Page 49 of These Godly Lies
His blood. His bone. Hismagic.
The horror she feels is as sharp as the blade in her pocket. “Khiran…”
“I’ll heal,” he repeats, quickly. It’s meant to reassure her, but all Anna can hear is the wheeze in his breathing. His head lulls to the side, eyeing the blood coating her fingers with a level of detachment that scares her.
“I know what she’s tracking.” She swallows, closing her eyes. “You told me it was born of you and you alone. Your magic.” She looks at him, watches the understanding reach his eyes and the horror part his lips. “It’s the ring, Khiran. That’s how she’s tracking us.”
He swallows, breath coming faster. Anna can’t tell if it’s becauseof the panic rimming his gaze or because his undamaged lung is now doing the work of two. “I—” A cough cuts him off, wet and bloody. He cringes, red coating his lips and staining his teeth. “When I regain my strength. I’ll find a way to remove it.”
Find a way. Find a way because he can’t. Doesn’t know how.
Anna does.
The solution is heavy in her pocket. The blade Silas insisted she needed to hold on to. The blade she never had the opportunity to use. Anna pulls it out, unsheathes it, and stares at the chipped edge. A blade forged with the blood of a god for the sole purpose of cutting through divine flesh. And she knows—sheknows—it wasn’t meant for battle.
It was meant forthis.
Khiran follows her gaze, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Anna,” he breathes, “Where—”
“Silas gave it to me,” she says, voice thready and weak. Her eyes lift, meeting his stare. “He told me I’d need it.”
He must see the apology in her expression, see the way she holds her ringed hand to her chest in a final goodbye. “Anna,no.”
But she has to. Marcia will keep hunting them for as long as she has a scent. Anna doesn’t know how fast she heals, but she can’t help but remember the way she hobbled after them—the strength in which she threw her daggers—despite an injury that should have left her bleeding out over the earth. Too fast. She heals too fast. She’s probably chasing their train even now. Preparing to wait them out at the next stop, ready to ambush them the moment the engine slows.
Khiran is in no shape to run. He won’t be for days, at least. Anna needs to throw her off the trailnow. Needs her to believe they’ve already jumped the train so she won’t be there at the next stop.
He lunges for the blade in her hand, a pained shout passing his lips.
Anna is quicker.
She raises the blade above her head, splays her hand out over the straw like a sacrifice, and brings it down with all her strength.
Khiran is silent as he wraps her hand.
The rest of his kurta lays, cut into strips by the same knife that severed the ring finger on her right hand. Anna stares at the empty space that remains; watches the blood seep through the cotton. The flow has slowed to barely a trickle as it clots. Another ten minutes and it should be done completely. She wonders if Marcia has found her finger and the ring encircling it, caked with dirt and dried blood, where she threw it from the train car. Better yet, maybe a stray animal picked it up before she could. Maybe she’ll spend precious hours searching and find nothing but a scavenger for her trouble.
Khiran ties it off, tucking in the loose end neatly. It’s surprisingly well wrapped. Anna wonders if he’d learned from watching Eira or if it’s a skill he was forced to learn from attending the wounds The First and his followers have dealt him.
“I would have found a way,” he says, the words soft with regret. His hand lingers on hers, thumb brushing the edge of the bandage, hesitating over the knuckle missing its limb.
Anna stills his hand with her uninjured one, fingers curling around his palm. “I couldn’t risk you.” An echo of the words he spoke to her a lifetime ago. She’s not sure he recognizes them.
He flinches. “I made it to protect you.”
“It did. For eight hundred years,it did.”
“It used so much magic—was a piece of me. I should have realized—”
“Don’t,” she says, a gentle command. “You told me to stop shouldering blame that wasn’t mine to carry. So stop blaming yourself for something I wouldn’t have changed.”
She waits, patiently, for him to meet her gaze. Tries to soothe the guilt she finds there with a smile. “Eight centuries ago, you gave a piece of yourself to protect me.” She reaches for the star-shaped scar along his ribs, resting inches below his wound, feeling the shape of it. “Now I’ve given a piece of myself to saveyou.”
He takes her hand, kisses the fingertips that traced the edges of his scar just a moment before. “I won’t be able to find you,” he murmurs, voice soft. Anna can hear the fear in it—can feel its echo reverberating in her own chest like a warning. She breathes deeply, concentrating on the way air fills her lungs and rushes past her lips so she can ignore the gnawing pit weighing heavy in her stomach.
She straightens her spine and pulls her shoulders back. As if looking confident holds the power to make her feel it. “I wasn’t planning on letting you leave.” She leans toward him, their foreheads touching. “Together, remember?”
His sigh is pained. Weighted. She can feel his worry as easily as she feels the tremble in his breath. “Together.”
