The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  * * * * *

  Further along down the corridor, Eiron had returned to his old room. Alessia prepared to continue down the hall, but Eiron reached out his hand to stop her.

  “I’d like to talk to you in private before we go back. Could you help me get settled in?” He asked. If she saw through his flimsy excuse, she didn’t say anything about it.

  As they unloaded his things, Alessia seemed interested in what he had taken with him, in particular his stills. Eiron had brought several stills, one of Vaikyur and himself taken when Eiron was only seven. Alessia smiled at it; Eiron had been making a face, and had tugged at one of his grandfather’s medals just as the still was taken.

  Another, older still had been placed carefully near the top. Eiron’s mother and father sat on a picnic blanket somewhere in Inen’s High Park, a toddler who had to be Eiron playing with the family pet that looked more interested in reaching the sweet Eiron had in his hand.

  “Your mother, she’s very beautiful,” Alessia commented. Melain Vaikyur’s hair shone gold in the sun, haloing her face. Eiron agreed; he had often pulled this still out when he remembered his mother, to feel close to her again. But when he was young, every time he looked at it, he was always surprised by the darker grey skin of his father. For a long time, he hated himself to admit it, he’d felt a little ashamed of the image there.

  When he returned to Inen, he’d taken the still out again, and found himself looking at it almost for the first time. He saw himself in those eyes, in that face. He no longer saw the good and the bad, only who he was. With that realization, he’d brought out some of the memories that had been gathering dust in the dark recesses of his mind.

  Alessia looked through the other stills taken on Eiron’s graduation day, the day he had become an ahkso, a clipping from a civilian newsletter describing the hero of Wysteirchan, and a still of him at about eleven years of age playing on the beach when on holiday at the Kestrian Sea.

  “I had to get him out of there,” Eiron announced unexpectedly. “Kesney was slated for questioning.”

  “Why?”

  Eiron shrugged. “Probably because they couldn’t get to me.” He said. “Though they wouldn’t have to dig very hard to get anything on him, either. My grandfather was careless about their conversations, even though his intentions were good—but Kesney’s the sort of person who can’t discover what’s going on because he’ll give himself away. He hasn’t learned when to keep his mouth shut because he’s never had a reason to believe that it’s necessary. Most of the young officers who question the status quo don’t, until it’s too late for them.”

  “I only hope he doesn’t mind what he’s sacrificed in coming here.” Alessia said, as they finished unpacking Eiron’s things. “So why did you come back?” She asked suddenly.

  “There didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go.” Eiron shrugged as he adjusted the latch on his satchel, one knee on the ground. “But I’ve been thinking about you a lot since I left.”

  “You have?” She said, waiting. He stood up and turned towards her, lacing his hands behind his head.

  “It’s no good avoiding what I want to say.” He laughed. “The truth is—I fell in love with you.” He smiled at her self-consciously.

  “In this spirit of confession...” she said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “When you left, I have to admit, I… began to regret that I had let you go, even though I knew the outer world was where you belonged. I think I must have thought of you above a dozen times each day, wondering where you were, wondering how you were, wishing I could leave here to follow you into your world and to make sure that you came to no harm. At one point, I finally realized what it all meant—”

  “What?” He asked quietly.

  “Well, that I love you! I missed you so much when you left.”

  He tried to keep the shock off his face, until he realized there were tears in the corners of her eyes; she was blinking them back furiously. Smiling, recomposed, he stepped forward and brought his thumb up to dry them.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t know how glad I am to hear it.” She laughed.