Asunder (Incarnate)

by Jodi Meadows

  “So you’ll be home soon?”

  “Yeah, a few more days. This horse is going to hate me, though.” Something clanked in the background. “I’ve been calling my people. I checked in with Lidea and Moriah, and they’ve been in touch with their groups. Everyone is doing their part. You just get ready for yours and don’t worry about the rest of us.”

  “That’s hard to do with Cris and Stef missing.” With explosions, people destroying parlors, and nursery break-ins, anything could have happened.

  “I’ll call their lists. It’s fine, Ana. I’m sure they’ll turn up soon.” She didn’t sound convinced, though. “I bet Sam could use your company right now. Go be with him, and I’ll talk to you soon. Love you.”

  The SED clicked, and she was gone. Just in case, I tried Stef and Cris again. They didn’t answer, so I left messages. Then I readied another tray of food for Sam, hoping he’d finished the last, hoping he’d gotten up to bathe.

  He hadn’t. He didn’t break his intense study of the floor. His scowl never eased as I replaced his food tray.

  Heavy with dread and worry, I did the only thing I could think of that might rouse him from his misery. I sat at the tall harp and positioned my hands like he’d shown me a few months ago—right hand close, left hand far—and plucked at the first string my fingers found, then the next.

  On the bed, facing the other wall, Sam sat taller. He tilted his head.

  I played another string, and another. Long, low ringing filled the bedroom like gentle snow. It was slightly out of tune, but I didn’t know how to fix that. I’d only played the harp a few times before, though the strings on my fingertips, the curve of wood against my shoulder—they felt natural.

  My fingers wandered into familiar patterns from Sam’s brief lessons. I played a simple tune, belatedly recalling how to work the pedals to change key. My playing wasn’t what anyone would call good, but as I continued, I heard silverware clank on ceramic, a mug thunk on the nightstand. A few minutes later, the shower started.

  He came back into the room—water still running in the background—while I fumbled across a series of notes I couldn’t remember; I was used to having music in front of me.

  “Here.” He took my hand and placed it on the correct string. “The arpeggio begins here.” His fingers fell off mine, skin grazing skin.

  I nodded, continued playing, and watched while he took clothes from his wardrobe and drawers, then went into the washroom. Steam wafted from the door he’d left ajar.

  My music soared through the house, even when my fingertips started to hurt and I lost track of which strings were which. I needed the music, too.

  Shower water silenced, and a few minutes later Sam appeared in clean clothes, his hair chafed damp against a towel. He sat on the bed near me while I kept playing the harp.

  “I remember building it,” he murmured, almost a countermelody against the delicate harp. “The piano. I remember covering it with coats of clear finish to let the natural wood shine through, fitting the cloth into corners and creases to ward away bubbles and drips. It felt like it warmed under my hands, like it was alive. I could already hear all the music I’d make. Preludes and nocturnes, sonatas and waltzes.”

  My fingers found a darker melody to match his mood.

  “I never imagined choosing a favorite instrument, but even before I played the first note, I thought the piano could be it.

  “Each piece of ivory and ebony came from faraway lands. I carved and polished every one myself. I cut the maple from forests near Range, and mined the ore—to be smelted and purified for wires and such—with my own hands.”

  Which hands were those? Ten generations ago?

  “It took half a lifetime to plan and gather the materials, learn the necessary skills for constructing what I envisioned. I couldn’t do it all by myself—some things just need more hands—but I worked so hard on it. When it was complete, I was an old man and my fingers ached from all that I’d done to create this thing, but when I touched the keys and played the first notes, it was so beautiful. So wonderful. Even now, I can almost hear the echoes of music from centuries ago.”

  I leaned my cheek against the smooth wood of the harp and let my hands rest on my knees. The music faded.

  He watched me with dark, haunted eyes, his damp hair pressed against his skin. Anguish shone raw on his face: the strained set of his mouth, the way he made breathing look like the hardest thing in the world.

  “I didn’t make other people’s pianos. I gave the construction plans to people who could do a better job. I’m a musician, nothing else. But I was proud of that piano.”

  “Nothing I say will help.” I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Your music helped.” He reached as though to touch my arm, but I couldn’t stop remembering what he’d suggested before we came in and found the parlor. He wanted me to leave. He wouldn’t have suggested it unless he meant it.

  I pulled away from him; I had to protect what was left of my heart, too. “The temple books are gone,” I said, standing up. “And Menehem’s research.”

  Sam said nothing.

  “Stef isn’t answering her SED. I went over there to see her, but she’s gone.”

  He dropped his gaze. “She probably decided to wait out the snowstorm with another friend. I doubt she felt welcome here.”

  “Because you two were fighting.” About me. Did that make it my fault? “She should have answered her SED, anyway. I called a million times and left a million messages.”

  He clenched his jaw. “She’s angry with me. Maybe she’s ignoring you by association.”

  I doubted that was it, but I wished he were right. Stef avoiding me was better than Stef being missing.

  “We’ve been at such odds lately.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I thought she would be happy I was happy. I don’t understand why she’s been acting like this.”

  Really? He didn’t understand? How could someone with so much history and experience be so oblivious?

  I’d reached the end of what I could take. Every piece of me felt like it was vibrating so fast it might fall off. A piano wire. A harp string. I’d spent the last day dragging off pieces of instruments I loved, too, to be sorted into scraps later. I’d frozen, seen friends killed, and Sam had asked if I wanted to leave. So what did it matter if I told him?

  “She’s in love with you, Sam. Really, really in love.” My throat ached, and my heart felt dashed into a thousand pieces. “She’s jealous that you’ve spent so much time with me. She just wants you back.”

  He was shaking his head. “No. We’ve had relationships in the past, but nothing like you mean. She can’t.”

  “Because you said?” I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t get to say how other people feel or don’t feel. You can choose to be blind, but that doesn’t change what everyone else sees. She loves you.”

  He seemed lost, like he didn’t know where we were or who I was, let alone the language I spoke.

  But I’d told him. Now he had to choose what to do with the information; I’d already decided what I’d do with everything he hadn’t said. “I’ve been thinking about what you asked. I’ll go.” Speaking the words aloud made them true.

  “Why? Where?”

  “Li’s or Ciana’s, like you said. Maybe Sarit’s until I get my own things.” I bit my lip, wondering at what point my heart would crumble under the weight of my decision. Any second now. “I hope you don’t mind if I stay here until the snowstorm is over.”

  His mouth dropped open, and he just stared for what seemed like hours. Like after the instruments, this was going to break him. I couldn’t feel bad, though. Wouldn’t. He’d suggested it. I’d have stayed forever if I thought he wanted me.

  But in the hours that were really minutes, he didn’t beg me not to leave. He didn’t say he hadn’t meant it. When I stood, his gaze just followed me up. Then I was a shattered blown-glass blue rose, and every step away from him made my shards clatter and chime.

  25


  SNOWFALL

  AS I LEFT his room, I wanted him to stop me. I wanted it so badly I could almost hear the perfect words he’d say to convince me to stay, but when I breathed, those words were lost. They’d never existed. I braced myself on the nearest shelf as my vision tunneled and faded, and up and down became the same direction. Another step. If I could just make it to my bedroom—

  Arms wrapped around me and my knees buckled. “No.” Sam’s cheek grazed mine, fresh-shaved stubble. “Don’t go. I need you.”

  I jerked out of his arms. “You asked if I wanted to move out. You can’t take back a question like that. Words don’t just go away.”

  His voice came from behind me, soft and stricken. “I didn’t say you had to go.” But his tone sounded like he was figuring it out, how there had been no right answer to his question. Did I want to leave? Live somewhere else?

  No, I wanted to be here. I wanted him, the music. “I don’t want you to worry about what’s appropriate or not, or feel like you need to make those decisions without me.” The words barely fit in my mouth. “I know I must seem very young to you, and why would anyone trust me to make choices about anything important? But I’ve been deciding things on my own my whole life, because no one else ever cared enough to help. Not until you.”

  Behind me, there was only silence.

  How could my heart hurt this much? It shouldn’t be possible that it ached more than my sylph-burned hands. “I don’t feel young,” I whispered, “and I don’t feel like anything we had was inappropriate. I still don’t care what others think. I still don’t think it’s inappropriate for us to touch or kiss. Maybe strange, but strange and inappropriate are different things.”

  And maybe I was talking to empty air. Should I turn around?

  “I am an idiot.” He said it like tumbling, like if he didn’t get it out quickly enough, we’d both fall apart. But weren’t we doing that already? “I asked if you wanted to leave because I wanted you to know you could. I don’t want you to feel trapped here.”

  I stared at my socked feet and focused on breathing, suddenly aware of the entire house around us. Rooms filled with books and instruments, bedrooms with personal things, the parlor that used to be a haven, and the white shell around everything. Snow and wind beating on that shell.

  He held his hand near mine, not touching. “I hate what people say about you. Everyone knows we live together, and everyone knows how I feel.” His words rustled hair across the back of my neck, making me shiver. “The assumptions about us aren’t kind.”

  I knew.

  “I don’t need that kind of protection, Sam. I’ve lived with gossip my entire life. I can deal with what other people think or assume. Whatever is appropriate for them—they made those rules for them. Not for me.

  “While I am”—I snorted—“lucky to have the benefit of everyone’s experience and wisdom, the truth is it’s been so long since any of you were truly my age that you can’t fathom what it’s like. Even if you do remember, the world is different now. You’ve made the world different. That leaves me with the responsibility of deciding what is or isn’t appropriate. If they want, other newsouls might be able to use my experience to decide when they’re ready, but who knows how the world will have changed by then?” According to Meuric, nothing would matter after Soul Night, anyway.

  “So does that mean you’re staying with me?”

  “Is that what you want?” Hope blossomed in my heart, but what happened the next time someone suggested a five-thousand-year-old teenager and a real teenager shouldn’t be together?

  “More than anything, I want you.”

  What happened the next time he saw Stef?

  But he’d followed me out here to apologize. He’d danced with me at the masquerade, maybe even attended because of me. He’d been ready to go into the temple so I wouldn’t have to be alone.

  I slid my heel back and let my weight follow until I pressed against his chest. His arms closed around me. Warmth filled me everywhere he touched.

  “Ana,” he whispered. “I only wanted to do right by you, but I should have talked to you about it, too. Better than I did the other morning.”

  “You and your stupid sense of honor.” My words held no bite. I was too drained, and he’d already apologized. Asking him to do it again would diminish the words.

  “I agree.” He kissed the tip of my ear, sending prickles of heat all down my right side. His arms stayed around me, and when I tilted my head and he kissed my neck, it was as though we’d never left the masquerade. Only the music of our heartbeats and wind outside, surrounded only by silk and wood and cool air.

  “Try not to be so dumb again.” I faced him, took his hand, and tried not to think about what I was admitting. “I’m not that strong, Sam. I can’t forget the past as easily as you. For me, it’s all right here, smushed together. Not stretched over thousands of years.”

  He cupped my cheek and nodded, his jaw clenched tight.

  “I’ve never been able to trust anyone before.” And the things I didn’t say out loud, but hoped he understood: please don’t hurt me again; be the person I need you to be; show me what it means to be in love so I can decide whether that’s what I feel.

  Fingertips traced lines over my cheek, down my jaw. “I’ll do my best to deserve your trust.”

  I lifted my face and kissed him, tasting the salt of my own tears, inhaling the scent of his soap.

  He lifted me off the floor, held me tight against him. My skin slipped against my sweater until my toes touched hardwood and air touched my bare spine. He gave a breathy, nervous laugh as he hitched me up again and this time supported me with a hand on the back of my thigh. “Is this okay?” he whispered.

  I had lost all power to breathe, but managed to hook my legs around his waist. It was strange, like we were too close and not close enough. His hips moved when he walked, and he kept one hand on my back, and one under my leg so I wouldn’t fall.

  He placed me at the foot of his bed, and I recaptured my breath as he knelt before me. “You are beautiful.” His hands rested on my knees. “And wiser than anyone has given you credit for. The world does need you, Ana. You challenge us, make people think and open their eyes to the truths that we’ve been ignoring for too long. Sometimes I’m so aware of how close the world came to not having you at all, and it terrifies me. Our immortality is not without a price.”

  “Neither is my life. There was Ciana, and other darksouls.”

  He shook his head, black hair falling across his eyebrows. “I’m sorry that I disappoint you sometimes, Ana. I know I’m not perfect. No one is.”

  I tried not to think about how many times I would inevitably disappoint him. I’d want his forgiveness when I did. I could forgive him now.

  “There is something I am good at.” He ducked his head as though to hide a blush, and his hands on my legs forced my insides into taut coils of yearning. “At least I hope. I imagine you would tell me if I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time.”

  “Music?” I bit my lip. I’d never heard him so much as play an out-of-tune note.

  He raised himself, leaned so close his words touched my mouth. “Kissing you.”

  I couldn’t move. “Prove it.”

  His sly smile flashed as he tilted his head and tipped his chin toward mine. Our lips brushed, but instead of kissing me, he rested his teeth against my skin and gave a gentle squeeze. His voice was so low it rumbled in my stomach, too. “I just wanted to find out if it tasted as good as I imagined.”

  “And?” He hadn’t hurt me, but I could still feel the slight pressure where his teeth had been.

  Maybe he’d do it again.

  He leaned close and whispered by my ear. “Better.”

  Wind and snow pattered on the shuttered window while we kissed. He touched my face, throat, collarbone, making me feel like a piano must under strong, skilled fingers. But his movements dragged, and even the cadence of his breath sounded off, as though he was trying not to yaw
n.

  “When was the last time you slept?” I cupped my hand over his cheek, feeling the way his jaw moved when he answered.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Not since we’d found the parlor, I was certain. Even before that had merely been a couple of hours in the early morning. He must be exhausted.

  “Lie down. I’ll turn off the light.”

  He kissed me again, as if to prove he wasn’t that tired, and then stretched across the bed. “Stay with me,” he said, as I made the room fall into twilight.

  I paused, wanting him to mean it.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  “Okay.” I emptied my pockets and laid my belongings on his nightstand. Then I crawled into the bed, facing him. Everything was so dark, I could barely see the shape of his body, and for a moment, my frantic heartbeat seemed the loudest thing.

  “Blanket?” He reached around behind him to find the end.

  “I am cold,” I whispered. And if he heard the shaking in my voice, maybe he’d think it was from chill.

  He swept the sheet and down-filled comforter over us. “Closer?”

  Yes. Definitely. I reached for him, relieved to find him reaching for me, too. His hands found my waist and pulled me tight against him. “Sam, I don’t know—”

  His tone sounded like a half smile. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out another time. I just want to hold you right now.”

  That was good. I wanted—something. But I didn’t want to do it wrong and embarrass myself. I probably would, anyway, if we ever got that far. But for now, I turned over—awkward in my day clothes—and pressed my back to his chest. Our legs intertwined, and I knotted my hands with his at my chest.

  I slept.

  And later woke to perfect snow silence outside, no wind or rattle of trees or clucking of chickens. Light seeped in around the shutters. I found which legs were mine and reclaimed them, then turned in Sam’s grasp. His hands were slack and heavy with the carelessness of sleep.

  He rolled onto his back as I finished turning, and blankets pulled away. The susurrus of silk and our breathing were the only sounds.