Page 90 of These Immortal Truths
“A week,” he murmurs, grimacing. “Two at most.”
Anna nods. It’s not ideal, foraging for the both of them, but they’ll make do. There will be an edge of hunger, but nothing like what she’s already suffered. “Alright.” She curls her feet beneath her, leaning into the cushioned back of the chair. She doesn’t miss the way his eyes linger on the exposed skin of her calves. “Tell me a story?”
His laugh is little more than a breath. “One that’s true or one that’s fantastic?”
She holds his gaze. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Khiran cringes. “That’s a very long story.”
“We have time.”
He’s the first to look away; to yield. “Where could I possibly begin?”
“Who hurt you would be a good place to start.”
Khiran’s eyes snap to hers, going so still she begins to lose faiththat he’ll answer. When he does, his eyes close as if it pains him to share the burden. “We call him The First.”
Anna thinks of the story he told her, his fingers dancing up and down her spine as he whispered words of a tree so grand it cradled the world in its roots and of a man who demanded more than he was given. “The first to climb,” she murmurs. “The first to steal a peach.” Khiran sighs, leaning back against the pillows and staring up at the ceiling. “The first to call himself a god,” he murmurs, lips curling as if the word tastes sour. “There’s different theories, you know. Some think the powers given are weakened with every peach that’s plucked. Others think he just got lucky.”
Anna stares, fighting the chill tracing her spine. “What do you think?”
Another pause, shorter than the last. “I think people in power only ever want more of it.” His gaze finds hers, the blue so crystalline it nearly drowns out the green. “I think it’s foolish to believe he only ever helped himself to just the one.”
Anna thinks of the magic Khiran possesses, gifts given from just one single fruit, and feels a seed of horror take root. What would it mean to have the power of two? Of three? The thought alone is enough to make her mouth go dry. “He’s the one you didn’t want to find me. The one you’re hiding me from.”
Khiran flinches, but he doesn’t try to deny it. Doesn’t try to hide the truth from her. “Yes.”
Her eyes drift back to the cuts and bruises marring Khiran’s skin, and feels her stomach churn all over again.
No one should hold that much power.
She has spent centuries watching how power corrupts, a slow and bitter poison that harms the ones who have the least, most. She watched the church fatten their coin purses, peddling salvation to the starving. Has seen Lords watch the people under them go hungry even while their own food stores grow and witnessed the rise of a dictatorship built on the backs of its citizens.
“And no one else has done the same?”
His mouth quirks, a tiny twisted smile. “No peach leaves that treewithout The First’s blessing.” He reaches for her hand, thumb running over the lines of her palm. “Except for one.”
Anna remembers the edge in Eira’s voice, the disbelief, when she learned Anna had tasted immortality.
Of all the foolish things …
Now, eight centuries later, Anna can’t help but agree. “You stole it.”
“I did.”
“I don’t understand.” Anna shakes her head, pulling her hand from his grasp. He lets her slip away with only a wince of regret. “Why didn’t you take it for yourself?”
“I needed someone to do what I could not,” he says, words soft. “I needed someone to be my hands, because The First has shackled mine.”
He needed someone to put good into the world—to save the lives of strangers and hold the hands of children. Toactwhere influence isn’t enough.
“Why?” The word is a trembling whisper. “Why risk it? If you had been caught—” She can’t finish. She can’t let herself imagine what the consequences would have been, not when his body is battered and bruised from one misstep.
He shrugs. “At first, I think I simply wanted to see if Icould. The First is powerful, but he isn’t humble. All those centuries of threats and posturing … holding that peach in my hand felt like a victory made all the better by him not realizing he had lost.
“I didn’t have any plans to do anything with it. Eating it myself would have been as good as admitting my crime. Even if it made me stronger, I knew it would likely be far from being strong enough. I resigned myself to merely keeping it as a sort of trophy—a trinket to make me feel better whenever The First tried to ground me beneath his heel.”
Khiran looks at her, his smile so achingly crooked and soft it makes her heart hurt. “And then you saw me in the woods, saved me when I didn’t need saving.” The laugh he gives is breathy and full of fondness. “I thought if anyone could be worthy of its gifts, it would be you.”
