Page 85 of These Immortal Truths
Anna turns to him; hopes he sees the stillness in her heart—the commitment. “Why do you think I’m still here?”
Her words only seem to push him—a prodding poke instead of the soothing caress she had meant it to be. The hand on her arm tightens. She can feel the press of his individual fingers through her jacket. “This is beyond your reach,” he snaps. He must have hidden them from prying eyes and ears, because no one turns his way despite his volume rising and his German switching to English mid conversation. “What’s coming isn’t a battle, it’s anextermination.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
His hands are on her shoulders before she can turn away, pinning her as effectively as his stare. “What is this, Anna? Are you trying to punish me? Fine. Consider me admonished. I will take all your blame, all your anger, so long as you leave.”
She jerks her arm away from him, her glare as stiff and frigid as the words she has for him. “This isn’t about you.”
Khiran recoils, as if struck. His eyes wide and his lips parted, Anna watches as surprise bleeds away to desperation. “Anna, please. I’m begging you. Leave before this escalates into something that strips you of all control.”
She laughs, the sound dark with her amusement. “Control? Khiran, nothing has ever been in my control. Not the plague, not the famine. Not thewars.” She shakes her head, taking a step back. Hishands slip, limp, from her shoulders to her wrists. A tentative hold she could easily break from. “Control—manipulation—seems to beyourvice. Not mine.”
His expression twists. “How—it’s beenyears, Anna. How are you still this angry with me?”
There’s a stone lodged in her throat, as bitter and cold as the empty feeling in her chest. “Because it still hurts.”
The hands at her wrists flex, tightening, but the edge in his eyes softens. “I’m sorry. It was never my intent to cause you pain.”
She pulls away from his hold, lets her fingers replace the empty space he left behind. “I know.”
It’s the truth, but somehow it only adds to the hurt—the difference between a clean cut and a serrated one. It’s harder to heal when the wound is jagged, harder to forget when there’s a scar left behind.
His hands fall to his side, looking at the crowd that’s built around them. “I have little to no control over it, either. Anna, I’m worried about the control they’ll takefrom you.” He releases a wavering breath, shaking his head. “Everything points to something terrible to come.”
She turns back to the pyre, sees with a pang that it’s doubled in size. “‘Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too,’” Anna quotes. She turns back to him. “I’m not the same naive girl I once was, Khiran. I’m not staying here because I’m hoping for the best. I’m staying because I fear the worst.”
“Heinrich Heine.”
“Yes.”
“He was Jewish.”
“Yes.”
“They will be burning his words, too.”
Anna has no doubt. Heine’s poetry is sure to sit amongst the pile of every other writing the regime has deemed to be not German enough: Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Helen Keller, Kurt Tucholsky, Sigmund Freud. Anything that fostered ideas that worked against their agenda; anything that contradicted their false narrative and weaponized propaganda.
A voice booms across the opera square and the chants of thecrowd go quiet. Anna’s eyes find the man in front of the microphone, recognizes him as the Propaganda Minister. “Fellow students, German men and women! The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism has now ended, and the success of the German revolution has again given the right of way to the German spirit!”
A chill skirts up her spine. The sudden, horrifying realization that he isn’t just speaking to the crowd, but to every citizen tuned into the radio. A disease of hate spreading across the airwaves, sinking its plagued teeth into any ear that will listen. A virus.
Khiran’s hands grasp her shoulders, turning her back to face him. There is a desperation lining his eyes. “Please, Anna. I’ll take you anywhere you wish. Anywhere else.”
“Brightened by these flames our vow shall be—”
She brings a hand to his cheek. Around them, the energy from the crowd is toxic. Thick as poison and just as deadly. Nationalism disguised as patriotism.
“The Reich and the Nation and our Führer Adolf Hitler—”
She gives Khiran her softest smile, hopes he sees the forgiveness and the apology in it. “I can’t.”
“Heil! Heil! Heil!”
Khiran stares down at her while the crowd, all tens of thousands of them, cheer as a torch is brought to the pyre. The roar is deafening, drowning out the sound of catching pages and crackling spines as the fire feeds and grows. The weight of their complacency is a vice on Anna’s chest. She’s not sure what’s more horrifying: the thought that they’re too blinded by the regime’s propaganda to see the hate and prejudice behind it, or that they do and support it, anyway.
She takes a deep breath, reaches for his hand before meeting Khiran’s searching gaze. “This is why you gave me my immortality. To be your hands in the places you cannot reach.”
