Page 88 of These Immortal Truths
It’s a minuscule difference—one anyone else would have missed—but she fixates on the change. Worry tightens her chest, a painful suspicion rooting her to the spot. It twines around her heart, barbed thorns threatening to pierce the tender flesh. “Show me.”
He closes his eyes, head tilted to the heavens as he releases a long breath through his nose. “Anna—”
“Show me.”
“I am not your next charity case,” he snaps. “Find someone else to sacrifice yourself for.”
She stands, unmoving. Unwavering. “Show me,” she repeats, softer this time. “Please.”
It’s the please that breaks him, she can see the way it cuts at the last remaining threads holding his anger in place. Now, he just looks tired. “I can’t be saved, Anna.” His smile is weak. “Not even by you.”
She closes the few feet between them, fingers undoing the buttons of his shirt with a familiarity that hurts. When she slides the fabric off his shoulders, his skin shudders under her touch. She traces the bruises ringing his neck. They look like hands. It’s in that instant that she understands the truth hiding between all the words he refuses to say. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
His insistence that the human world isn’t his to meddle with.
The soldier dropping, the bullet meant for her shattering his skull.
The fury in the words,you forced my hand.
The pale pinch of fear on his face those scant seconds before he blinked away and left her stranded.
“Anna,” he breathes, soft and consoling, but he doesn’t offer any denials. She appreciates that, even after the horrors she must have put him through, he doesn’t disrespect her by lying.
Her throat constricts and her eyes burn from the effort of holding back the tears threatening to consume her. “Show me. Khiran,please.”
Show me what I did to you. Show me the pain I’ve caused.
His arms wrap around her shoulders, his hold so gentle it hurts. A kiss to her crown, breath mingling with her hair. “No.”
She closes her eyes and hides her face in the collar of his shirt. “Why?” she croaks, voice hoarse.
“Because I won’t be the one to cause you pain.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
If she was angry with him for withholding the truth, he has no doubts she will hate him now. So long as she’s safe, so long as she has a chance for happiness, he can live with that.
TROLLSKOGEN, SWEDEN
1941
He refuses to drop the illusion, but she doesn’t need to see the marks to know they’re deep.
Khiran’s hold is weak. When he tells her to hold on tight, she gets the sense it’s because he lacks confidence in his ability to do the same. When the world folds around her, expanding and contracting, it feels like she’s being torn apart—pieces of her lurching to opposite ends of the earth—until she finally feels the ground beneath her. It’s worse than last time,sharper.
She falls to her knees painfully, stomach heaving. When she glances up, she’s alarmed to see Khiran leaning, his jaw slack and his eyes glazed.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but the syllables are fuzzy. Slurred. Then his eyes roll back and his body tips forward, and Anna only just manages to catch him. She staggers under his weight, knees threatening to buckle, as she calls his name between gasping breaths. He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t flinch.
Anna feels the panic set in as her strength gives and they fall to the ground. It’s only the waist-high grasses that prevent the impact from being painful. “Khiran!” She pushes against his chest, rolling him off her and hovering over him the moment his back hits the ground. He’s pale—paler than he should be—but she can feel his breath against her cheek, find his heartbeat under her palm, and feels a thread of relief join the twisted knot in her chest.
Unconscious.
Guilt is a knife, serrated and deep. It cuts into her with every second he doesn’t wake, pierces her with the realization that he won’t be any time soon. She wonders how severe the injuries must be for a god to fall.
Pushing down the tears and the panic, she stands. The sun is warm on her face, the wild grass untamed and dotted with summer wildflowers, and surrounded by towering dark pines. Somewhere in Northern Europe, she guesses, but the where isn’t as important as what she’s looking for. She turns, eyes flitting over the landscape and nearly crying out in relief when she spots the peaked roofline and red siding of a small farmhouse peeking behind a copse of trees.
She takes Khiran’s wrists, dragging him towards shelter. His body leaves a trail of crushed flora, but the tall grasses are smooth and slick under his back, offering little resistance. Still, Anna is blinking sweat from her eyes before they’ve made it even a quarter of the way. By the time she has pulled him up the few steps, through the door, and onto the low bed, she is drenched in it.
