Page 48 of These Immortal Truths
From the ridge, the wind tangling in her hair, Anna watches the battle unfold. There is a knot of emotions tightening her chest, so desperately tangled she can’t tell one from the next.
It’s no surprise he finds her.
“Does it ever stop?” she asks.
Khiran sighs, folding his legs and resting his elbows on his knees. “Yes,” A pause, punctuated by a cynical breath of laughter. “Then they’ll do it all over again.”
“I don’t understand it,” Anna admits, the hollow ache in her heart growing. “How are they not sick of it?”
“It’s easy to be righteous, to be angry, when you weren’t there to see all the blood and misery that came before you,” he says. “Most of these soldiers will only ever see one war firsthand in their lifetime. The ones who survive will grow old and sit in front of their hearths and pass stories of this battle to their children and grandchildren. They’ll romanticize it. Sing praises of how bravely their battalion fought. They won’t speak of the squelch of their fellow friend and soldier’s blood in their boots, or the fear that painted every soldier’s face. Enemy and ally alike.”
Khiran’s words are weighted with the kind of grudging acceptance that Anna feels. “Then those children grow. Eager to fight the way their forefathers fought, only to realize the lie of it all too late.”
Anna scoffs, a whisper of breath as weak as her heart. Anotherround of musket fire cracks through the air, its echo ringing across the valley. Anna closes her eyes, swallows down the disappointment. She wonders how many men will stay alive long enough to return to camp and receive treatment. “And the cycle continues.”
“And continues, and continues.” Another crack fills the silence between them, followed by the deep, unsettling drum of cannons. Screams follow. “I’m sorry.”
Anna glances at him, but his attention is fixed on the battle below. “What for?”
“For many things,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “At the moment? I wish I could offer you a more hopeful outlook.”
“Honesty is your nature,” she murmurs, shrugging. It’s a truth she has come to appreciate. Khiran doesn’t mince his words, no matter how much he must know she’ll hate hearing them.
A short, huffed breath—more scoff than laughter—escapes him. “A bold statement, considering I lie more often than not.”
“Not with me.” In all their centuries together, she has never known him to lie or twist the truth. Even when he must know she will hate his answers. She trusts his word the same way she trusts he will always return.
“No,” he agrees softly, “Not with you.” He shakes his head, head tipping up to the sky in thought. “But sometimes, I wish I could.”
Anna smiles despite the heaviness in her heart. “What lies would the great trickster spin for me?”
His eyes hold shadows Anna’s becoming far too familiar with. “That the world would get better.”
She looks away, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’m not sure I’d believe you.”
Worse, she’s almost certain she wouldn’t. She’s not sure when that changed—when she lost that quiet hope that the future was brighter than the present.
“No,” he says, “you wouldn’t. For the same reason I don’t believe myself when I dare to hope for it.” The curling at the corners of his lips is bitter and sharp. “Time is the cruelest of teachers.”
Eira had told her something similar, once. Anna had no conceptof how true it would come to be. She hadn’t expected the lessons to cut so deep. Hearing the thread of pain in his voice, Anna takes a small amount of comfort in knowing she isn’t alone. That it’s not that her heart is too fragile, but the world is too hard.
She turns her face up to catch the sunlight on her cheeks. The clouds chase each other across a blue sky, wisps of white down so fragile they look a breath away from scattering. If it wasn’t for the grotesque sounds of battle echoing over the hills, Anna could almost call the day beautiful. “I don’t think I’ll stay here much longer,” she admits.
His glance is openly curious. “Oh?”
“A man confessed his love to me yesterday,” she admits. “I’m not sure it would be wise to continue working with him.”
Khiran’s gaze is weighted. “Do you love him?”
“I think I could have. In another life. Maybe.” She shrugs, plucking at a blade of grass. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t love me. Not really.”
A few heartbeats and his stare slips away. There’s a neutrality to his expression that feels foreign—a mask that he hasn’t bothered wearing for her in centuries. “You sound so certain. Is it so easy to write off a declaration of love?”
Eyes closing, Anna tries not to think of the flash of pain that crossed Frederick’s face when she pulled away. Tries not to think of the sudden fleeting desire that he was the god beside her now. She shakes her head, ready to blame the flush creeping up her neck on the heat. “He loved Eliza. A different woman with a different name, with only a couple decades of baggage instead of centuries.”
A woman without secrets.
Sighing, she tosses the abused blade of grass aside to shrivel and rot. “It doesn’t matter.”
