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ANTON
I could have loved you, you know. The words he’d whispered to Nahli passed through Anton’s lips as his eyes flew open. His body jerked up, and two firm hands grabbed his shoulders before he fell to the side.
Anton thought they were Nahli’s delicate hands until he realized the skin was callused.
“You’re all right,” Pav said. “I didn’t leave you buried in the dirt. We’re at Ionna’s.”
A wide grin spread across his brother’s face, but Anton couldn’t bring himself to mirror the smile. It wasn’t even a settee he was resting on, but an unfamiliar bed.
“I’m here. I’m really here in Kedaf,” Anton whispered. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
Pav scratched the side of his face. “Some parts I wish had been, if I’m to be honest.”
Memories of the night before with Nahli came to him—them together, kissing, skin touching, him inside her, her gripping him, stealing each other’s breaths. He wanted to return, dig a hole through the earth and find his way back to her. But it wasn’t that easy, not unless he truly wanted to die. For what Nahli wanted, he would remain in Kedaf.
Pav’s smile slipped away. “It will be all right. It isn’t as if you’ll never see her again. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.”
When will I see her? Years from now?
Anton’s eyes narrowed, his lips tightening.
Biting his lip, Pav held up his hands in front of him. “All right, I didn’t mean it how it came out. I only meant perhaps—I don’t know what I meant—but maybe it wasn’t meant to be right now, yet one day it could be. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, and you know who’s going to be happy to see you? Tasha. I think she’ll miss my storytelling, though.” He tapped the side of his chin. “Or perhaps I have the new role of being the nighttime reader.”
Anton had to put a hand to his head, while Pav continued to babble on, as everything was still foggy.
Weak and shaking, Anton stood from the bed barefoot, with only a pair of trousers on. As he took a step forward, his knees buckled and his legs collapsed.
Pav caught him just before he smacked into the wood floor. “Careful. Perhaps you should lie back down.”
The door jerked open, and Ionna walked in. Her dark irises flew to Anton, a beaming smile spread on her lips, and her sleeves were rolled up like she’d just been out in her fields.
Yeva rushed in past Ionna, her blue eyes wide. She threw her arms around Anton, and he hugged her back with a heavy breath.
“I thought you had lost all your marbles,” Yeva cried to Pav then focused on Anton. “I screamed at him for disappearing. And when I found out he and Ionna dug you up, I was horrified beyond belief. Then they showed me your body on the bed, appearing the same as before, and I didn’t know what to think.”
Anton sank down to the feathered mattress. “I don’t know what to think, either.”
“You look like you need to rest and eat, so let me get something. Pav told us a story that I wouldn’t believe possible.”
“Believe it.”
Swiftly, his sister nodded, still wide-eyed when she rushed out of the room.
Ionna smiled and clasped her hands in front of her. “I already have a room set up for you if you’d like to stay here with us.”
“Thank you.” Anton didn’t know what he was going to do. Would he stay here? Go back to his old cottage? There were too many pieces shifting around in his head.
She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle squeeze. “I’ll let you get some rest.”
Everything should have been easier now that he was home in Kedaf, and it would have been if he hadn’t met her. It should have been elation at seeing his family again, starting his new craft, and finding his place in the world.
But Kedaf wouldn’t be as it was before.
The door creaked, and a small-frame of a girl with tangled curly hair entered the room. In her arms she carried a chicken, and Anton held his breath before slowly releasing it. This was the hen—the one Nahli had stolen from Daryna.
Pav plopped down beside Anton. “I told Tasha you might want to meet the chicken Nahli gave to us. What were the chances?”
Hesitantly, Tasha padded farther into the room, quieter than usual. Was she frightened of him?
“Hello, baby bean. I know this is probably difficult for you...” To think a person dead and now alive would frighten almost any adult, let alone a child.
Tasha handed him the hen but didn’t sit beside him. “Are you going to go away again, Ton-Ton?”
Anton stroked the black and white feathers of the hen. “No. I’m here to stay. But we don’t know how long we truly have, do we?” He patted the bed on the empty side beside him, and she stiffly sat down. “What you need to remember is that no matter where Pav, Yeva, or I are, we love you. That never disappears.”
Nodding, she scooted closer to him. “Juju here wants you to read us our story tonight.”
Pav pretended to appear offended as he flung his hands to his chest. “But I thought I was the official storyteller now!”
“I wasn’t finished yet.” One tiny finger flicked up from Tasha’s hand. “And then Pav will tell us all a story.”
“That’s more like it.”
Yeva’s hurried footsteps thudded across the floor as she entered the room, carrying a bowl of broth in one hand, a glass of water in the other, and a loaf of sweet bread tucked under her arm.
“One of us could have helped you,” Pav said, standing and attempting to take the items from her.
“I told Ionna I had it, and, Pav, you still need to rest, too. You stayed up all night in here.”
He waved her off. “I’m fine.”
Yeva set the broth and water on the nightstand then handed Anton the warm bread. He didn’t feel like eating, but he entertained her by taking the bread and placing a buttery piece in his mouth.
“May I talk to Anton alone for a few moments?” Yeva asked Pav and Tasha.
Pav nodded and Anton handed the chicken back to Tasha, giving his sister a kiss on the head. His brother wrapped his arms around Tasha’s shoulders and led her out of the room.
Yeva took a seat beside him, meeting his gaze. “You can talk to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Pav had no difficulty pouring out the dramatic tale from start to finish with gory details that he could have left out.”
“That’s Pav, though. Not me.”
“But you still always tell me things straightforward.”
His shoulders slumped. She was right—she was always right, and Anton needed to get everything off his chest anyway. They had been through so much together with their mother’s suicide, their father’s death, and struggling to have food in their mouths. As he told her about the Bone Valley and Maryska, he left out certain parts about Nahli that were too private, but said enough so Yeva would know how he felt about her. The last thing that fell from his lips was why he’d returned, when Nahli hadn’t.
Yeva wrapped her arms around him, drawing his head to her shoulder. He wept. Hot tears slid down his cheeks, and he cried like a child. It had been ages since he’d truly wept—not when his parents had died, not when he’d whored himself out to villagers for coin, not even when he had died. He always tried to hold it all within, to not affect his siblings, but he was crying for all of it now. All of it, including Nahli.
It felt as though he was nine years old again, with Pav swinging a wooden sword that almost took out Anton’s eye, leaving a scar in its wake. Yeva had held him then as he cried while his father stitched him up. Spilling tears over physical things was much simpler than what he was now feeling.
Lifting his head from her shoulder, Anton looked for something to dry his face. Yeva stood, tossing him a shirt from Pav’s closet. He rubbed away the physical parts of sadness while his mind continued to writhe inside him.
“We didn’t get rid of any of your belongings,” Yeva said in a soothing voice. “All your clothing is in here, along with Pav’s things. We can move them in the room Ionna set up for you, when you feel like it.”
His things... A thought struck him fast and hard. “You remember that satchel in the market I told you I took from the thief? You said you didn’t want it, so I kept it.”
“Yes, I remember it.”
“Well, did you keep it?”
“I did.” She peered at him, questioning. “It’s in my room. Do you want me to get it for you?”
He nodded a little too quickly. “I’d like to bring it back to Nahli’s home.”
Her bridge.
Yeva left the room while Anton went to Pav’s closet to find one of his tunics. He tossed on a dark blue one and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hands, making sure he could hold his internal stitches together.
His sister padded back into the room with the leather satchel in hand. He smiled to himself as he took the bag and pulled it close.
“I wish I could have met her properly,” she said. “Not only when she’d brought Juju.”
“You almost did that day in the market, if you’d made it to the booth sooner.” He smiled, wondering how Yeva would have reacted.
As though reading his thoughts, she laughed. “If she’d been that desperate for herbs, I would have given her some, if you must know.”
“I know.”
Yeva knew as he did what it was like to struggle, and she was the most generous out of the four of them. That was one thing that he loved and hated about her.
“I’ll return a little later, if that’s all right?” Anton didn’t have to ask her to leave, but he didn’t want her to have to worry again.
Pursing her lips, she nodded.
“I promise I’ll return.”
“We just got you back is all.”
Anton grasped both of her shoulders. “I told Tasha I’d read her a story tonight. I’m not going to break what I said.”
She tossed her arms around him once more. “Be careful.”
Before leaving, he drank down his broth, then told Pav and Tasha goodbye. Worry flickered in both of their eyes, but Anton couldn’t sit there a moment longer, cooped up inside Ionna’s home. He needed to go outdoors—he needed to see where she’d lived, to give her one final goodbye.
The pale blue sky sat absent of clouds as he walked off the path, stepping over fallen tree limbs. Anton didn’t know what he was going to do when he arrived back at Ionna’s, most likely spend the rest of his life carving objects to keep his mind occupied. He would help out Ionna with the herbs for his sister to sell, and that would be his life. Before he’d died, or thought he had, his future path had felt like a dream come true, but now he not only wanted that but also something he couldn’t have.
Clutching the satchel to his chest, and inhaling the leather of it, Anton headed for the bridge. He passed the tall hills in the distance, then the lake, stopping to glance at the water for a moment to see the sun reflecting off it. Too many lakes reminded him of her, and he didn’t want to look or think about it anymore.
Anton stared at the loose gravel trail beneath his feet for the remainder of the way, listening to the consistent pattern of crunches below his boots, the songs of insects, and the crowing of birds.
He held up a hand and stared at his skin. The familiar bones hidden underneath the layers were already becoming a distant memory until it would feel like it had never happened—like she had never happened.
When the decaying bridge appeared, directly in his line of sight, Anton lifted his chin higher. Focusing on his destination, he started to pick up the pace toward the open space below the curving and broken wood. He didn’t know why he was in such a hurry. Perhaps he thought for a moment she would be there.
His boots pummeled the hardened earth, trampling the tall weeds beneath his feet. When he drew nearer, his gaze caught on a sprawled-out blanket across the ground. Chest heaving, he inched even closer, noticing trinkets, a pile of rumpled clothes, and a pan resting in the corner. Then something recognizable caught his eyes, his tunic. The one he’d worn the day he’d met her—the one she’d taken. Kneeling, he lifted the fabric and brought it up to his face. It smelled of her—honeysuckle—as if she’d worn it.
His grip tightened as he fisted the material, and he threw it down. Taking the satchel strap in his hand, and with emotions flaring up, Anton pounded the bag over and over against the ground. He wasn’t going to let himself lose it again like he had in the bedroom, but tears still managed to find their escape.
Anton let out a choking noise and tossed the satchel next to his tunic on the dirt. He released a loud roar—because he needed it, because it stopped him from thinking.
“I’m not sure what my poor satchel ever did to you, but you do know that’s my favorite one, right? I don’t think I appreciate you whacking it like that,” a teasing, familiar voice called from behind him.
Nahli.
Eyes wide, heart screaming, he whirled around. “What? How?”
Nahli took a step closer and closer, as he did the same, still too far away, until she finally reached him and he reached her, neither one of them touching. Raven hair hung loosely past her shoulders, brushing her tan tunic.
“I suppose you have Kezia to thank for this.”
Kezia. There could have been only one thing that may have possibly happened.
“She went to Torlarah?”
“I would have argued with her not to exchange her life, no matter how much I wanted to come back. But I suspect her decision was a firm one. When I knew her as Daryna, she never would have done anything she didn’t truly wish.” Nahli paused. “I think she may also have unfinished business with Roka.”
“I—I...” He couldn’t get the things out that he needed to say. It was as if no words existed, only a vision he couldn’t believe was there.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be attempting to thieve from you again.” She smiled, two dimples forming in her cheeks.
With those words, he clasped her face between his hands and pressed his mouth softly to hers. “You already have. You’re a thief who has stolen my heart, and I never want you to give it back.”
Nahli’s smile grew wider. “Even when I didn’t have a heart, you had the ghost of it. Because skeletons, you know, don’t have hearts.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Pav.” He chuckled.
She laughed along with him, so much so that tears beaded against her lashes.
“When I told you I could have loved you, I take back what I said.” He pressed his finger to her lips to prevent her from speaking. “Because I already do.” There was no reason to wait longer to say it because he knew how he felt. He didn’t need a longer amount of time to tell him so. And with life, he didn’t know what could happen tomorrow.
Anton slid his finger slowly down her lips, catching on the bottom one.
She nipped the tip of his finger. “I love you too.”
“Now what do we do?”
She shrugged. “I suppose we have time to figure it out together.”
