Page 76 of Immortal Longings
He rolls his eyes, nudging her hand away from his face and lacing his fingers through hers before she can protest. An afflicted expression stirs in her eyes, one that was not there the previous night. Anton thinks he recognizes it—a laceration, a torment. Like approaching a fork in the road, alternating between each option at breakneck speed even as the split approaches, unable to turn back.
“You’re not that paranoid,” Anton says. He presses his lips to the inside of her wrist. “What’s really on your mind, Calla?”
Calla extricates her arm without niceties, and Anton blinks, taken aback. One of the factories nearby must be rumbling to a start, because there’s smoke rising through the gaps between the buildings, low-hanging mist gathering around them. The dip in his stomach comes without warning. Seven years without Otta, and he would have thought he had gotten better at this. Would have thought that leaving his youth behind meant outgrowing his need to hold on too tightly to people once he has them. Yet Calla pulling away makes his skin prickle, as if he’s been given a slap on the wrist without knowing what he did wrong.
“You never look the same, Anton,” Calla says quietly. Her fingers play at the hem of her sleeve, her face turned away. Her cigarette has burned to its end, but she still holds it in her other hand, angling the ash onto the ledge.
He wants to pinch it out. Pluck it from her grasp and press it to his skin if that means she’ll look at him. “Why does that matter?”
Calla finally drops the butt of the cigarette. “I don’t know who you are.” Her eyes shift in his direction at last, glinting with a cascade of color. The yellow of hardened gold; the burning end of an overwrought electric wire. “How can I trust you?”
A high-pitched call comes from the street below, but neither of them reacts. They are mirrors of each other, one head tilted to the left and the other to the right, one with a leg propped on the ledge and the other with a leg stretched inside, effigies hung for display on the edge of this rooftop.
Anton doesn’t understand. Or he does, he supposes. He understands that she’s searching for an excuse, and he doesn’t want her to find one. Calla, despite her grandiosity and confidence, is just as trapped as anyone without the jumping gene. She is stuck on the idea of her body giving her power, so much so that she has forgotten who the one moving that body is.
“You know who I am,” he says. He dares to reach out again. Skims his finger along her temple, brushing her long hair back. “I am Anton Makusa. It doesn’t matter what body I’m in.”
The rooftop stutters, its gurgling pipes coming to a pause.
“You must understand,” Calla says evenly, “that by the same logic, I am nothing. No one. I don’t even have a name.”
Anton snorts. At the sound, Calla shoots him a sharp glance, indignation ready in her expression, but he shakes his head before clarifying.
“You are Calla Tuoleimi. If you choose to be.”
“Don’t you—” Calla cuts off, huffing. “Istoleher.”
“You havebeenher for fifteen years. She is more you than anyone else.” His hand runs along her face now, along her soft skin and the sharp angles of her cheek. She lets him, and he knows she catches the exact moment his jaw clenches tight and his voice hardens. “Who cares if you stole her? You deserve this powermore than the girl who was born into it. Forget your name and adopt the title instead.Calla. Soon, people will be saying it just as they whisperGod.”
Calla shifts toward him slowly. He almost wonders if he should be afraid, if her hands are coming around his shoulders to throw him off the side of the building. Thankfully, she’s only twining her arms around him, drawing near until she can rest her chin on his shoulder.
“Calla,” she echoes, putting on a tone of reverence. She makes a thoughtful noise. “Would you know me in another body?”
“In any body,” Anton promises, “you would still be the same terrifying princess.”
That draws a laugh from her, and the sound sends a thrill shooting along his body. When she lifts her chin to grin at the look on his face, he can’t help but feel that he is giving away more than he should, yet he can’t stop himself.
Calla touches the ridge of his ear. “I have to tell you something.”
“It is more or less shocking than your identity?”
“Less.” The building jolts beneath them. The restaurant on the fifth floor has activated its industrial-size exhaust fan. “I entered the games to kill King Kasa.”
Anton doesn’t know if he is supposed to act surprised. He figured it had to be something like this. Why else would she emerge again in San-Er? She singlehandedly enacted the most audacious massacre in its history and got away with it. She could have easily lived the rest of her days in quiet hiding.
“And that requires victory in the games,” he guesses. No one outside the palace has access to King Kasa any other way. He pauses. “Would you like me to offer my heart in sacrifice?”
Her eyes narrow into a glare. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Good,” Anton replies. “I would have thought that a mighty ask.”
He wouldn’t have enrolled in the games either if he didn’t need to win. He wouldn’t have done any of this unless it was the last possible option.
Calla has traced her finger from his ear down to his neck. The smoke from the nearby factory lessens as the machines find their rhythm, dispersing into the air more evenly. It feels easier to breathe.
“I don’t suppose you’ll pull your wristband out of commission?”
San is starting to wake up. The rooftop doors are opening and closing as wayfarers move in and out, but there’s no reason to be concerned; few will recognize them as players, and other combatants cannot creep up on them in such an open space.
