Page 70 of These Godly Lies
Khiran’s there, his back to her and his eyes wild and searching as he screams her name into the chaos. Looking for her.
She answers, his name cracking with the weight of her relief. He turns, just in time to catch her as she launches herself around his middle. Shaking, his hands are on her face, her body, checking her for burns. Her fingers tangle in his soot stained shirt, gripping him with an urgency that borders on desperation. Anna can’t tell where his trembling begins and hers ends.
“Anna,” he murmurs, a choked breath. “I thought—”
He doesn’t finish—can’t. She doesn’t need him to. She holds him tighter, because even though the world is burning around them, she still needs this moment to convince herself that he’s real. “You were gone.” Her voice catches, words tangled and barbed in her chest.
Khiran pulls away, his hands anchored on her shoulders. “Marcia is here.”
She swallows. Nods. “I know.” There’s a bruise blossoming along his jaw, circling his neck like a shadowed collar. Her hand reaches between them, tracing the damage. Blood smears across his skin. Her hand is covered in it. “You’re hurt—”
“It’s not mine.” His brow furrows, searching her face with growing trepidation. “Anna, how did you know?”
Her eyes meet his. “Malik.”
Khiran pales, his grip on her tightening. “You saw him?” His eyes flit over the flames, a bitter laugh staining his lips. There’s nowhere for them to run. The fire has encircled them. “Of course. That’s why she didn’t follow. They’re burning us out…” He shakes his head, hiding his face behind his hand.
The wind shifts, smoke stinging her eyes and clouding her lungs. She coughs into her sleeve and blinks back the tears trying to clear her eyes. Her throat aches with it. The expression Khiran wears is nothing short of tormented. Anna understands why.
I’m supposed to make sure it keeps burning.
They’ve been forced into a corner they can’t escape—not without magic. If they stay, Malik’s flames will devour them. If they leave, Marcia will follow the thread of magic, ready to draw blood on the other side. Only one of the options provides them with a chance.
Anna suspects that’s just how Marcia wants it.
“We can’t face Malik,” he murmurs, hand dropping from his face. His skin looks sallow, wrung of hopes and sharp with bitter realities.
Anna studies the shadows lining his eyes. “He’s a child.” Her voice still shakes with the horror, the heartbreak, of it. “You didn’t tell me he was still a child.”
Khiran scowls. “Heisn’t. He’s older than I am—don’t let his appearance fool you into believing otherwise.”
Anna thinks of the look in his eyes when she touched his shoulder. Thinks of how similar it looked to another boy all the way in California who was only ever angry because he hurt. “You’re wrong.”
He doesn’t argue with her, but she can see his doubt. It doesn’t shake the conviction she feels in her heart.
Khiran presses the handle of a blade into her hand. Anna instantly recognizes it as the one she used to cleave her finger fromher flesh. It’s stained with blood—Marcia’s, he tells her. He managed one good hit before he’d fled into the fire. He has some burns on his legs and scorched clothing to show for it, but the gamble had paid off. Marcia refused to risk following him. Why would she, when all she needed to do was wait? Drawing on Khiran’s magic is the only option left to them.
He holds her close to his chest, his arms a vice binding them together. “Are you ready?”
Anna wets her lips. The heat of the flames surrounding them makes her thoughts muggy. Their plan is more thin hopes than a strategy—travel to the other side of the world and hope the distance causes enough of a delay that they can slip into a crowd before Marcia can catch them.
Khiran’s hand slides along her jaw, tilting her face to his. “Anna?”
There’s a determined edge to his stare, rimming his eyes and tightening the line of his shoulders. Anna tries to draw courage from it, swallowing the fear suffocating her. Her eyes drop to his lips, heart splintering.
These could be their last moments.
She leans into him, her fingers tangling in his shirt and the flat of the chipped blade pressing over his heart, and brings her lips to his. Soft and reverent, as if kissing him slowly could delay the inevitable. His mouth slides against her, fingertips burying in her hair at the nape of her neck and the hand on her hip holding her flush against him.
When he pulls away, his forehead pressed intimately to her own, Anna feels the loss as keenly as the scorching heat stinging her skin. She has so much to say to him, so many feelings she’s never found the words for. Finding them,sayingthem, now would feel too much like a goodbye. Instead, she grips the knife until her knuckles go white and holds his gaze. “I’m ready.”
His chin dips, pressing one last kiss to her trembling lips, murmuring against her parted mouth. “Hold on to me. Don’t let go.”
It is, perhaps, the easiest thing to promise. Still, she repeats it like a mantra. Winding her arms over his shoulders, she holds him sotightly her chest aches with the pressure and her muscles tremble with the strain. His hold is equally fierce, a protective cage she’s terrified of escaping.
The world folds around them, violent and crushing like a ball of paper in a clenched fist. Ithurts. It feels like she’s at the center of a storm, centrifugal force tearing pieces of herself in every direction, until the only thing that feels real is the press of Khiran’s body against her own. She’s screaming, she thinks. Her mouth is open and her lungs are empty. The sound of it is lost, pulled from her lips and smothered in the weight of the universe.
Darkness creeps at the edges of her vision, spreading like an oil spill. She’s suffocating in it. Drowning.
