“I’m old, Ana.” He said it like that would change anything. I already knew this was only one incarnation of the musician I’d always admired. He closed his fingers around my wrist, gently. “I’ve died so many times. It always hurts.”
I paused with my fingers resting on the tip of his chin. “Always?”
“Some worse than others. The easy ones are when you die of poison or illness. Sometimes you get to go from old age.”
The room turned into winter. “What does it feel like?”
“Dear Janan. You shouldn’t ask that.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be willing to tell you.”
Someday I would die too. I might as well be prepared.
“It feels like being ripped out of yourself. Like being caught in giant talons or fire or jaws. It’s suffocating. And then there’s nothing for what seems like eons, but when you come back just as painfully, it’s only been years. Any time you’re killed—sylph, dragon, giant, anything violent—the pain lasts even after your soul is out. Something incorporeal shouldn’t be able to hurt so much.” He hesitated, and his voice turned gentle. “I’ve been burned by a sylph too. It never feels quite right again. Sometimes, even generations later, I can still feel the fire.”
I held my fists to my chest.
“That’s why everyone focuses on the present and future. The past is too painful when you remember how lives end. Often abruptly.” He shook his head. “In a dragon attack four generations ago, Stef had to save my hat for me to bury. It had been thrown aside, and was the only thing left.”
I couldn’t imagine living, or dying, like that. For millennia. And then I’d come along, always asking about things that had happened before me. I hadn’t meant my curiosity to cause so much pain.
Before I could find an apology good enough, he said, “I think last week wouldn’t have been so dramatic if I hadn’t already been killed by dragons not twenty years ago.”
That was before I’d been born, but it probably felt recent to him. “What happened?”
He stilled, arms loosening around me. “I went north because I was lonely. I felt empty, and I needed inspiration. Stef, who’d just reached her first quindec, told me not to go because I was too old, but I didn’t have a reason to wait. Ciana had died a few years prior.”
I nodded; Li had said Sam and Ciana had been close.
“After traveling for weeks,” he murmured, sounding far away now, “I came upon a white wall that must have gone up a mile . . .” He trailed off.
“Was it like Heart’s?”
He blinked. “What?”
“The wall. Did it have a pulse like the one around Heart?”
“I—” He looked as confused as the day I’d asked how he knew the doorless temple was empty. “Dragons came from all around. Before I could do anything, they’d killed me.”
“What about the wall?”
“What wall?” He inhaled deeply, shook back into himself, and kissed my temple. “You’re trying to distract me. Good job.”
My skin tingled where his mouth had touched. “But— Never mind.” Maybe the wall was a question for later. I could look it up in the library.
“I think we should see how much time is left for your lessons.”
“Are you sure you’re up for it?” I scrambled off his lap and onto my feet. As much as I’d liked being that close, it wasn’t fair that he could keep kissing my head when I wasn’t sure if that was something we were doing now. Library time, lunch, head kissing. Today was probably a trauma exception, but still.
He took my hands when I offered to help him up, but he didn’t let me hold any of his weight. “Music lessons would restore some much-needed normalcy, and I’d like to hear what you were playing.”
I shifted and shrugged. “I don’t want you to . . . you know.” My insides flip-flopped. It had been easier to play when he wasn’t there.
“I’ll be fine.” He brushed his knuckles across my cheek.
I ignored his touch and headed for the door, forcing my tone light. “Okay, then. But no laughing. I don’t have a million years of practice composing in my head.”
He scoffed. “I’m not that old.”
“And the piano wasn’t even invented yet. Yeah, I know. Sing another tune, Sam.” I strained a smile. He wanted normalcy? Fine.
He feigned shock as he followed me into the hall. There he reclaimed my hand and stopped, spinning me toward him as though we were dancing. “I just thought of a name for your waltz.”
I waited.
“If you like it, that is. We can always change it.” His voice shook, probably because it had been such an awful morning, but I imagined he wanted my approval. “‘Ana Incarnate.’”
My heart felt too big for my ribs to cage.
For all the unfair head kissing, the way we hadn’t kissed in the kitchen, and his grudging agreement to dance with me every morning—it suddenly seemed he knew me better than anyone in the world. Better than anyone ever would.
He’d seen my deepest need, buried so far I’d hardly been aware of it.