A Thousand Heartbeats

by Kiera Cass

I took a deep breath and dipped a towel in my basin of water, wiping away everything I’d done.

I knew what recognition felt like. I wondered idly what it would be like to actually be known. Then a deeper ache came to the surface, and I wondered what it would be like to be forgiven.

“Do all of you see it? If you don’t, you need to tell me now. I can’t teach you if you’re already lost.”

I hated everything. I hated this castle, I hated fate, I hated myself.

But after that moment of weakness, I resurrected the sure and steady walls I kept around my heart. It was much safer here with them in place.

gushed. The rush of accomplishment was so wildly vivid. It gave me a sense of possibility—if I could do something I was clearly not designed to do, maybe there were other things, bigger

things, I could master as well.

There was nothing. No mountain, no violent ocean, no decaying castle. Instead, there was tall grass, moving as if it were waving every time it got swept up in

the breeze. The land rolled a few times, kissing the horizon in the beauty of a setting sun. It was so startlingly different from any sunset I’d ever seen, so I reached out to touch it.

When I did, I saw that my fingers were leaving marks like ink on the sky....

I lay back in the grass. It was so tall that it built a wall around me, and I stayed there, watching the sky grow darker.

But as we made our way along the borders of the other established countries, I found myself aching for their beauty.

Walls to keep in, walls to keep out.

“You know, even in places that are dark, even in the midst of war, sometimes, people find light in each other.”

I wiped at my face. “I wish you were here. I wish I still had someone who loved me the way you did.” And there was the heart of all my pain. I was loved in some way or another by everyone around me. But no one loved me like her.

But I wasn’t frightened. I reached up and my hair was down, floating out behind me, free. Free.

I stood there for a long time, watching the waves, focusing on the place where the sky meets sea. After a while, on the edge of the horizon, the stars started to move.

It had been fascinating to watch how love chipped the jagged edges from someone, made them sharper in some ways and softer in others. It left me, for the first time, awed by the prospect. Love was complicated. Complicated, but so unexpectedly beautiful.

told myself that the noise I’d heard had been the rain. It was something hitting the mountain, or a tree falling, or anything else really. It would have made perfect sense considering the situation we were in. But every time Lennox smiled or touched me or even looked

would hear it again. The sound of a thousand heartbeats.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “What is death to you and me? Your memory is still breathing. I’m keeping it alive.”

How was it that I held all the power in our kingdom and yet felt so helpless?

token. What of mine couldn’t Annika have if she asked? She had my cape; she had a bracelet made from my tie; she had every last corner of my heart. If I could have given her something grand I would have, but I held nothing. She held everything.

No one—no one—could have made such a bitter situation into something sweet.

“Even if she did, she couldn’t

love me half so much as I love her. I’m willing to rip the world in two for her.” And as I said it aloud, I knew it was true. I wanted to hate myself for it, for the fact that I was willing to give up everything, a lifetime of struggle and work, to chase something I knew I couldn’t have.

That word. Orphan. I supposed it was a title we only assigned to children, but even if you were forty or fifty or older still, did it ever not hurt to be without your parents?

the fact that the girl I’d loved since I was a boy grew up in comfort.

It was something I could get used to, being this close to him. Hours, days, lifetimes. It would never be enough.

“With everything that’s going on, with how badly this monarchy has been hit, what happens if I walk away, Annika?” Personally? I’d throw a festival. But I don’t currently have the funds.

I understand now what love can do to you. And I understand what grief can do. Because grief is simply love with no one to receive it.