by Varsha Ravi
26
Lyne
At night, Kiran left. Suri knew this—she felt it in her chest. Sometimes, after he left, she would ghost her fingers over her heart and trace the outline of that old burn.
He had never explained, and she had never asked. It was one of those things they left to rot outside in the winter cold, secrets choking them from within. But he had never told her why he had helped Annabel, and it had unsteadied that careful, tenuous balance between them.
It wasn’t his fault that she laid awake at night, consumed by unspoken questions. But she was tired of bleeding and bleeding, and so, a few days after Annabel returned to her family, she waited to feel him leave—a faint strain in her chest like a thread pulling taut—and then she rose and dressed.
It was foolish, and it was dangerous, to play games like these with gods—to dance on slender, uneven ropes threading chasms, deluded by bravado and a refusal to fall. Even if she wished it away, she was still mortal; she could still fall.
He wouldn’t let her, though. She didn’t know him, not the way she desired to, late at night with her fingers curled into fists and heart aflame with the dream of it. But she knew he would not let her fall, even if she slipped. Even if she jumped.
Kiran paused near the meadows that wrapped around the city limits. The darkness of him—black hair, black coat, dark skin and bright eyes—stood out in stark relief against the desaturated wildflowers, the bouquet stiff and pale against him. He looked like some god of oblivion, of mourning, a reaper in the dead of night.
Suri followed him out of the meadow, onto the slender footpath that wound around the hills. Sparse, distant trees cast delicate, tangled shadows onto the cement and dirt. She traced them carefully and followed him through the narrow opening and out into the rolling emptiness of the country beyond.
From here, they could easily see the towns and suburbs that dotted the countryside; the city’s overflow sprawled across knotted ground, covered with asphalt as though it was hard candy. This was a world that had fallen asleep, soaked with darkness and the whistling melody of the breeze. If she strained her ears, she could hear the dissonant song of the city, but it was already beginning to fade.
It was a world asleep, but Suri still startled at the emptiness of the parking lot, the eerie cast of the moonlight against the shining stone of the temple. Kiran ran his fingers over the wrought-iron gates, gentle and reverent, before slipping in. The faucet creaked in protest but obediently began to spill out water, and he washed his feet quickly, twisting the tap off just carelessly enough that it still trickled to the stone below. A joke, perhaps, a kind of wordless acknowledgement of her presence. But it was not enough—Suri wanted words, wanted answers.
A truth pierced through her, raw and unsurprising. She had spent weeks ignoring it only to be confronted with it now, standing at the steps of some old, loved temple, a temple that had belonged to her family but would never belong to her.
She wanted his heart; the desire devoured her. Even if it was made of fire and to know it was to fall into ash, she wanted the entirety of it, with the passion of maenads, the madness of gods. It did not matter to her that she had none of their magic, none of their clever golden blood. She was mortal, so she would return; Kiran’s river of death would release her, and she would live again. Fate tangled threads and cut them in patterns that were so cruel and so lovely, and yet it allowed mortals to love. And in the end, love made immortals of them all.
Following the god’s steps, she brushed her hands against the pillars to guide herself in the near-darkness. This close, the air smelled like aged blossoms and honeyed milk and incense, and she felt saturated in it.
What little moonlight illuminated the angles of the temple from outside disappeared entirely the moment the door fell softly shut behind her. She could only navigate the temple by the shifts in the darkness as her eyes slowly adjusted to the black.
Light blazed through the shadows; Suri watched, entranced, before ducking behind a nearby shrine. Kiran’s index finger was held up, a small ball of flame burning steadily above it. He used it to light a bronze candelabra discarded at the edge of one of the larger shrines, carrying it with him to the back of the temple.
Suri counted her breaths as she traced his steps on uneven, glittering marble. He lingered in front of a smaller shrine, near the back exit. It still held a few elements of the grandeur of the main shrines—the same carved pillars, stories written into the stone that hung overhead. Unlike those, it didn’t have an inner and outer sanctum, only an iron lattice pulled tight over the idol within. Kiran tinkered with it before slowly dragging it upward, the shrill screech of it cutting into the night.
From here, she could not know which god he was honoring. A golden plaque hung on the far pillar, but the candlelight fell short of its edges.
Tucked behind another shrine—Makai’s, or Ashri’s, she wasn’t sure—she watched him work through the steps of his old routine. He moved with the ease of practice and the tremulous hesitation of mourning. Atonement, he had said, when he had carried a hundred flames in his soul and let them flicker for her. She wondered, distantly, whether this was another method of atonement, self-flagellation sustained by centuries of careful repetition.
After, he removed the bouquet from his coat, drawing stems out one by one. He pinched fingers around petals before pulling them all off in a single movement, scattering them over the statue. Suri felt the cadence of it, the rhythm of the strewn blossoms and whispered prayers. He performed the service as if he was a priest, not a god.
His fingers were stained with ash and holy water by the time he finished. The waning moonlight caught him when he turned, the planes of his face streaked black and silver. “You can come out now, Suri.”
Suri felt cold with knowledge. She had wanted his heart, and in his own wordless way, he had given her parts of it. It did not change the consuming, uncaring nature of the desire, the need to have everything instead of perfumed, fragile pieces. But it warmed her. “Who is this?”
It was a question he had prepared for; his expression dipped under the weight of it and smoothed out accordingly. “A friend of mine. He’s dead.”
“I thought gods didn’t stay dead.”
Kiran shook his head lightly. “He will return, eventually. But his death was sacrilegious—it extends the period of death. I don’t think you will be alive to see him. He is as good as dead, in your mortal definition of it.”
In the uneven firelight of the candelabra and the distant moonlight, he looked almost sorrowful. Then he looked up, and his eyes shone. “I assume you have more questions. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have followed me.”
It was such a useless, cruel phrase, and she nearly resented him for it. More questions. He could not know how, more often than not, they were urgent, formless, incomprehensible. She felt as if she might split from the force of them, crack and shatter into shards as the dark parts of her heart grew and swallowed the earth.
He ducked his head, and it resembled apology. Suri stepped forward until she was close enough to feel the heat of the candelabra. And him, always him. The god was so much warmer than camphor and flame could ever hope to be.
Instead of asking a question, she found her lips shaping a confession. “I feel like I’ll never know you. Like you could stay for decades and centuries and millennia, and my bones could strip themselves clean with the effort of it, and I still wouldn’t know you entirely.”
Instead of frowning, he laughed, and it was such a surprisingly sweet sound that she startled, leaning back. Temple bells and chilled, sweet water, bright and lovely. Even when it faded, his face was still shaped like it. “You know me so well it terrifies me, Suri. You know me better than gods and mortals, better than anyone who has lived for centuries.” He tilted his head, the line of his mouth sharp and fraught with incredulity. “That kind of knowledge is dangerous, you know. You could rip me apart without a blade.”
Suri lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t. You know that.
”
“I do,” he said, unsmiling. His eyes were chips of ore, glittering and hard. “Would you want to know me?”
Her lips soured with unspoken words. I would want to know you entirely, in this life and in every one that follows. “If you’ll let me.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I would give you anything, if you wished for it.”
“Except for another kiss,” she said wryly. They were close enough now that she could steal one, if she dipped in quickly. But she didn’t want to; they had never been the kind to take from one another.
“Except for another kiss,” he agreed. He took a seat on the stone floor in front of the sanctum and leaned forward into the grate, putting out the flame of the candelabra with his thumb. She sat beside him, cold marble chilling her bare shins.
“Tell me a secret,” she whispered, tipping her weight onto his shoulder. She felt warmed from within. “One you’ve never told anyone.”
He was silent a moment, shoulders rising and falling under her cheek. Then he said, “I used to have a brother.”
“What happened to him?”
“I lost him,” he said eventually, so softly the words disappeared into the air seconds after he let go of them. So softly that when he turned his head, exhaling a laugh against her forehead, she had to strain to discern them from the viscous quiet. “It was my fault, of course. But I lost him.”
By dawn, the shrine was cleaned and closed, and they had already begun to return home. When light began to spill across the sky, washing it in shades of red, Suri tilted her face up and watched the world come awake. Wordlessly, Kiran mirrored the action and watched the sunlight turn the darkness ruddy and soft, and thought of the old myths of dawn, of the beauty and the artifice of them.
In all the old stories, gods and devils were infallible and invincible, carved out of spells and stone. When the heroes sought to kill them or to know them—so often the same thing—they quested to the deepest, darkest cracks of the world, splitting the earth and looking for items so lost, so abstruse they assured the impossibility of deicide. The wishbone of a firebird, the burial ground of the first person they had ever blessed, the sacred, rusted weapon they had lost in battle. Beautiful, unattainable things presented on the cusp of victory.
Kiran had always loved those tales, the sharp, effervescent wonder of them, bubbles popping on his tongue every time he spoke them into life. And when he had been taken aside, gently and fearfully, and told the secret of their existence and their deaths, he had nearly laughed from disbelief, from jagged scorn. It cannot be that easy, he thought, and yet it was—there was no other word for oblivion in the language of gods, but he had only just begun to learn it.
It had not taken him long to understand that their sugar-sweet poison was impossible in itself. What seemed inevitable to humans was unfathomable to them. There was a perfect, fate-kissed balance to it.
Because gods could never be human, and humans were defined in broad, beautiful strokes of terror and love and ephemerality—immortals couldn’t understand such things, couldn’t understand how emotions struck paper-thin skin and set it aflame.
He could, of course. And that was the humor of it, the cosmic punch line, kismet leaning forward and tenderly sliding one of his own knives between his ribs. He could, and the knowledge had been burned from him for years and years, but it still lingered, soul-deep. Gods couldn’t love because they had never been taught how to, had never traced the vessels of a beating heart so gently and so fearfully, afraid of cracking it open and shattered with the need to swallow it whole.
Kiran had been taught, and even if the knowledge was faded, Suri had taught him again and again.
It wasn’t as convoluted as the myths, not so grand or timeless, but he thought the secret of their deaths was lovely in its own way. No one would ever die from it, none but him, but he had grown himself into something golden and wrapped for death once before, and so it did not bother him, the notion of dying again for the sake of some old, inexorable rule.
No, what bothered him was the simplicity of it, the knowledge that all those heroes had traveled to the Asakhi and sifted through its waters, and fought demons and lovers and themselves. All for the sake of holding out a relic on an engraved, shining platter, so they could defeat evil or love it. They never failed, he knew, but he also knew that those lost treasures were not why they won.
Killing a god seemed simple enough; heroes leaned close and ran them through, dressed in new, jeweled blood. But golden hearts were born strong—they split not from blade or stone, but from trembling fingers wrapped around hilts, still shaped in love and prayer.
The night at the temple had been a mistake. Suri had confessed once, and her heart was still bold and greedy with the memory of it, as though she could confess again and again, and ask him easily for things she knew he could not give her.
She woke one morning to see him on the balcony, leaned against the wrought-iron bars. The glass doors were frosted with cold—his expression was obscured, his posture loose and inscrutable. For a moment, her head murky with sleep, she remembered that old nightmare of hers. The figure of him, silhouetted against a red dawn, before he disappeared into ash and tepals streaked with blood and gold.
But the sky was thick with clouds, and though his shirt hung oddly off his frame, wavering in the faint wind, she didn’t see him break apart and fragment into dust. He was still real.
Suri slid open the glass doors and stepped out into the winter air. Absently, she traced the whorl of a jasmine bud as she passed the garden to stand by him. Her fingers were damp and perfumed, and when she brought her hand up to prop up her chin, she could smell the sweet, heady scent of the flower.
Kiran was looking out over the city, pensive. Heat wicked off him, and the frost around them melted endlessly. Then he turned to look at her, and she held his gaze and thought, without pretense and without fear, of the raw beauty of his eyes. They looked like nectar, saccharine and strong, like the molten warmth of them could fill her entirely, like it could drown her.
This was not daybreak, dangerous and infinite. The world around them was ash-gray, damp with snow and salt. It was not made for confessions. But Suri tired of these silent exchanges, strained with yearning and the desire to speak aloud what seared them from inside. She tired of this wordless, vagabond love that had no birthplace and would have no grave, not unless they gave it one.
She opened her mouth, and spoke.
Her lips parted, but he cut in before she could speak. “Are you afraid of death?”
It was not entirely desperate misdirection—he was curious to hear her answer—but her mouth puckered as she took in the question. “Yeah.”
She didn’t explain herself, but he hadn’t expected her to. Kiran leaned away from her, cutting a jasmine blossom off the plant with his nail. He cupped it in his hands so she could see the smooth, velvet curve of the flower. They were so close that the air was fragrant, heavy with the night-sharp sweetness of the jasmine and the sugar citrus smell of her shampoo.
The bud was soft against his curled palm. Flame wound through it, and turned it to ash.
She held his gaze, unaffected by such small wonders. A smile threatened to touch his lips, but he held it back and curled his fingers in. The bud reformed and bloomed, a blossom made of ash and smoke. Her lips parted for a moment, with suppressed awe.
Delicately, she stroked the blossom, flinching when the pads of her fingers touched the ash petals. “It’s real.”
“Real as hearts,” he said, and pinched the flower between his index finger and thumb, watched the breeze disrupt the dust. Then he leaned forward, and tucked the stem behind the shell of her ear. Her skin was cold to the touch, chilled by the air and thick human blood. His fingers burned where they’d brushed against it.
He let his mouth curve into a smile, faint and faded. “From death to life. You should not be afraid.”
Suri echoed him, but it was brittle. “Shouldn’t I?” Her fingers brus
hed against the curl of her ear absently, burnt-sugar eyes fixed on his. “Tell me, do wishes die when we speak them aloud?”
The line of her mouth was dangerous—still, he shook his head. She dropped her hand from the flower and turned away, glancing out over the city. There was nothing of interest to see, not for a girl who had loved it her entire life—she had turned for the sake of it, for the smooth nature of the movement and the way it would carry her away from him. “You said gods can’t wish. So, on my birthday, I made two—one for you, and one for me.”
Something like a plea tore through him; it came out the other side blood-soaked and empty. Suri turned back and took his hands in hers, smaller and softer and colder.
“I wished,” she said, bitten nails leaving half-moons in his palms, “That we could both have happy endings.”
Kiran was alive with the memory of burnt cities and a past composed entirely of dead flowers and bleeding steel. And it formed words and warnings inside him, whispering to him in that ragged, sorrow-sweet voice he’d never forgotten, telling him to run, run, run.
His hand pulled out of hers; he placed it on the iron railing and wrapped his fingers around the cold metal.
“You’ll have a happy ending,” he said, quieter than he’d intended to. But in the silent winter morning, his voice carried. “You will.”
“And you?” she asked, tipping her face up so it held the thin sunlight. A muscle jumped in her jaw, tense with every word and every question that lived inside her. “Who will give you your happy ending?”
He tried to smile, but it came out strained and ugly with old pain. He could’ve lied—he could feel it on his tongue, the artifice he could’ve spun out into humor and purposeful ignorance. I’ll find one someday. But she would’ve seen it, and the untruth of it would’ve hurt her. “Some of us don’t get happy endings, Suri. Not all tragedies mend themselves in time.”