Page 84 of These Godly Lies
Funny, she’s forgotten to worry about infection even though her skin burns with a reminder of her newfound mortality. She swallows, throat dry, and nods. His fingers flex against her wrist, a gentle squeeze, before he releases her and returns to his previous activity.
Anna folds her useless, bandaged hand in her lap. “What are you looking for?”
The smile he gives is tender, tired and soft at the corners. “If I find it, I’ll let you know.” Briefly, he glances up at her from the corner of his eye. “You needn’t worry about me.”
She studies his profile, searching for cracks in his impassive expression. “Don’t I?”
A laugh leaves him, raspy and full of whispered relief and tired regrets. “We’re alive, Anna. I may no longer have forever with you, but the time we do have… it’s enough.”
Hesitantly, Anna relents and lets him dig amongst the ashes in peace. As she helps Silas and Kaia prepare dinner, she tries not to think of the heaviness in the words he left unsaid.
It has to be.
He’s covered in ash and soot when he finally joins them. It’s raining, the warm air humid as they huddle beneath a rocky overhang. Water drips down his jaw, his dark blonde hair dark with it. There’s a reprimand on her tongue, a reminder that whatever he’s searching for can’t be worth the time and energy. Then he holds out his hand, a ring she’d recognize anywhere nestled in his muddy palm. The one made of him. The one made for her.
He slips it onto the ring finger of her left hand, and Anna chokes back a watery laugh as she curls it lovingly against her chest.
Khiran doesn’t need his magic to see her, but it’s a nice reminderall the same. Time changes everything, but the ring that once tied them together still fits like it was made for her.
Togetheris a promise that needs no magic to bind it.
It takes days to climb their way out of Edun’s depths. Anna’s not sure if they would have made it at all if it weren’t for Malik and his knowledge of every cavern and limestone ledge. After thousands of years, the sinkhole was as much his home as it was his cage.
It isn’t until they leave it behind them that Anna realizes they are as lost as she is.
The Tree’s magic was a strange thing. None of them had ever bothered to learn where it stood in reference to the rest of the world. It had its own magnetic pull, its own magic that led each of them there in different ways. The desire to be under its branches had always been enough to gain entry from anywhere.
So when they make their way down the mountain and finally stumble on a rural Mandarin speaking village, it comes as news to all of them that the tree of legend actually hailed from the same region that told stories of gods and peaches that grant immortality. They’re in the Guangxi region of southern China, surrounded by rivers banked by lush forests and towering karst formations that rise from the earth like slumbering stone giants.
Without money, it takes five days for them to travel to one of Khiran’s hideaways in a small coastal town south of Nanning. The only thing they have of value is the golden hoops lining Cassius’ ears. It’s at least enough to trade for food and transportation part of the way.
To Anna’s immense relief, the hideaway is stocked immensely better than the one in Sweden had been. Instead of a single tin of almond cookies, they find enough food to comfortably share. They’re all in need of it. They are haggard and travel worn in ways that only mortality can bring. Anna had taken for granted the way her feetached but never blistered; the way she felt the fatigue of a journey but not the bone deep throbbing of her muscles protesting every step.
She knows it’s the same for the rest of them, too.
Malik had whined and whimpered, tears stubbornly clinging to his cheeks, until they took turns carrying him on some of the longer stretches. Cassius had grumbled about it incessantly, but he let the boy curl against his back despite looking as haggard as the rest of them. Anna suspects it was only watching Khiran stumble, his sallow face twisted into a grimace, when he had carried Malik the time before that prompted the offer.
They are all suffering under the constraints of their mortality, but Khiran seems to bear a weight that they don’t. He doesn’t utter a single complaint, but Anna can see the shakiness in his steps—can see the way his complexion pales with pain. And Anna knows, without him breathing a word, that he isn’t fit to travel on foot.
It is with that thought, thatfear, that she finds herself flooded with relief when Khiran pulls an old tin hidden beneath the floorboards and filled with small gold bars.
It’s enough to send them all wherever they wish to go, in comfort.
Cassius and Silas leave two days later, but not before the blonde scribbles an address on a piece of paper and folds it into her palm. It’s in Istanbul—the home she and Khiran had taken shelter in those dark days after Eira’s death. Silas makes her promise to write, his smile warm and dimpling in the corners when he reminds her that they’ve been friends too long to let something like mortality come between them.
His arms are warm when he hugs her goodbye. Anna finds herself blinking back tears. Strange how a farewell can hurt so much when forever is no longer promised.
Cassius’grin is crooked and teasing as he instructs her to make sure his ‘brother’ keeps in touch, but there’s a storm darkening his blue eyes that tells her more than he can in words.
He’s worried about Khiran, too.
Kaia fusses over him as much as she does Malik, mothering them both in equal measure. She has already told them she plans to stay. She likes the little house—likes that it’s close enough for her to hear the crashing of the waves from the open window. Between the roof over their heads and the gold, they can live a modest life and give Malik the chance to grow into a person of his own making.
In the end, there is never really a question about where Khiran and Anna will go. In the safety of her pocket, she wraps her scarred fingers around the pit. She can think of no better place to plant it than the home—theroots—she’d left behind.
It turns out Khiran hates flying almost as much as he hates traveling by boat.
His hands clutch the armrests, knuckles white. “Anna?” Her name slips between his teeth, the muscle in his jaw spasming. “This is worse.”
