Page 49 of These Immortal Truths
Khiran scoffs. “You’re upset. Of course it matters.”
“It’s not—” She trails off, struggling to find the right words. Finally, she settles for, “I don’t grieve forhim.” Anna looks at the man who gave her immortality and hopes her eyes convey what her words lack. “I grieve because I know the future he envisioned is one I will never have.”
For a long moment, the only response he gives is a stare so searching it makes her fingers itch with the urge to break the intensity of it. In the end, she looks away. It feels like the cowardly way out.
“Is that a life you want?”
A lock of hair has escaped her low bun. It tickles her neck as she shakes her head. The echoes of battle have grown softer. Anna knows it’s only because there are fewer men able to pull their triggers. “It’s a life I’ll never be able to have. It never has been.” Even before she tasted immortality. Before her secrets could fill libraries. “How could I want something that was never within my reach?”
The breathy laugh he gives is soft, his hand running through his dark curls. “You have crossed over the canals of a city that was built on marshlands once believed to be unusable. Your family waited for you for a century, with nothing but the words of a father for proof that you existed at all. Yet, you think married life is beyond you?”
She flushes, shame prickling her skin. “Ahappymarried life is beyond me.”
Whatever bliss is to be had from marriage would go no farther than the wedding night. One look at the skin she has spent centuries hiding, and whatever attraction he once felt for her would fizzle into disgust. Worse, whatever affection would sour into resentment. She would be the lying witch the town openly sneered at—the one that tricked her way into a marriage bed. Even in the middle of a war, Anna has no doubts that they would be quick to throw her to fire.
She’s not eager to risk repeating the experience. Not for something she knows will fail. Something she knows will hurt.
Khiran’s gaze is heavy; she can feel the weight of it on her cheek. “You’re afraid.”
A statement, not a question. Anna finds it incredibly unfair. “I’m too old, tooexperienced, to hope for the things the world has always made clear to be beyond me.” She tips her chin, her jaw tight as she meets his eyes. “It’s self preservation, not fear.”
His silence is as loud as his stare is searching. Anna is a moment away from filling the quiet herself when he finally speaks. “My apologies. I … forget that your burdens weigh differently than my own. Perception is a tool for me—something to use. I forget that, for you, it must feel more like a burden.”
Anna swallows, throat tight. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She thinks of Frederick’s reaction—the way he stripped her words of meaning until they became skeletal shadows of what they were just so his would stand stronger. “For listening. For understanding.”
For acknowledging her burdens despite never having to carry them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When he finds her in the middle of the ocean aboard a pirate captain’s ship, he expects to find her trapped there. Nothing could have prepared him to see her with her hair unbound with the wind and salt playing with the soft curls. Freedom looks good on her.
SOUTHCHINASEA
1807
Things can change in an instant.
It’s a universal truth—one Anna has had lifetimes of experience in—and yet it still manages to catch her by surprise. What was supposed to be routine passage to Portugal has taken a turn into something more dangerous than Anna feels comfortable with.
The rough boards bite into her knees, the sun beating mercilessly on the back of her neck. She aches to stand, but she doesn’t dare. Not when pirates are barking orders in a language she doesn’t understand. Not when she has already watched some of the braver sailors get cut down before their bodies were tossed overboard. Their blood still smears the deck.
Anna may not fear the blade or the bullet, but she fears the seemingly endless stretches of ocean.
So she keeps her head down and kneels like the submissive passenger she is, and waits. Listens to the mariners’ footfall as they travel to and from the storerooms—their arms heavy with precious metals and heavy silks. They’re in good spirits, these pirates. Their foreign dialect is regularly broken by laughter. She imagines it must be easier to bear the sweltering heat and humidity when every labored step means gold in your pocket.
Then there’s a shout—and even though Anna doesn’t know the words, she recognizes the edge of an order. The laughter stops. A new set of slippered feet touch down on the deck, smaller and daintier than the others that came before it. It doesn’t escape Anna’s notice that the shoes are finer than all the rest, or the respectable hush that falls over the crew.
Curiosity fills her, coaxing her eyes upward and taking in the long purple cloak flicking in the hot breeze and the rings glinting off slim fingers. The person’s hair is wrapped in a dark turban, but Anna recognizes them for what they are.
A woman.
And, judging by the previously rowdy crews’ sudden respectful silence, thecaptain.
Perhaps it’s the surprise of it that prompts her to continue staring instead of quietly ducking her head. Then Anna spies the golden fruit embroidered on the captain’s collar, and breathes the word before she can stop herself. “Tao.”
