Page 150 of The Surviving Sky
“I’ve been erased, my love. It is harrowing too.”
Iravan said nothing, but his brow furrowed. Carefully, Ahilya disentangled her fingers from his. Iravan froze, but she raised her hand to his cheek and stroked it. “You said leaving that dusty little copse would change us. You were right.”
He closed his own hand over hers, gazing at her with those blue-green eyes. “It doesn’t have to changeus. It doesn’t have to change you and me.”
Ahilya said nothing, but a choked sob escaped her.
“In the vortex,” Iravan continued, “there was a momentwhere—Iwas broken, the falcon and I,wewere broken. We knew we must unite and complete ourselves, but we didn’t know how.” Iravan took another deep ragged breath. “You showed me how. You saved us.”
Behind them, the falcon ruffled its feathers. One wing lifted slightly, and Ahilya glimpsed a gigantic black eye, unringed. She thought she detected grudging gratitude from the bird. She glanced back at Iravan and only felt awe and humility from him.
Tears burned in her throat. He was making this difficult. Of course he was.
“What else did you see?” she whispered.
His gaze locked on to hers. “Your reality. Ahilya,you’re…pregnant.”
She made no reply to that. Iravan’s grip tightened on her hand, almost painful.
“You knew this,” he breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have left the copse and made the choices you did?”
“So you forced the choice on me by keeping me ignorant?” A growl laced his words. “Ahilya, it was not your decision to make alone! You don’t know what that vortex did to you. You don’tknow—”
“We ended the earthrage. I saved you. You said this yourself.”
Iravan trembled in anger. She snaked her other arm around her belly, remembering all the arguments the two of them had so long before, remembering how he had lived with that fear as an architect; the decision that she could take about any child they had, alone, without his participation.
Perhaps he was thinking of the same thing, for his grip loosened and he took another deep breath to calm himself. “I can never go back to Nakshar. Not like this. Not yet.”
“Then the ashram survived,” she said. She had seen it inthe…Etherium, of course, but until Iravan nodded, she hadn’t known how much she had been waiting for his confirmation.
He watched her a long moment, his eyes growing brighter.
She could feel it coming, the moment of inevitability.
“You’re leaving me,” he said quietly. “You’re saying goodbye.”
“I’m trying very hard not to,” she said, uttering a humorless laugh. He didn’t smile, so she looked back into his eyes. She thought of Dhruv and Tariya and Arth and Kush, and the things she had made Airav do. Iravan against the world. That was the choice she had made. She needed to answer for it. “There are others who need me now,” she said. “To whom I owe explanations.I’ve…done what I could for you.”
“Iwantyou,” Iravan said. “Isn’t that better than need?”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “It is. It really is.”
They sat in silence, fingers still entangled. Behind them, the yaksha rumbled softly and shook its feathers. An explosion of jasmines covered the walls, running like a wave from one end of the garden to another. The scent was intoxicating; and she breathed it in, its fresh, sultry heat. He was doing this, of course. Perhaps he didn’t know he was.
“You were the best of them,” Iravan said abruptly. “Of all the lives and all the many partners I’vehad—youmade completion possible.” He stared straight ahead past the garden that filled with jasmines. “Our civilization is embedded with the need for material bonds. It’s passed down to us as the greatest wisdom, because architects weren’t supposed to be Ecstatic. I lived a hundred, athousandlives with that wisdom, but I couldn’t have found the falcon in any of those. In no other life did I have someone who pushed me to find myself like you did.You…”He turned to her then, his blue-green eyes gazing into her. “You mademepossible. And I will never stop owing you for that.”
Tears trickled down Ahilya’s cheeks. It was more than she could bear. Her heart pounded in her chest. She stood up before she could change her mind.
The yaksha ruffled its wings and stretched, sudden shade falling on Iravan and Ahilya. The creature’s wings extended high above her. Individual feathers shone like mercury.
Iravan stood up slowly. His jaw clenched, but she knew it was not in anger. He was holding back tears. He walked over to the front, and the giant falcon gazed down at him with its glittering black eyes. Her husband stared back with his ethereal blue-green ones; the yaksha yarped, an imperious and haughty lift to its beak, but as Iravan raised a hand, the yaksha bent its sharp beak and let Iravan stroke it.
Iravan strode back to Ahilya. He knelt, making a step with his hands.
Ahilya walked forward, placed a hand on his shoulder, and he boosted her up so she sat astride the falcon. The yaksha rustled under her, and she breathed deeply. The creature felt alien, its glistening feathers cool under her skin. It smelled of earth and smoke, truly a creature of the jungle.
