Page 40 of These Immortal Truths
“Is this one cursed as well?”
His brows rise in challenge, but there’s a softness to his mouth that leads her to believe he’s more invested in her answer than he’d like her to know. “Do you still believe yourself to be cursed?”
Anna goes quiet. Thoughtful. In a busy, noisy street, she feels like perhaps they are the only ones who remain still. Two fixed points in a sea of chaos.
Today, she watched a tragedy that entertained instead of tormented. The job she secured as a chambermaid is far from glamorous, but it lets her admire the artwork on the walls and hear the music filtering in and out of the rooms. She has tasted flavors, seensights, that most can only dream of. “No,” she says, a smile in her voice. “I suppose I don’t.”
Khiran’s grin widens, lighting his eyes. He holds his hand higher, the apple in his grasp ripe and inviting.
Anna plucks it from his hand and takes a bite. It’s crisp and light, but there is no magic. An ordinary apple for a not so ordinary woman, and yet she still enjoys its sweetness.
Not a gift or a curse. Just a taste of the ordinary. Somehow, there’s beauty in that, too.
She takes another bite, teeth sinking into the firm flesh. Chews. Swallows. There is a question sitting on her tongue that makes it taste momentarily sour. She looks down at the apple in her hand, at the pale, fragile flesh beneath its green and red-flushed skin.
“Why me?” The words are little more than a breath, soft despite how deeply they have haunted her. Anna has replayed their meeting over so many times and with so few answers. Sometimes she feels as if they’re more imaginings than memory—that they have evolved and changed along with the world around her.
Ask me again, on a day when the gift I’ve given you doesn’t weigh on you like a curse.
It has taken her more than a century to find it in herself to ask again. A century to look at the world with excitement instead of dread. She wants to know, wants tounderstand, just for the sake of it.
His gaze is steady but unreadable. She’s getting familiar with this mask of his—beginning to recognize it in every form he takes. It speaks of hidden truths. “Let’s go for a stroll.”
Anna frowns down at his offered arm, brows raising. “People will talk.” And her employer is sure to listen. Ms. Merril’s rules are rigid and her ears seem to pick up on each and every stray piece of gossip.
“Let them.”
She shakes her head. “It’s exhausting—starting a new life in a new place. I’m not ready to leave this one behind just yet.”
He regards her, huffing softly. “Fine. Then you have my word that no one will recognize you.”
It’s an impossible promise, but from him it’s believable. She accepts his waiting arm and tries not to think of the warmth seeping through his sleeve. He leads her into the courtyard and Anna discreetly watches for the people’s reactions, but Khiran’s promise holds true. Their eyes slide right past them, as if … “They can’t see us.”
She remembers the night she screamed up into the stars, the warmth of his arms around her and the whisper of his breath against her ear.
No one can hear you. No one can see.
“In a way,” he says, leading her down the street. “Though to say we’re uninteresting would be more accurate. It’s a simple trick, but useful.”
Simple. As if the bit of magic that made them invisible to the world was as easy as snapping his fingers. Not for the first time, she wonders how much easier it would be if she were granted a bit of power with immortality. If she could flit from place to place with a thought, change her appearance with a blink. She wonders if Khiran knows how lucky he is.
He leads her to the main square. People file around them—as if aware of their presence despite never glancing their way. There’s a child at the fountain—dirty and clothed in scraps—with a coffer at his feet and a bundle of cloth in his arms. He looks nothing like Piers, and yet Anna feels her heart ache with the memories that it brings. His hair is brown and matted, dirt and grime streaking his cheeks. He looks every bit abandoned and desperate as Piers did, dropped off in an unfamiliar forest and told to wait. She starts forward, but Khiran’s grip on her arm tightens. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “Watch.”
The boy’s voice cracks, tears running down his cheeks. “Please, my sister needs medicine.Please.”
And Anna realizes with a start that the bundle in his arms isn’t cloth, but a newborn, and her heart breaks. She doesn’t have the means to take in two children. Even if she did, she isn’t sure she’s ready to take on the heartbreak again. Still, she can at least help in some small way. She has the knowledge to heal, knows enoughpeople in the palace thatsurelyshe’d be able to find someone to take them in. “Let me—”
Khiran sighs, but his hold doesn’t loosen. “Not thechildren.Thecrowd.”
“But they aren’t doing anything,” she hisses. She has watched at least a dozen people pass by without so much as glancing at the scene. Worse, their eyes seem to purposefully point in the opposite direction. She yanks her arm free from him, intent on making her way to the children with or without his blessing. But when she turns, the space under the fountain is empty.
The young boy that reminded her so much of Piers, the cradled bundle in his arms, is gone. Swept away as if they never existed.
“Exactly. They did nothing.” He steps around her, their shoulders brushing, and ducks his head until he catches her gaze. “Butyouwould have.”
Anna feels her breath come faster, fighting the dizziness that makes the cobblestones feel like water beneath her feet. “I don’t understand—they, the children. They weren’t real?”
His eyes soften, his hands rising to cup her shoulders. “No, Anna. They weren’t real. Just an illusion.”
