The Immortal City by May Peterson

Author:May Peterson [Peterson, May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488055171
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-08-02T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I flew until the wind killed every sound in my head.

My reaction cut me in two—the me that had been Ari since before my death, that still was, the me that mattered to someone. I shouldn’t run from Hei. This was more than the path I had chosen, it was the route back to warm blood, a heart that beat with human feeling. I wanted him to have his miracle, to go back to his life, safe and healed and not alone. I didn’t want him to be lost here, like me.

But he had come here to assassinate moon-souls. The skills and weapons he’d revealed rendered every other explanation impossible. This didn’t mean I was one of his targets—but he had come to me, picked me, for a reason. And the fact that he had investigated me could no longer be one more elusive scrap of evidence. The entire time, he’d possessed a plan that exceeded his sad story of Kaiwan and Beniro. And with Kaiwan’s promise at hand, very few things could have moved him to delay his absolute last choice. It was a passion that had enabled him to face Kadzuhikhan and not only live, but slay an immortal.

And the violence of that passion terrified me for reasons I couldn’t name. I had been painting Hei’s image as fragile, gentle, lonely—and the sight of him beheading Kadzuhikhan seemed to set that image aflame, unleash a far more visceral truth that I feared to taste. He was not an angel sent to comfort my wounds, play the role of victim I could protect.

Tears dazzled my eyes, made the reeling sky a blur of indecision. I should go back to him. Demand the truth of who he was, who I was to him. I should fly, and fly, and never turn back. Fly until the tundra swallowed me, blasted the whole earth white. A horror climbed my bones, that if I soared until the wind itself died, I would never reach the end of the snow. The world was dead too. Everyone entering Serenity was a soul bound to our gem-lit hell, as unable to turn back as I was. The earth itself was nothing more than a vast conjoined dream, fading as our memories drowned in the dark.

I reached the edge of the mountain, a crop of rock looking over Bare-Sky Road. I could keep going. I could test my theory, at last. But convictions were amassing on my thoughts like snowfall. There would be nothing.

Tamueji’s story was about more than Umber’s cunning, or the ravages of time. None of us had anything left to find again, because it would mean nothing.

Hei knew me. He had to. And I was no longer the me that it would mean something to.

I sobbed into my hands as the moon plummeted into sleep. Then, in the crystal certainty of the dark hour, I realized what my immortality was. It was not a second chance. It was not a new life everlasting, a reward for being nameless and insignificant in my mortality.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.