Chapter Twenty-Three #2
The soldier hovers over her, gun drawn, shouting in German the same words over and over.
Where are they? She knows they’re already too far ahead to be found.
Anna just about guaranteed their chances when she doubled back.
By the time the soldiers think to expand the search farther from where they found her, they’ll be too far gone.
Death may still come for them. They could freeze in the night, could miss her subtle markers and lose themselves in the wilderness. Perhaps they will never make it to the Swiss border, but Anna can be at peace knowing that she did everything she could to give them the best chances.
“Stand!” he orders.
Anna obeys, knees weak with cold.
The soldier’s gaze travels over her appraisingly—lingering on her feet. “The shoes. Take them off. The coat and gloves, too.”
Anna bites her tongue, bending to unlace her leather boots. Her gloved fingers make slow work of it. Slow enough that her captor curses and demands she move more quickly.
With only her clothing underneath, the cold bites. His icy blue eyes scan over her once more, looking for anything else worth taking. She can tell by the curl of his lip he’s disappointed. Everything else is tattered; better for rags than for clothing. Everything except—
He flicks the barrel of the pistol toward her feet. “The socks.”
Anna grits her teeth, peels the double-layered wool socks off her feet and adds them to the pile. The snow crunches beneath her bare feet, so cold it burns. When she straightens, she grits her teeth against the chattering and meets his eyes defiantly. The soldier cocks the trigger back.
Anna knows what comes next.
She doesn’t fear the pain, but she fears what could come after. She has heard the stories. The refugees have shared them over the fire. What ways would they try to tear her apart, when they shoot her and she doesn’t bleed. Doesn’t die.
She sucks in a breath, the air freezing in her lungs, and braces herself.
An arm wraps around her middle, heat at her back and an arm gilded in magic outstretched. Anna watches, time stretching into a breath of a moment, as the gun fires—
And the officer drops, the bullet meant for her between his brow.
The world shifts beneath her feet, a whirl of colors spinning, the universe as she knows it folding in on itself. She closes her eyes, chokes on a silent, terrified scream because there is nothing, nothing, nothing. No air, no breath, no light, no dark.
Then it’s over. The sound of the universe stretching and pulling replaced with crashing waves, the feel of nothing replaced with shifting sand beneath her bare feet.
The arm around her waist releases her, and she folds—knees and hands burying themselves in the coarse sand as she heaves.
Her stomach contracts painfully, there is nothing but bile for her to lose. She ran out of food days ago.
She wipes her mouth with the back of a shaky hand, sand scratching at her skin, and finds the energy to turn her head to look at him. He’s sitting, forearms braced on his folded knees and his eyes narrowed on the horizon. “Thank you,” she croaks.
Immediately, his expression twists—those fathomless eyes pinning her in place. “Thank you?” he echoes, as if the words were a knife. “You dare, after you gave up every opportunity to escape, to thank me?”
He stands, stalking toward her—a tower of fury and spite as he grasps her chin, his long fingers digging into her jaw. “I warned you to leave the country,” he hisses. “And now you’ve forced my hand to meddle in a realm that isn’t mine to meddle in!”
Her lips thin. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“You didn’t need to, Anna!” he snaps, the words gravel and brimstone.
“What, exactly, do you think would happen when they figured it out? How far would they go, how many tortures would you endure, when they tear you apart trying to understand why you just won’t die?
Do you think I would stand by and let you suffer? Would you wish that on me?”
She pales, his words a strike to her heart. She has never seen him so furious. Never have his words cut with such a cruel edge.
He draws closer, their faces a hair’s breath apart. He must see the horror in her eyes, the crushing realization, because he releases her chin with a disgusted hiss of breath. Takes a step back, then another, shaking his head. “You have no idea what you’ve cost me.”
Anna reaches out to him, his name on her tongue.
He’s gone before it can spring from her lips.
She stands, regret as sharp as the wind on her cheeks. Slowly, her outstretched hand drops.
A numbness sweeps over her. For the first time since they arrived, she takes in her surroundings. The beach is barren save a few wind-worn trees and craggy cliffs. All around her, for as far as her eyes can see, is nothing but ocean.
It’s eight weeks before Khiran returns.
Eight weeks of hunger and thirst; of scrounging the shoreline for crustaceans stranded at low tide and a never ending search for pockets of rainwater between the jagged rocks.
Of days filled with loneliness and cold damp nights under the cliff face.
Eight weeks of staring off into the waves and weighing which is worse: starving or drowning?
She is knee-deep in ocean water, the undertow pulling the pebbled sand from beneath her feet, when she hears her name over the wind.
Anna turns, catches sight of him on the shore. The waves slap at the back of her thighs, the water wicking up her clothes. She’s freezing, body shivering with it, but in that moment—seeing him, unfazed, so close to the exact spot he left her—all she feels is heat.
She runs to him, the water tangling in her legs and slowing her down. When the tide pulls out, the ground shifting beneath her, she trips. Sand coats her damp skin, her clothes, like scales. Like armor.
Good.
She knows, the moment she recognizes the soft edges of regret playing across his face, that she’ll need it.
Her fists pound against his chest, tears burning down her cheeks. “How could you,” she spits, pain and fury coiled so tightly they become synonymous. “You left me here!”
He doesn’t flinch away from the assault, but he doesn’t stop it either. “It wasn’t my intention.”
Her fingers curl into his shirt, his words only serving to fuel her anger.
“Wasn’t your intention?” she echoes, words hissing past her teeth.
“It was a god damn island! How could …” her voice trails off, eyes pinned to the flawless seams of his shirt—the way the crisp cotton barely flutters despite the wind tangling her hair.
She pulls away from him, disgusted. “You coward,” she growls, hands fisted at her side. “You don’t even have the decency to face me yourself? Were you just going to let me talk to an illusion this whole time?!”
The copy’s expression is carefully blank. Behind her, his voice barely carries over the sound of squawking gulls and crashing waves. “That was the hope. What gave it away?”
Her nails bite into her palms. “The clothes.”
A moment of silence, a sigh of understanding. “The wind. Of course. A rookie mistake.”
The double disperses lazily and without the usual grandeur or finesse.
Anna turns. He’s sitting on the rocks a few paces behind her, his arms extended and elbows resting on his raised knees.
There’s something off, though. There’s no feline grace in the lines of his body, no proud arch of his brows or challenges in his eyes.
His spine is bowed, shoulders slumped. It’s enough for the words burning on her tongue to cool.
Then she sees the purple marring his flesh, just under his jaw, and feels her blood chill. She thinks of Silas’ words: the same one Khiran would save you from knowing.
“Is it the silent treatment, now?” The small laugh he gives is as sardonic as his crooked smile. “I suppose that would be a fitting punishment.”
When she says nothing, he looks up—interpreting her line of sight as easily as if it were mapped out in string.
His hand lifts, elegant fingers grazing the bruised flesh of his neck.
His smile turns bitter at the edges, as cold as it is sharp.
“I see I missed a spot. Forgive me, I’m afraid I’m not at my best.”
“What happened?”
He looks away, standing. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” The motion is smooth, but it lacks his usual grace.
It’s a minuscule difference—one anyone else would have missed—but she fixates on the change. Worry tightens her chest, a painful suspicion rooting her to the spot. It twines around her heart, barbed thorns threatening to pierce the tender flesh. “Show me.”
He closes his eyes, head tilted to the heavens as he releases a long breath through his nose. “Anna—”
“Show me.”
“I am not your next charity case,” he snaps. “Find someone else to sacrifice yourself for.”
She stands, unmoving. Unwavering. “Show me,” she repeats, softer this time. “Please.”
It’s the please that breaks him, she can see the way it cuts at the last remaining threads holding his anger in place. Now, he just looks tired. “I can’t be saved, Anna.” His smile is weak. “Not even by you.”
She closes the few feet between them, fingers undoing the buttons of his shirt with a familiarity that hurts.
When she slides the fabric off his shoulders, his skin shudders under her touch.
She traces the bruises ringing his neck.
They look like hands. It’s in that instant that she understands the truth hiding between all the words he refuses to say. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
His insistence that the human world isn’t his to meddle with.
The soldier dropping, the bullet meant for her shattering his skull.
The fury in the words, you forced my hand.
The pale pinch of fear on his face those scant seconds before he blinked away and left her stranded.
“Anna,” he breathes, soft and consoling, but he doesn’t offer any denials. She appreciates that, even after the horrors she must have put him through, he doesn’t disrespect her by lying.
Her throat constricts and her eyes burn from the effort of holding back the tears threatening to consume her. “Show me. Khiran, please.”
Show me what I did to you. Show me the pain I’ve caused.
His arms wrap around her shoulders, his hold so gentle it hurts. A kiss to her crown, breath mingling with her hair. “No.”
She closes her eyes and hides her face in the collar of his shirt. “Why?” she croaks, voice hoarse.
“Because I won’t be the one to cause you pain.”