowledge, she’ll always be centuries behind him, but wisdom is more than what you know. It’s more than what you’ve lived through.
“How can you say it’s anything else?” she challenges, the words dark with her anger. “When you so clearly want to keep me from it?”
She can hear the way his teeth clench, the bones groaning under the pressure. “There are some things you aren’t ready for.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
“You’re my responsibility.”
She recoils. Struck. “Responsibility?” The word tastes foul, bitter disappointment paired with curdling resentment. “Is that what I am? Still?”
The line of his jaw softens, a flash of regret before he closes his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know that’s not how I meant it.”
“But that’s what you said,” she retorts, the accusation sharp. “So, am I a responsibility or not?”
“You’re more. You must know that. I’ve made my feelings for you no secret.”
“More,” she echoes. “But, under everything else, that’s still what I am to you.” She shakes her head, retreating another step. “I don’t want to be your responsibility, Khiran. I want to be your equal.”
He has no response.
Even if he did, Anna’s not sure she’d hear it. She turns on her heel, slams the bedroom door loud enough for it to echo the anger in her heart. Her shoulder blades press against the wood, her body slipping to the floor. No footsteps follow. Anna’s not sure if she’s more relieved or heartbroken.
Eira’s voice is soft, a murmur she can barely catch. “Perhaps it’s best for you to stay away for a bit. Give her some time.”
Anna feels the weight of his answering silence long after he’s left.
Eira adamantly refuses to tell her what Khiran’s hiding. The first time Anna asks, all she receives is an exasperated glare for her trouble. The second time, Eira sighs. “He would never forgive me. Do you understand how steep a price that becomes when we live as we do?”
When Anna first came under Eira’s care, she didn’t—couldn’t—but time is the best teacher. Never becomes so much heavier when eternity is stretched out before you.
Anna doesn’t ask again.
Instead, she focuses on the children. Her task is simple: travel Eira’s paths and lead the hungry and abandoned back. It sounds far easier than it is. She knows now why Khiran tried to steer her away—can see the mercy in it.
Anna has lived through famine, but she has never been forced to confront its horrors so directly.
In France, she had stuck to the fields and forest and avoided the larger cities and towns almost completely.
The worst she witnessed was the hunger in Piers’ face, and the pain of knowing he was left to die alone in the woods so that his family’s plates would be a little less empty.
Anna has always been limited to one place, one tragedy, at a time.
Eira’s paths give her no such luxury.
There are bodies lining the streets, skeletal remains with eyes open and staring.
The living walk by them numbly, dust kicking up behind their bare feet, balancing on the brink of starvation themselves.
Anna knows, without needing to ask, why so many are without shoes.
She can see it in their bony faces, in the bloated bellies of the children, and knows they sacrificed the leather to feed their stomachs.
Every day leads her somewhere new. A new town.
A new country. Many are under Soviet Russia’s control.
One day, the trail takes her to Samara, and Anna makes the mistake of going too close to town.
Close enough to see what’s being sold as food.
Anna’s stomach lurches, barely making it far enough out of eyesight before retching behind a tree.
She knows the image of butchered limbs will haunt her for lifetimes.
Anna has seen hunger—has felt it—but never like this.