These Immortal Truths (Peaches & Honey #1)

by R. Raeta

For the givers, may the next person you save be yourself.

Death comes for everyone and often without mercy; she has no doubts that it’s coming for her now, wearing the faces of the Lord’s men.

“Khiran has too many flaws to name,” Eira hums. “The greatest is caring too much about things he shouldn’t.” “That doesn’t sound like a flaw.”

She shrugs, fingers plucking at her hem. “I—when it’s just us, I would rather see you as you see yourself.” “And if I see myself as a monster?” “Then I would see that too. I would take your honesty over your pretty lies.”

“I admit, I never envisioned you marrying yourself to God. I’m feeling a little betrayed, if I’m honest.”

If there is one person worth understanding, it’s him. The god that saves her at one turn and lets her suffer the next. He is the riddle she’ll ponder over every lifetime, never knowing if she’ll learn the answer but struggling to solve it all the same.

“I have spent a millennia whispering in mortal ears, singing songs and weaving stories with only glimmers of truth to tie them together. I am Loki, the god of Lies. Eris, the goddess of strife. Lucifer, Wisakedjak, Eshu, Anansi, Hanuman. I am all of them, and I am none of them.” He leans closer until their foreheads nearly touch and she can feel his words against her lips with every violent tremble.

How do you live with all their ghosts?” Khiran idly plays with a piece of grass, twisting and twirling it between his fingers. “One ghost becomes two. Then a dozen. Then hundreds. Eventually the faces blur together and the details of multiple atrocities merge into one looping nightmare.” He looks up at the sky. “And then I’ll discover places of beauty, enjoy food and art that fills me with a desire for more. Nightmares aren’t without end. At some point, you wake up.” Anna bites her lip, chest heaving around a sob she refuses to release. “I’d like to wake up now.” His stare is pitying. “I know.”

Strange that the god that saved her from the fire would be the same one to keep her from drowning.

“Don’t be sad, Bisnonna.” Anna’s head snaps up, her eyes wide and her heart wild. The smile Franco gives her is warm and knowing. He squeezes her hand. “Your son lived well and died honorably.”

Omg crying

“Anna, the Benevolent,” he says, so softly the gentle movement of the creek nearly drowns it. Anna doesn’t know how to respond, doesn’t know what to say. He must see the struggle in her expression, because he saves her with a smirk. “I have studied Mary for three days. I can say with certainty that I would have pushed her into the pig waste.”

Khiran’s grin is crooked. He leans forward, their cheeks brushing as he whispers in her ear. “Shall we give them something to fear?” Anna pulls away, reads the mischief in his eyes. It sends sparks across her skin, in her chest. “What did you have in mind?” His fingers run along the rope. “A disappearance of a very bound, very public person accused of fornicating with the devil.” He tilts his head, a thoughtful expression crossing his features. “Perhaps a touch of smoke and embers for drama?” He’s erected no barrier around them, she can feel the settlement’s eyes as easily as she can hear the shout for Khiran to step away. She bites her lip, smothering the smile that wants to break free. “Surely there would be some disappointment if there wasn’t.”

Jealousy is beneath him. An emotion for mortals with their too short lives and limited patience. He feels anger and bitterness for the things he cannot have—the freedoms they refuse to give him—but never jealous. And yet it’s there, poison laced fingers gripping his heart, when she mentions there’s another. In that moment, he understands. She is the one thing he denies himself.

If necessity is the mother of invention, Anna thinks desperation might be the father of change.

Nothing is immune to change, Anna. Not the mountains or the oceans. There is nothing more inevitable; nothing else that unites us so indiscriminately.”

Her fear calls to him. A pinprick scream in the back of his skull that makes the blood in his veins run cold. When he gets there, when he sees him, he almost slips. He can’t meddle in the lives of men, but in that moment, he almost thinks it would be worth it..

he dares to be honest with himself, there is nowhere he’d rather be than at her side. It’s a dangerous game he’s playing—one Eira would certainly scold him for playing. That doesn’t stop him. He’s not sure there is a force on this earth that could.

“They’re gone,” she breathes. “No,” he murmurs, reaching up, thumb stroking her clavicle. “Just hidden. Does this please you?” She can’t lie to him. Even if she could do it convincingly, even if he wasn’t so well versed in spotting fictions from truths, she could never lie about this. Not to him. “Yes.” His fingers trace a line down her arm, curling around her palm. “I’m glad,” he says, before leaning in close. The lapels of his suit brush her chest, prompting goosebumps to dot her flesh. “But Anna, let it be known, I would rather see you as yourself.”

“There are galaxies painted across your skin,” he murmurs. “Nebulas and universes mapped out like artwork, designed solely for one to get lost in.”

“This wasn’t meant to happen.” His fingertips thread into her hair, her jaw cradled in his palms and his eyes burning with such an intensity that she’s drowning in it. “You weren’t meant to possess me so completely. You haunt me, Anna.”

Loving him came to her the way snow melts into creeks, then rivers, then oceans. Time has engraved him into her heart the way the rivers have carved canyons and glaciers have cut fjords.

“Nothing good ever follows a book burning, Anna.”

She names him Loki. Partly because of the trouble he likes to cause, but mostly because she finds a great amount of amusement in imagining Khiran’s face when he discovers one of his many names has been bestowed, by her, to an ass.