Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Her eyes drift back to the cuts and bruises marring Khiran’s skin, and feels her stomach churn all over again.
No one should hold that much power.
She has spent centuries watching how power corrupts, a slow and bitter poison that harms the ones who have the least, most. She watched the church fatten their coin purses, peddling salvation to the starving.
Has seen Lords watch the people under them go hungry even while their own food stores grow and witnessed the rise of a dictatorship built on the backs of its citizens.
“And no one else has done the same?”
His mouth quirks, a tiny twisted smile. “No peach leaves that tree without The First’s blessing.” He reaches for her hand, thumb running over the lines of her palm. “Except for one.”
Anna remembers the edge in Eira’s voice, the disbelief, when she learned Anna had tasted immortality.
Of all the foolish things …
Now, eight centuries later, Anna can’t help but agree. “You stole it.”
“I did.”
“I don’t understand.” Anna shakes her head, pulling her hand from his grasp. He lets her slip away with only a wince of regret. “Why didn’t you take it for yourself?”
“I needed someone to do what I could not,” he says, words soft. “I needed someone to be my hands, because The First has shackled mine.”
He needed someone to put good into the world—to save the lives of strangers and hold the hands of children. To act where influence isn’t enough.
“Why?” The word is a trembling whisper. “Why risk it? If you had been caught—” She can’t finish. She can’t let herself imagine what the consequences would have been, not when his body is battered and bruised from one misstep.
He shrugs. “At first, I think I simply wanted to see if I could. The First is powerful, but he isn’t humble. All those centuries of threats and posturing … holding that peach in my hand felt like a victory made all the better by him not realizing he had lost.
“I didn’t have any plans to do anything with it.
Eating it myself would have been as good as admitting my crime.
Even if it made me stronger, I knew it would likely be far from being strong enough.
I resigned myself to merely keeping it as a sort of trophy—a trinket to make me feel better whenever The First tried to ground me beneath his heel. ”
Khiran looks at her, his smile so achingly crooked and soft it makes her heart hurt. “And then you saw me in the woods, saved me when I didn’t need saving.” The laugh he gives is breathy and full of fondness. “I thought if anyone could be worthy of its gifts, it would be you.”
His thumb brushes over her ring, turning the band over her finger. “You are everything I never knew to hope for.”
He heals faster than any mortal, the bruises fading within days instead of weeks, but he carries the fatigue like a chain.
Sometimes she catches him nodding off between short pauses in conversation.
A week later and he still doesn’t have the strength to travel, and Anna finds herself spending more and more time foraging for what she can until one morning he hands her a small wad of papered money.
“There’s a town two hours walk west of here,” he says. “Buy some supplies and hire help to bring them.”
Anna frowns, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him alone for so long, but she suspects food is as vital to his recovery as rest. She takes the money and follows Khiran’s directions until she stumbles upon a small town.
The locals give her odd looks, and Anna has the sense that she’s paying far more than current value, but money is the least of her concerns.
She hires a farm hand to load the goods onto his horse.
It takes some convincing—Anna learns that most of the locals seem to eye the forest with suspicion.
She doesn’t know the language, but from their choppy bits of English (and the trouble she had finding someone willing to brave them) Anna suspects they believe it to be cursed.
She’s sure Khiran has absolutely everything to do with it, and she’s eager to hear the story upon her return.
The journey feels longer returning than going.
Anna blames the awkward silence and long stares of her temporary travel companion.
By the time they emerge from the treeline and into the meadow, the sun has already begun its descent.
When they turn the corner around the copse of trees, she spies Khiran sitting on the front steps.
Waiting for her.
“What will come next?” she asks, a whispered question in the dark. The bed is big enough for them to both fit comfortably, though sometimes their elbows and knees knock when they shift. She turns her head, studies his profile in the moonlight. “When you’re better?”
His eyes open, but he doesn’t turn to face her. “I’ll take you back across the ocean. The travel will feel horrible, but you’ll be safer on that side of the world.”
“And with us?”
His silence is deafening.
She sits up, forcing herself into his line of sight. “Khiran?”
“There won’t be an us, Anna. There can’t be.”
“There has been an us for eight centuries,” she argues. “Why would that change now?”
His lips twist into a grimace. “He’ll be keeping closer tabs on me. Once he notices I’m traveling again, he’s certain to pay attention.”
“And if you didn’t? If you stayed in one place?”
His eyes soften with a regret so sharp it cuts. “Then he would know I’ve found something worth staying for.”
Anna shakes her head, loose curls brushing over her shoulder. “I don’t understand. Is he this controlling with everyone?”
“He believes himself above everyone, so in a true narcissist fashion—yes. Absolutely.” He winces. “Though I admit my rather … rebellious start hasn’t done me any favors in that regard.”
Somehow, the thought of him spending his youth causing trouble comes as absolutely no surprise. “Is that why you can’t interfere?”
He nods. “My punishment for believing myself greater than I am,” he says, the words coated in a bitterness so old it’s stale. An echo from someone else’s mouth.
Loosely, she laces their fingers—watches as her thumb traces the lines in his palm. “I’m not afraid of him.”
His hand flexes against her own, tightening until his knuckles go white and she finally looks up at him. “You should be,” he says, and even though it’s no louder than a whisper, she feels it like a gunshot. The echoes of it reverberate in her chest. “Anna, you need to be.”
The breath sits in her lungs, a still, hollow ache, as she searches his face.
His eyes are wide, imploring. She can map out and memorize every fleck of blue and green in his irises.
Her hand rises, pushing a dark curl away from his face before settling on his cheek.
Her gaze dips, grazing his parted lips. How long has it been since she’s kissed him?
How long since she’s let herself drown in his embrace?
She meets his eyes, wills her words reach his heart despite how softly they fall from her lips. “Fear is for mortals.” She tilts her chin, their breath mingling. “You taught me that, remember?”
The grimace he wears is painful. His nose brushes hers, foreheads touching. “This is different. Anna, please—”
She closes the distance, lips capturing whatever words he would have uttered. Rejecting them before they could be born from his parted mouth. Slowly, reverently, he moves against her like a sigh. Soft and measured, trying to draw out each movement to its fullest.
He tastes like pasts and futures, like whispered memories and lucid dreams. He feels like coming home.
Anna shifts, straddling his lap. The urge to press herself against him, to sink into him until the weight of it robs the breath from their lungs, makes her breath stutter.
But she won’t risk causing injury to the fragile, partially-healed ribs along his torso.
Instead, she hovers over him, kisses him until she’s certain she would float away if not for the hands gripping her thighs.
“Say it.” A breathy command between kisses, her hips canting to meet his, nerves fraying and sending sparks across her skin. “Please, Khiran.”
“Anna—”
“Say it.”
Glazed eyes stare up at her as if she is both a dream and nightmare. His hand travels beneath the hem of her dress, over the curve of her waist. “Fear is for mortals.”
After, when the shadows start slipping away and the night melts into morning, Anna feels his words whisper over her hair. A whispered breath she wasn’t meant to hear.
“If only fearlessness were enough.”
He had warned her that the jump from one continent to another would be difficult, but she still wasn’t prepared for how much worse.
It’s more than losing the contents of her stomach, more than a dizziness that makes the world spin.
She is being torn apart, pulled in a million different directions.
Black clouds her vision, an agony pushing against the walls of her skull.
It’s only the distant feeling of Khiran’s hands drifting from her back to cup her face, the slow realization that she’s kneeling and the violent churning of her stomach, that makes her realize they’ve arrived.
Her body hurts in ways she hasn’t experienced.
Khiran’s hands hold her hair back as she retches into the grass—her chest heaving when there’s nothing left to lose. Her throat is raw, her mouth sour in ways that make her gut recoil in sympathy. It takes her a good twenty minutes before she gathers enough strength and will to lift her head.
Miles of coastline stretches out in front of her.
At her back, ancient sequoias reach up to the heavens, and—between it all—hundreds of acres of flowers.
Orange and purple sways on the breeze like the ebb and flow of the tide.
Khiran’s hands help her up, steady her with an arm around her waist. Anna’s still trying to find her bearings. “Where are we?”
“California,” he murmurs, eyeing her carefully. “Are you able to walk?”
Her legs are weak, trembling like a newborn fawn they ache so terribly. “How far?”
“There’s a cottage just over the hill.”
She pales, gripping his arm. “Up or down?”
He chuckles, the sound strained and soft. “Down.”
“You couldn’t have just brought us to the door?”
“It’s not a precise magic,” he says, adjusting his hold so his arm wraps behind her back. The other takes her hand, squeezing it softly. “The farther I travel, the less accuracy I have to work with.”
Following his lead, she takes a shaky step forward. Her stomach complains, nausea rising in her throat. She swallows it down. Focuses on his words. “So if you tried for the doorstep—”
“We would have been more likely to go through the roof.”
Anna breathes a laugh. “In that case, I think it’s a lovely walk.”
There’s no response, no quipped remark or fond smile. Anna feels her spirits fall. He crossed them to the other side of the world; surely such a feat would cause strain when he’s still recovering. “Khiran?”
He must hear the concern lining the sound of his name. “I’m fine.”
Perhaps anyone else would have believed him, but Anna doesn’t. There’s a strain in the words, a tension in the arms that hold her. It’s so subtle, she would have missed it were she not looking. The traveling has taken more than he cares to admit. She’s sure of it.
They move slowly through the field of flowers. Anna tries to withhold a sympathetic wince whenever she accidentally crushes one beneath her shuffling feet. Another fifteen minutes, and she sees the cottage.
It’s lovely.
A gabled roof and pale yellow shingles with white trim and a covered porch that makes her think of her cabin back in Louisiana.
Peeking over the roofline, she spots a stone cap of a chimney.
It’s sweet and unassuming, charming without the frills.
It’s not entirely unlike the cottage they left behind.
The architecture is different, and this one seems substantially bigger, but the feeling is the same.
Both are quietly tucked away into nature’s embrace.
Of course, privacy seems to have been a priority in nearly all his getaways.
“It doesn’t snow here,” he explains as they approach the front steps. “There is some frost, but you can grow year round.”
Anna glances up at him, frowning curiously. It’s an odd bit of information for him to share. “Are we staying that long?”
His hold adjusts, supporting her by the elbow as he helps her conquer the first step. “Go slow.”
The words are wasted—Anna doesn’t feel like she has any other speed.
It takes an agonizing amount of effort, even with the handrail and his help.
She understands, more than ever, why he hesitated to travel so far for so long.
All the other times, the distance had been so short in comparison.
Enough for her to feel sick, but never like this.
She feels like she’s been struck by a vehicle and peeled up from the road.
On the last step, she wavers, her knee giving out.
Khiran’s hands are there to steady her. It’s only when they’ve crossed the threshold that he lets her step out of his arms. If the exterior is cute, the inside is absolutely charming.
Wood floors and painted beadboard that runs floor to high ceilings.
Stained glass transoms over the doors cast colored light across the room.
“Do you like it?”
The question is so ridiculous, she can’t help the breathy laugh that escapes her. “It’s lovely.”
“I’m glad.”
There’s a shadow in his voice, a tint of sadness to the words, that set her on edge. She turns to him, a frown on her lips that only grows deeper when she catches his expression.
He’s studying her; his gaze tracing the curves of her face as if he’s trying to memorize them.
She steps closer, takes his hands in her own. “What’s wrong?”
He kisses her, soft and achingly gentle. It tastes like an apology.
Anna pulls away, apprehension rising like a tide. She looks into his eyes, sees the regret there, and feels it crash down on her—sweeping her away into frigid waters and filling her lungs. “Khiran—”
“I’m sorry, Anna.” His voice, his smile, is full of pain and resolution. Anna knows he’s decided for both of them, without her. His lips press against her forehead. A goodbye. He’s never given her a goodbye. “I won’t risk you.”
She gasps, her fingers tangling in his sleeve. “No! Don’t—”
But he does.
He disappears, ripping out of her arms with a violence that’s painful. She can still feel the echo of his lips on her skin, taste the silent goodbye in his kiss, and she knows with heart wrenching clarity that he doesn’t plan to come back to her.