Page 65 of Immortal Longings
She wants to beher.
Wind swirls in from the mountains. The girl drops her stick into the puddle, but she doesn’t notice it sink to the very bottom. In that moment, she canonly feel her fists clenching tight, her spine tingling, a desperate tremble moving along every inch of her skin.
Her eyes snap open. Somehow, she is standing three paces away. A horrendous pain overwhelms every other function in her body—churning, roiling, tearing apart her very cells.
Then, slowly, the pain fades. Sensation returns: the silk under her fingers, the pinch of her shoes.
She blinks. Once, twice. Beside her lies a body, arms flopped onto the grass and legs splayed crooked.
When she kicks her own birth body into the puddle, the vessel sinks right down into the mud, buried perfectly under the water and out of sight.
Calla opens her eyes. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them. Sometimes, in her dreams, she still remembers the other language that was spoken in what is now Rincun Province. They switched between two—one for the people who came from all over Talin and another only for themselves. But just like her other memories, it moves and disfigures the moment she tries to grasp for it, and the knowledge slips away like water through a sieve.
“I was eight years old,” she rasps. She pulls back, lurches her body away until she has torn out of Anton’s grasp. “Now I am twenty-three. You must understand: I have had her longer thanshehad her. But if I leave this body…”
“She cannot possibly still be in there after fifteen years,” Anton says.
“She might. No one has been able to invade me in these fifteen years. Maybe it’s because I’m still doubled.”
Anton shakes his head, as if the very thought is preposterous. “It’s because you’re strong. No one could invade me in my birth body either.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, Ido,” Anton insists. “If you don’t lose your mind after invading a strong body, then you have won it as a vessel. Most dormant occupants fade off after five years. Forget ten. Forgetfifteen.”
“Most,” Calla emphasizes. “But when we’re talking royal blood, anything goes.” If the real princess has remained after all this time, if the real princess takes her body back the moment that she leaves, then this Calla has nothing left. Because who is she, if not Calla? She doesn’t even remember what her name used to be. She remembers nothing of the life she was born into. She remembers only the princess that she stole.
“This body is all I have.” Calla rockets to her feet. Her wound throbs, but she swallows her wince, pulling her shirt higher to keep the leaves out of sight. “I was so young that I wasn’t even expected to remember my—Calla’s identity number yet. The tutor recited it back to me when I said I had forgotten, because never could they have thought a child managed to jump at eight years old, much less take over their equally young princess.”
Anton catches her arm; she looks at him dully.
“Stop,” he instructs. “Sit down.”
“I have to go.”
“Go where? You’re injured.”
Anywhere but here, she thinks. No weapon in her hands, only her bare skin, needing to brave harsh elements like the sweltering heat outside and Anton’s sympathy inside.
“Release my arm,” she commands.
Anton frowns. “You’re being stubborn.”
Stubborn. As if this is only a trifling disagreement, debating whether they should change the television channel, instead of her whole life undone.
“And what about it?” Calla snaps. “Why do you care?”
For several seconds, Anton is silent. Then:
“Have you lost your mind?” he fires back. “I am only mortal, Calla. Clearly I care aboutyou.”
A terrifying whine begins in Calla’s ears. Maybe it’s her injury, shutting her down. Or maybe it’s the existing fault line in her heart, triggering every alarm bell whenever the risk of harm arrives.
“Release me immediately,” she says again. “I need to report to August. You won’t stop me from that, will you?”
“August can’t help you.” There’s a plea in Anton’s eyes. “He is as powerless as the rest of us.”
Another breeze swirls into the room. The curtain dances up and down.
