Page 28 of These Immortal Truths
Scoffing, he sets the bowl aside with a dark scowl in its direction. “I certainly didn’t do it for myself.”
Anna shakes her head, fidgeting. “But why? You didn’t have to.”
He shrugs. “You asked me to stay. It would have been poor manners to neglect your would-be-dying wish.”
If it weren’t for his teasing grin, Anna would almost take the sentiment as sweet. Her brows crease, trying to draw on the memory, but everything is a blur of bridges and the faint impression of a guiding hand. “You said we’re in France?”
“I did.”
“But that’s—” She almost says ‘impossible’ before remembering he has no concept of the word. Instead she asks, “How?”
“Well I certainly didn’t walk.” His gaze is steady, appraising. “I can be anywhere I wish, but it tends to be rather taxing on any guests that tag along. If you weren’t already flirting with the grave, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
Anna thinks of the way he always disappears, between one blink and the next—of how sometimes the masks he wears are from a part of the world she’s never come close to seeing. She’s not sure why it never occurred to her that he was merely somewhere else. Still, she struggles to wrap her mind around the concept. “Anywhere?”
What a gift, to only wish for a place and find your feet touching its soil.
Khiran shrugs, as if it’s nothing. For him, it probably is.
Anna thinks of a run down cabin in the French wilderness and cold hungry nights. Remembers the way she endured just so Piers could eat—of the struggles and the suffering—and feels herself grow hot. There are words, bitter and tough, sitting on her tongue. She chews them until they soften. “You could have gotten us out of France yourself?”
He could have saved her from so much heartache.
“You? Yes,” he says, sitting down across from her. “The child, no.”
Anna stares, but no amount of searching finds any hint of a lie. “Why?”
“His life isn’t mine to meddle in.”
She doesn’t understand, but she’s too tired to stay angry over what has already happened. Still, she shakes her head. The motion makes her dizzy. “You gave us supplies. How is that any different?”
“No,” he says, voice soft. “I gaveyousupplies. What you did with them is out of my hands.”
“That just makes it sound like you don’t want credit.”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
There’s no inflection in his voice, no change in his expression, to hint at his thoughts. “I don’t understand you,” she confesses, soft as the breeze through his open window.
Khiran smiles, but all Anna can see is the loneliness touching his eyes. “Perhaps you’re not meant to.”
Anna’s not certain if he means it, but she knows he’s wrong. If there is one person worth understanding, it’s him. The god that saves her at one turn and lets her suffer the next. He is the riddle she’ll ponder over every lifetime, never knowing if she’ll learn the answer but struggling to solve it all the same.
CHAPTER NINE
He has witnessed more horrors than he can count. Has heard screams for mercy and screams of pain. None of them haunt him like the sound of her shattering.
Rouen
1431
There is a stillness in the crowd; a hush interrupted only by the quiet sobs of the few and the sharp, piercing words spitting from Bishop Cauchon’s lips.
“A homicidal viper …”
Beside Anna, a young girl turns her dirty, tear-streaked face into her mother’s skirts. Soldiers stack kindling along the base of one of the three stages in the square. The stake that rises from the center ensures there’s no doubt about its purpose. The way theBishop sneers, venom dripping from his every word, offers little hope that it won’t be used.
“The poisoned virus of heresy …”
