Page 66 of These Immortal Truths
Anna’s heart stutters, her mind searching for an excuse even as she tries to come to terms with what Margaret has just told her. “It was really chaotic,” she says softly. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s made a mistake.”
“This wasn’t a mistake,” Margaret says, voice still hushed, but Anna can see the sliver of doubt darkening her bright blue eyes. “You didn’t have a pulse.”
Anna has no other explanation for her, not right now. Instead, she changes the subject even though she knows it’s cowardly of her. “Where is my help most needed?”
Margaret stares at her, her gaze unnervingly sharp. After a tense moment of silence, she answers. “Julianne needs some additional help rolling bandages. We’re using them faster than we can prepare them.”
Anna nods, swinging her feet from the bed and adjusting her uniform. It’s a mess, and her cap has gone missing, but she won’twaste time changing into her spare. Not when she can hear the pained moans in the beds beside her.
Not when she’s certain some of them come from the same young women she’s worked with.
Khiran comes that night, the way Anna knew he would. He’s nevernotchecked on her after a trauma. He arrives wearing the form she favors, his eyes dark and his expression haggard.
Tired.
Anna knows the feeling. This war has been something unlike any other she’s experienced, and she knows it’s not just because she’s part of the effort. The scale in which it’s affecting the world, the seemingly never ending battles fought in the rat infested trenches, the use of biochemical weapons in place of bullets … she can’t imagine the strings he must be trying to pull. Can’t imagine how tangled he must be in all of them.
“How are you?”
Anna sits up in her cot, eyes flitting over to her neighbors. They remain asleep—exhausted by a day of death and trauma. Anna has learned that they lost five of their own in the attack. “Will they wake?” she whispers.
Khiran shakes his head, sitting on the edge of her mattress. “No.”
She tucks her knees to her chest. “I would have died today,” she says, voice soft.
“You would have died long ago,” he counters, but he doesn’t deny it, and that’s what makes Anna certain that it’s true. His gaze shifts, Anna can feel it hovering over where she felt the pain. “How’s your head?”
There’s still a phantom ache, but it’s easily forgotten. How strange that she’s come to the point where near death feels more like an inconvenience than a threat. “I have otherconcerns.”
He lays across the foot of her bed, his long legs draped over the side and his arm thrown over his eyes. “Those being?”
Anna hesitates—she hasn’t seen him look this tired since Spain—but she knows better than to believe he’ll let her drop it for his sake. “Margaret saw. She checked my pulse and didn’t find it. I know she can’t explain it, but she knows something isn’t right. I can see it in her expression every time she looks at me.”
“So leave.”
The words are curt, but Anna doesn’t take offense. “I’m considering it.”
Khiran runs a hand through his hair, neck craning and looking out the cracked panes of her window. The moonlight plays with the shadows on his face, highlights bruises under his eyes that Anna knows aren’t there. “It may be for the best. There are so many moving parts in this war, so many players, I’m struggling to keep up with what’s coming.” He shakes his head. “I can’t be in enough places.”
“There’s still more for me to do here.”
He scoffs, the sound as soft as the shadows. “There will always be more to do. More people to save.” He turns to look at her, the weight of his gaze carrying thousands of years of hardship. “That doesn’t make staying the right choice. Not this time.”
Anna looks at him, questions building. “How bad is it out there?”
She’s only seen this side of the war—only treated those who managed to survive long enough to make it to them.
He releases a breath, slow and measured, and tips his head back. Throat pale and exposed under the moonlight, he looks up at the ceiling as if the faces of all the dead stare back at him from the plaster. “They keep finding new ways to make it worse.”
Anna doesn’t have to ask what he means. She’s seen the faces maimed by shrapnel, chemical burns, the trench foot. She’s heard the stories the soldiers tell of having to fight beside their dead because they can’t get the reprieve they need to remove them.
She hugs her pillow to her chest, fingers digging into the cotton. “Do you think it will ever get better for a change?” The words leave her, as weak and hopeless as she feels.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. “I used to be jealous of the ones who could see into the future,” he murmurs. Soft, like a confession. “I thought, if only I had been given such a gift, I would have the power to prevent so much tragedy.”
“And now?”
“Now, I wonder how any of them can do anything when they see this kind of future behind their eyelids.” He looks at her, the ghosts of a hundred wars haunting his eyes. “Today … today I’m tired, Anna.”
