Page 81 of These Immortal Truths
I need only to look for the missing part of myself.
Anna doesn’t know how much the magic translates. Does he feel the drumming of her heart? The anxious sweating of her palms? Can he tell that the thought of seeing him has her so conflicted between longing and resentment that sleep couldn’t find her? If she called him, would he hear her?
Would he come, even if he did?
She closes her eyes, releasing a frustrated sigh and shaking her head. The truth is, she isn’t ready to face him. Their argument is too fresh—her wounds too raw.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Khiran has always arrived on his own schedule. As she feels his magic breathe over the nape of her neck, feels the pressure of his gaze between her shoulder blades, Anna knows this time is no exception.
“I’m not ready to speak to you,” she says, suddenly aware of how thin her nightdress is. The morning air is a whisper over her flesh, goosebumps dotting her skin.
Khiran’s steps falter, the hand raised and ready to reach for her lowering. “Yet you called.”
Did she? She’s still not sure. “I need Silas. Can you find him?”
A pause, so weighted Anna can feel it pressing against her heart. The scoff he utters is more breath than sound, and yet it still hits her with the subtlety of a drum. “And that is all you want from me?”
No, she wantsanswers. Apologies that go beyond words and promises. She knows better than to hope for either.
“I need his help. Eira and I—we can’t possibly house enough children through the winter. Silas can—I’mhopinghe can lead them somewhere safe.”
“I can find him,” he murmurs. Anna hears the crunching of grass beneath his boots, can feel his presence at her back. So close, he need only reach out to touch her. “We need to talk, Anna.”
“I don’tneedto do anything.”
A sigh, so deep she can feel it. “Alright.Ineed to. Please don’t ask me to search the world without knowing where we stand.”
“How?” she whispers, turning to him. “How are we supposed to talk when you won’ttellme anything?”
His mouth pulls into a grimace. “There are some things you’re safer not knowing. I understand why that’s difficult for you, and I’m sorry, but I won’t apologize for putting your wellbeing first.”
“Then there’s nothing else for us to discuss,” she says, a stubborn tilt to her chin. “I wish you the best of luck finding Silas. The lives of many depend on it.”
She turns, her steps heavy. She only makes it a few feet before his hand finds her elbow. “How can you just walk away?”
“Because I’m angry with you!” she snaps, voice cracking. There’s a sick pleasure in the way he flinches away from her. “I feel betrayed, like I’ve been lied to from the very moment you placed that peach in my hands. What’s worse, is it took this long for me to see it.”
“Anna—”
“Aren’t you tired of keeping secrets?”
Khiran falls silent, stricken. In his eyes there’s a torment so deep, Anna knows it must span centuries. It’s enough to temper her fury—to make the heat of anger cool enough to recognize the lancing pain in her heart.
She swallows, throat tight, and eases away from his grasp. “When you are, that’s when I’ll be ready to talk.”
“Unless you have need of me,” he scoffs, lips twisting into a grimace.
“I’m not the one in need,” she reminds softly. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have called you at all.”
“As painfully honest as ever.”
“You used to like that about me.”
“I never stopped.” It sounds like the truth. “Even when it hurts.”
Twenty-three days later, when the forest is just beginning to turn more gold than green, Anna looks up from hanging the laundryand finds a tall, broad-shouldered man emerging from the trees. It has been over a century, but Anna has spent too many evenings on her front porch watching for him to forget the shape of his silhouette.
Misha’s small hand is tangled in her skirt. Anna coaxes the four-year-old’s fingers away. Gently, in Russian, she instructs her to run and tell Eira they have a visitor.
