Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Finally, she gives herself permission to look at him. She thought she was ready, that seeing him wouldn’t hurt like it does, but the truth is that a century could have passed and seeing him would have still knocked the breath from her lungs.
He wears the same face that stars in her favorite memories; the same full lips she devoted an entire year to kissing. The same eyes, staring at her with such hopeful desperation. She smiles. Hopes he sees the forgiveness in it. “You chose well.”
He can’t hold her gaze, looking away from her and surveying the expansive changes she’s made. “I didn’t expect you to stay.”
Anna shrugs, dusting off her hands. “I didn’t expect you to leave,” she counters softly. “Time changes everything, even us. Remember?”
Eyes closing, he swallows back a wince. “I wanted you to be safe. I couldn’t—if he found you—” His laughter is breathy, dark with a pain he’s held onto for decades. “Anna, it would destroy me. How could I possibly live with myself, knowing I failed to protect you?”
She stands, brushing the soil from her knees. “I know.”
I forgive you. I understand.
He wets his lips, shaking his head before finally meeting her eyes.
“I was worried. When you didn’t leave. I thought—I was afraid of how I would find you.
” His gaze lowers, tracing the colorful bits of embroidery decorating her collar before dipping down to her arms. Her sleeves are rolled up past her elbows, the pale patterns on her skin on full display. “You look well. You look happy.”
“I am.” Not an assurance for his sake, but a simple truth. “I’ve picked up beekeeping. I have a cat that sleeps by my feet every night. I discovered that I enjoy painting. There’s only one time in my life I think I’ve ever felt happier.”
The year they traveled arm in arm through New York, when their bodies warmed her sheets and his smiles warmed her heart. When it felt like everything else in the world would sort itself out without them, so long as he never stopped returning to kiss her breathless.
He regards her closely, as if trying to unravel the changes in her long enough to understand them. “I expected you on the other side of the world, if I’m honest.”
So much of the world is in a state of upheaval.
A century ago, she would have put herself in the thick of it—would have killed herself again and again trying to save everyone but herself.
“I wanted to make the world better, I still do. But you were right.” Her eyes find his, an ache settling in her chest. She missed him.
“I was so busy saving everyone else, I never stopped to save myself.”
His breath leaves him in a slow sigh. “I … have something for you.”
In his hand is a peach, golden and almost perfect. “What’s this?”
“A gift.” When she says nothing, a muscle in his jaw ticks. “An apology.”
“Is it magic?”
The corners of his lips quirk. “Not this time, I’m afraid. Just a simple peach.”
She takes it from his hand, admires the way the fuzz tickles her palm. “That’s alright,” she says, holding his gaze. “I’m finding that I rather like simple things.”
There is a grimace tightening the edges of his answering smile. “I’m afraid that’s a word I will never be worthy of. There is nothing simple about me. About us. I—” He pauses, chewing on the words as if they were stones. “If you’re happy, if this is the quiet life you want, tell me now.”
Tell me so I don’t ruin it for you.
“You’re wrong,” she murmurs. He is complicated in ways only immortality can nurture, but there is no one else Anna has ever understood so clearly. She knows him the way she knows herself; with an intimacy that is as simple as it is terrifying.
“On what count?”
She steps forward, the hem of her dress brushing the tips of his boots as she tilts her head back and holds his gaze. “Do you love me?”
“Immeasurably.”
The single word is a sigh from the heart, weighted with all his pain and all his longing. It sounds the way her heart feels.
“I think that’s pretty simple,” she says, fingers tangling with the lapels of his jacket. “Don’t you?”
“It should be,” he says. “But it isn’t. I wish it was.” His hand rises, fingertips tracing her brow. “If I stay, trouble will find me.”
A laugh leaves her like a sigh. “I’ve been told I like to find trouble.”
“This is serious, Anna.”
Her smile dims, her eyes searching. “There are things worse than death,” she murmurs, reaching for his hand.
Her heart flutters when he lets their fingers entwine, when he touches his forehead to hers and doesn’t pull away.
She studies the flecks of green in his eyes, reminds herself of how easy it is to get lost in them.
“I don’t want to survive, Khiran. I want to live. I’m ready. Are you?”
His laugh is shaky against her lips, breathy and full of a pain she understands all too well.
Eyes fluttering shut, Anna can make out each individual eyelash fanned out across his skin.
“Every waking moment I’m not by your side feels like agony.
The thought of never seeing you again, of leaving for good, fills me with such torment that Hell itself could swallow me up, and the distraction would be a relief.
” His nose brushes hers, his hands reaching up and cradling her jaw with a gentleness, a fragility, that aches.
“Now I’m here, touching you, and I’m haunted by the possibility that my selfishness will cost you everything. ”
His eyes open. Anna fights from drowning in the depth of them. “What am I to do, Anna?”
She presses her lips against his, a brief kiss brimming with her every hope, before she pulls away—her hands capturing his. “You stay,” she says, the words trembling for how much she means them. “You stay and we face whatever comes. Together.”
His stare is long, weighted by his every uncertainty. Anna’s pulse marks the passing time with every waiting beat. His silence makes her desperate.
“Fear is for mortals,” she whispers. A reminder. A promise.
The sound that leaves him is a shadow of a laugh, breathy and dark. Twisted. “Oh, Anna.” His thumbs stroke her cheeks, his eyes dark in all the wrong ways. “Don’t you see the truth of it, yet?”
He takes her hand, places it over his heart. Anna can feel it rabbiting beneath her palm. His stare, the honesty in it, guts her. “Fear is for us all.”