Page 87 of These Godly Lies
The muscles of his throat work around a swallow. “I don’t know how to share this.”
Her answering smile is gentle. Soft with empathy and brimming with hope. They both still carry their demons, but give them time, and they will rob them of their teeth. Wear them down until they’re more memory than ghost. “That’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Together.” He stares at her with those eyes she still hasn’t quite come to know. Give her a year and she’ll memorize every fleck of amber; memorize how the shades of brown turn caramel in the afternoon light and chocolate at sunset. They don’t have forever, not anymore,but Anna doesn’t need eternity to learn this face, this body, as well as she knows his heart.
He echoes her, voice so soft it’s more a whisper. She hears the promise in it, anyway. “Together.”
It’s almost winter when she wakes up to blood.
It’s been so long, it takes Anna longer than it should to realize her thighs are wet with it. In her chest, her heart stutters—caught between the grinding gears of old regrets and current realities.
Her hand shakes as she reaches for his shoulder. “Khiran?” His name trembles on her lips, so weak Anna doesn’t think it can wake him.
Maybe it’s her touch, or the trace of fear threading her voice, but he rouses quickly. His eyes follow her gaze to the red stain smeared over the white sheets. Anna feels him stiffen beside her, his eyes wild with the same fears—the same questions—as her own.
She goes to the bathroom to wash. Once she’s cleaned up, she drapes a blanket over her shoulders and sits on the back porch step. She looks out over the garden, at the willowy trunk of a once magnificent tree. Despite the layer of winter frost, its leaves still shine with bright new growth. Unbothered by the cold.
Khiran sits beside her, pushing a hot mug into her hands. “Drink.”
Anna doesn’t ask what it is. She’s brewed enough menstrual tea for others to recognize the scent. She brings the steaming rim to her lips, taking a cautious sip. He’s added honey to mask the bitterness. The ring of bone on her left hand clinks against the ceramic when she adjusts her hold. The warmth against her palms helps thaw the tension in her chest. “Do you—we’ve never talked about children.” They’ve never had to. It was never within the realm of possibility.
He sits beside her, their shoulders brushing. “What do you wish?”
Turning to him, she studies his profile. If she follows his gaze, she knows it will lead her to the very same tree her own just left. “I asked you first.” She means for the words to be teasing, but they twist at the last second. The weak joke souring until it sounds more like a plea.
His sigh is heavy, curling from his lips like smoke, but there’s a shadow of a smile hinting at the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t ask anything. Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter.” He meets her eyes, flecks of amber warm despite the chill. “My answer is dependent on your own.”
Her heart aches. “Don’t do that. Don’t put it all on me. That’s not fair.”
Khiran hesitates, studying her as he measures his response. “It’s not something I ever considered—it has never been a possibility before today,” he admits. “You’ve raised children, Anna. You understand the weight of this decision, what it would mean for us, in ways I can’t even fathom.”
Anna understands—shedoes—but that isn’t what she’s asking. “Consider it now,” she urges, lacing her fingers with his and squeezing. His hand feels cold against her scarred flesh. His skin is always cold, now. “This isn’t a decision we need to make today, but it’s something we need to talk about. I just—I want to know where you stand. Right now, in this moment. I just want to know how you’re feeling—”
“Terrified,” he says, the murmured word silencing her as effectively as a shout. Around her fingers, his hand tightens. “I feel terrified.”
She swallows, mouth dry. “Why?”
There are ghosts casting shadows in his eyes. “Because you’re mortal.”
He doesn’t elaborate, but Anna doesn’t need him to. Medicine has come so far, the mortality rate for pregnancy improved so much, but there’s always that chance that something could go wrong. The odds would feel small to anyone else, but she has spent so many centuries being untouchable that even the smallest of risks feels colossal.
She knows he feels it, too.
Khiran leans into her, forehead resting against her own. “There was a time when you wanted this, when you mourned the family you could never have,” he says, and Anna knows he’s thinking of their conversation on a grassy knoll overlooking a battlefield—the one where she grieved for the future dreamed up by another man. A future that was out of her reach. “How could I possibly live with myself if I denied you this chance? If I let my fear of being left behind strip you of the happiness you once wished for?”
She frowns, an uncomfortable truth tightening her chest. “It’s been a long time since I wished for that, Khiran.”
“Yes,” he agrees, cold fingers tracing her brow before his palm cups her cheek. “That doesn’t mean it’s dead.”
No, it doesn’t.
Regrets are stubborn things. They sink their teeth and hold on even as other hopes and other dreams slip through her fingers. But that’s all it is now, Anna realizes. A regret. A wish that soured, because she was robbed of the chance tochoose.
“I’m not sure I want that anymore,” she tells him. There’s a twisting sensation in her chest, and she realizes that her words aren’t entirely true. She shakes her head, hand curling over her heart just so she can take comfort in its steady beating beneath her palm. “No… Idon’twant that. It’s an old dream, one leftover from who I was—who I wanted to be—before. I’m not that person anymore.”
His stare is so weighted, so searching, she feels pinned by it. “You don’t need to be certain, Anna. We may no longer have forever, but we still have time.”
She knows, but it still doesn’t change the answer she feels in her heart.
Weeks pass, a blur of little moments that build until they feel like something bigger.
