Page 12 of These Immortal Truths
The summer days are long and lonely. Anna fills them by plucking weeds from the garden and harvesting food from the vines. She cooks. She cleans. She sleeps. Sometimes, she dreams.
The villagers don’t come—the path that once led to the meadow grows overgrown with moss and ferns seemingly overnight. More magic, Anna realizes. Somewhere in the world, there will beanother trail leading to another cottage door. The thought is as devastating as it is comforting.
Anna grows used to the quiet; numb to the solitude. It’s like stepping back into an old, tattered shoe—its sole painfully thin, but familiar. The meadow and its surrounding forest is bountiful, the garden sustainable. Even alone, this life offers far more leniency than the one she lived before.
Fall touches the earth with the first frost, turning the landscape red and golden, and Anna doesn’t fear the coming winter. Her stores are plenty and her body is strong. When the snows come, she busies herself with whatever her hands can find. She knits blankets and sweaters, socks and leggings, before unraveling the yarn and doing it again. She experiments in the kitchen, trying different methods and combinations of food. Some taste decent, others terrible. She eats all of it.
Then the snow thaws and the trees bud, and Anna draws a breath and braces herself to do it all over again.
She’s sowing the seeds from last year into the soil, carefully making note of what she’s planting where, when the hairs on the back of her neck rise—a feeling of being watched trailing up her spine only a mere moment before he speaks.
“There’s an entire world outside this meadow, you know.”
Anna stills. It’s been a decade since she’s heard that voice, but she recognizes the low, smooth timbre as easily as if it had only been yesterday. She rises from the garden bed, dirt dusting the folds of her dress. The face he wears is different—always different—but it still holds that devastating beauty that captured her attention the first time they met.
Brown eyes stare back at her under a raised brow, his chestnut hair falling around his sharp jaw. “Don’t you wish to see it?”
Anna looks away, readjusting the basket on her hip. “I have everything I need here.”
He hums, unconvinced. “Is that so?”
“What do you want from me?” She blurts, turning on him. Her hand goes to her chest, burning with a pain that’s more than skin deep. “It may be easy for you and Eira, but where is someone likemeto go? They will cast me aside, again and again, the moment they catch sight of it.”
“If that happens you move on. The same way Eira does,” he says patiently. “Do you think she leaves because it’s easy? She stays long enough to help and leaves before the questions can start.”
“Another price,” she sneers, tears threatening.
“Yes.” He looks over her garden with a distracted eye. “This isn’t an easy way to live, but Eira taught you well. Use what she gave and the world will teach you the rest.” He meets her eyes. “But you have to let it.”
She blinks back the burning in her eyes. There’s a snake coiling around her lungs, constricting with every shaky breath. She knows what it is before she names it. “I’m afraid.”
The whispered confession falls like iron, Anna can feel the shame of it burning a path across her cheeks as easily as his gaze.
“Fear is for mortals, Anna. Not for us.”
Us.
The word feels strange, foreign for reasons she can only begin to name. She doesn’t feel like she’s one of them, with their wisdom and their strength. They feel so muchmorethan she could ever hope to be. And yet … she doesn’t feel quite human, either. She is in that strange, familiar place of in-between. Ofother.
“I’m not like you,” she murmurs. “I’m not strong.”
“Strength is learned, not given.” He offers a hand, palm up in invitation. “I’ll show you.”
Anna stares, tracing the lines of his palm before hesitantly placing her hand in his. He tilts her wrist, the subtle engravings of her ring catching the light, and his chin dips in approval. “Don’t remove it.” The command is soft, but there’s an edge in his eyes that speaks of warnings.
“I can’t.” She knows. The first night she stayed in the cottage alone, after she had discovered the ring’s origins, she had tried to rip it from her finger in a fit only to find she couldn’t slip it past her knuckle no matter how long, or how hard she tried. She looks away from him, the accusation bitter on her tongue.”You should know.”
If he feels any hint of remorse, he doesn’t show it. Instead, heshrugs as if admitting guilt to something as harmless as a distasteful joke, and drops her hand. “Magic is a funny thing. It’s impenetrable if you face it head on, but there’s always a back door somewhere.” His gaze hardens, serious. “Don’t try to find it. Just leave it on and leave it be.”
Anna’s lips thin at the order. “You tricked me into wearing it.”
“I merely gave it to you,” he corrects, fingers plucking a bud from the overhead branch of a plum tree, twisting the flower between his fingers. “It was you who chose to wear it.”
She bristles. “I didn’t know it was you.”
His head tilts, curious but with a hint of challenge she’d be blind to miss.”Had you, would you have refused it?”
No, but she might have asked more questions before accepting. Somehow, she gets the sense that he knows it as well as she does. “Why? What does it do?”
