Page 4 of These Godly Lies
When The First laughed, the boy felt it in his chest. It snaredaround his heart like iron left in the snow, the sound of it so bitterly cold it burned.
He pressed the fruit into the boy’s hands. “Eat.” When the boy hesitated, he added promise to the command. “Eat it, and you shall be able to stay by Eira’s side forever. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
It was, of course, the right thing to say—there was nothing the boy wanted more.
So he brought the peach to his lips, took a bite, and tried not to notice the look of defeat deepening the lines of Eira’s face when he swallowed it down.
Anna lays, the echoes of the story still settling around her. There are so many questions clamoring around her mind, but the unnamed character stands out the most. The betrayer. The one Silas must have been speaking of when he told her that trust takes more time once it’s been broken. “Who was she?”
“Kaia,” Khiran murmurs. There is a sadness in the way he says her name. A regret. “She and Eira were best friends before it happened.”
She studies his expression in the dimming light. The fire needs to be fed; the last of the flames are listless with hunger, but she makes no move to get up. “You feel bad for her.”
“She didn’t mean the harm she caused,” he says, fingers trailing absently over Anna’s skin. “She confessed to me, much later, that she was a mother before she was a god. She knew the heartbreak Eira would face and tried to protect her from it. Unfortunately, intent weighs little when faced with the consequences.”
“You forgave her.” A statement, not a question. His words are too rooted in certainty to be anything else. Anna recognizes it in the softness of his expression, the truth of it folded between words spoken and words held back.
“There was never anything for me to forgive. I was never angry with her.” Under her palm, his chest rises and falls with a hollow laugh. “What child doesn’t revel in the thought of playing at something they’re not? To have the power to follow the threads of their curiosity no matter how many miles or oceans it may cross? No. I could never regret the door Kaia opened for me. Not as a child, and not now. She gave me an existence I never knew to dream of.”
“Is she one of the few you call a friend?”
“No, friend isn’t quite the right word for her,” he confesses. “I suppose, if I were to call Eira a mother, Kaia would be an aunt. Things were…difficultafter I gained immortality. The Meadow was my home, but The First knew where to find me. After that, he had someone capable of retrieving me when he wished. Kaia was the only other one to offer me a haven when she saw I was in need of one.”
Anna frowns. “Difficult how?” When he hesitates, she knows it was the right question to ask.
The smile twisting at the corners of his lips is sharp with resentment. “The First wasn’t as pleased with my capabilities as I was.” The hand at her spine stills, fanning between her shoulder blades. Anna wonders if he can feel the ache of her heart beneath his palm. “He was hoping for power and was instead delivered a boy with parlor tricks.”
The need to see him, to gauge his expression and measure his hurt, is too heavy to ignore. She sits up, the quilt pooling at her thighs as she straddles his waist. His eyes drag down, admiration intertwining with devotion. Anna has lived through more lifetimes than any mortal should, but she has never felt like a goddess, not until Khiran started looking at her like this. She waits for his gaze to meet hers, fingers slipping between his own until their palms kiss, before she speaks. “He’s a fool.”
His eyes spark, as if she has discovered one of his favorite pastimes. Perhaps she has. “Wise words for someone who has never met him. I wholeheartedly agree.”
Anna leans forward, their noses brushing and their clasped hands pinned on either side of his head. So close, she can see theshadows in his eyes—the ones he wishes to hide even from himself. “Then why do you sound as if you believe him?”
He stares up at her, gaze hooded and lips turned up in a somber smile. “I know what I am, and what I am not.” He sits up, their chests touching as his fingers slip from hers, trailing up her arms with a whispered softness. “I am a master of deceit, of plucking and pulling at strings and making those in power believe it was choice and not influence that shaped their decisions.” His palms cradle her jaw, thumbs stroking the ridge of her cheeks. Outside, the thunder rumbles a split second after Anna catches the flash of lightning reflected in Khiran’s eyes. “I’m not a soldier, Anna.”
She frowns, hands reaching for his wrists. The fire is only a lick of flame, more light than heat. Without it, she’s starting to feel the chill seeping between the crack under the door, but his palms are warm against her cheeks. “Why should you need to be?”
“Because, when the time comes, that is exactly who he will send. Soldiers.”
CHAPTER TWO
His hatred for them is a raw, burning thing kept alight by all the ways they’ve wronged him. Right now, he hates them for putting fear in her eyes. For forcing him to be the one to put it there.
CALIFORNIA, UNITEDSTATES
WINTER1955
The state battles record flooding that winter. The newspapers print stories about levees breaking—water spilling into valleys and leaving homes and farms under water. Khiran has already warned her not to attempt going into town—the San Lorenzo river has spilled over into the lowlands and completely cut her off. Even once the water recedes, it will be weeks before the ground dries enough for the skinny wheels of her cart to make it without sinking.
Spring, she knows, will arrive faster than she’s ready (it always does). As soon as the storms ease and the soil begins to resembledirt more than mud, she forces herself to go out and start clearing some of the garden beds.
Anna rises, leaning on her heels and adjusting the scarf around her neck. The morning is clear and cloudless, but the wind is bitterly cold. Looking over her shoulder, she’s unsurprised to find Khiran watching her. The pages of his newspaper lie forgotten in his lap, the corners fluttering. It’s a game he’s made—reading the papers just so he can point out the fallacies. One point for every omission, five points for shameless propaganda, and ten points for blatant lies. Yesterday he had awarded himself ten points whenThe Alabama Journalwent as far as to claim Montgomery police were “protecting” participants of the bus boycott.
Anna crosses her arms over her chest, raising an eyebrow. “If you’re not reading, you might as well help.”
He hums, tilting his head. “I could.”
“But you don’t want to,” she says, filling in the part he purposefully left unsaid.
