Page 45 of These Godly Lies
Her smile dies, quick and without sound, when he doesn’t return it. “Silas?”
“Where is Khiran?” he asks. The urgency of his voice sets her on edge. On the floor, the children go silent—looking between them.
Alarmed, she drops the laundry back in the basket without hanging it, searching his face as if she could find answers in the crease of his brow. “He’s at home.”
He crosses the room, barely sparing the children a glance. There are warnings in his eyes, trepidation in the heaviness of his steps. When he reaches for her, his hand settles between her shoulder blades, the pressure warm and urgent. “We must hurry.”
Anna doesn’t ask why. She can feel the truth pressing on her chest like a stone, pinning her breath in place. She plasters on a trembling smile for the children, tells them she’ll be back even though thepromise tastes like a lie. She keeps her expression calm, her stride even, but once she follows Silas past the doorway and into the courtyard, her steps quicken until just shy of a jog. Silas is a comforting shadow beside her. When they finally reach her door, her pulse has become a beat in her ears.
Khiran looks up, the iron kettle in his hand. His gaze shifts from her to Silas over her shoulder. “Another visit so soon,” he says, pouring the hot water over his tea leaves. Steam curls over the rim of the cup. “How lucky for us.”
Any other day, she might scold him for being rude, but Silas’ urgency weighs heavier than decorum. She steps aside, letting Silas enter and shutting the door behind him. She’s a moment away from suggesting they sit when he speaks the words she’s been silently dreading.
“She’s coming,” Silas says. Even though Anna was expecting it, even though she had mentally prepared herself the moment she saw the gravity in his gaze, the words still land like a bomb. She can feel the world rocking beneath her feet, feel the percussion of it in her chest, when he adds, “Marcia knows you’re in the Himalayas.”
Anna is already mourning the lives they’ve built—the peace they’ve found.
Khiran pauses in his pouring. Slowly, he sets the kettle down. Anna can smell the cast iron burning into the wood of the table. The table he’d surprised her with last summer, because she had mentioned on a whim how she missed eating meals together at their little kitchen table back home. He’d bartered weeks of work for it. There are a hundred questions in his eyes, but the only one he voices is, “How?”
“She’s tracking you.”
Immediately, he shakes his head, frustration curving his spine as he splays his hands over the table. “It’s not possible. I’ve been living—suffering—like a mortal since we left,” Khiran snaps. He straightens, running a hand through his dark hair as his lips pull into a grimace. “There is no magic for her to trace. There can’t be. If there was, you and I both know she wouldn’t bother with subtlety,” hesneers. “She’d follow the magic right to me and damn everyone else unfortunate enough to witness it.”
“Yet she knows to lookhere,” Silas stresses. “This is not an accusation, it’s a warning. She has no reason to be here, except foryou.”
“Right. You’re right. I just—” Khiran brings a hand to his temple, folding himself into a chair as his fingers drape over his eyes. “I’ve been socareful.”
Anna winces, because sheknows. She’s seen it. Every day is another sacrifice he wouldn’t have had to make had she not convinced him to stay. She turns to Silas, her question as fragile as her hopes. “Does she have another way?”
Silas shakes his head, his brow furrowed. “None that I know of.” His dark eyes slide to Khiran before settling back on her. “But for her to find you all the way out here… she must.” He seems as disturbed by his answer as she is.
Khiran scoffs, hand sliding away and eyes staring up at the ceiling. “That would be my luck.” His head lulls to the side, pinning the other man with a dull stare. “Isn’t that right, Shepherd?”
Pity softens Silas’ expression. “You need to leave now if you are to escape.”
Anna wets her lips, already making a mental tally of what to pack. What to leave behind. “Where should we go?”
A pause, so heavy it’s frightening.
She looks to him, alarmed by everything his silence speaks. The pain reflected in his eyes, the uncertainty, makes her stomach drop. “Silas?”
“He doesn’t know,” Khiran answers for him. The words fall between them, leaden and lifeless. A shell of the hopes they harbored only days ago.
“Oh.” The air tastes thin, the room tilting under her feet. She sits, hands gripping the table with a desperation that leaves her knuckles as white as the ring encircling her finger.
“Luck is fluid. It changes. Not knowing the destination only means the where doesn’t matter. Not yet.” Silas brings his hand to rest reassuringly on her shoulder. Anna tries to focus on the warmth of his palm to help distract her from numbness threatening toswallow her whole. “What I do know, with certainty, is you can’t stay here.”
Anna nods, forcing a deep breath into her lungs before breathing it out. She lays a hand over his, hopes he can feel her faith in him despite her fears. “When do we need to leave?”
“Now.” The word sounds sharp. Final. “We need to leave now.”
Another nod. This one feels stiffer than the last. “Do we have time to say goodbye?”
“My friend, you barely have time to pack.”
They reach the base of the mountain just as dawn starts bleeding across the sky. Anna mourns the goodbyes she didn’t get to say—imagines the monastery waking to the bells and finding them gone. She wishes she could have at least thanked Master Tenzing for all his kindness.
Silas leads them as far as the next town over before he stops, his head tilting as he listens to the whispers the world delivers to his ears alone. “You need to go to Jammu Tawi. Board the train.”
