Incarnate

Costume included.

“Ana?”

“What?” I yelled, and spun to face him.

He stood in the washroom doorway, wearing confusion and something I couldn’t identify. Pain? His head hurt. My fit probably made things worse.

I swallowed back tears. “Sorry. Maybe, since we don’t know who did a bad job of trying to kill us, we should just go to bed.” That would be better than subjecting either of us to this, and if I accidentally cried, only my pillow would witness it.

His gaze traveled from me to the costume, and the line between his eyes said he’d figured out why I was so angry. “I want to tell you something.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” I wanted to scream and kick things, but I couldn’t do that if he tried to make me feel better.

No, I wanted to be back at the masquerade, so close I could hear his heart beating over the music. I wanted that moment when there was no question who he was and I had a brave impulse — and I kissed him. I wanted him to need me like that again.

“I want to feel real.” The words escaped before I realized, and I’d have fled the washroom in horror if he hadn’t been standing in the doorway. Instead, I turned away, leaned on the counter, and squeezed my eyes shut. Warmth trickled out.

His good arm circled my waist. “You feel real to me.” When he tugged me toward him, I went. I didn’t know what else to do. “I can’t imagine what’s going on inside you now.”

“Everything.” I mumbled into his nightshirt. “There’s a thunderstorm inside me, swirling everything around.”

He kissed the top of my head and didn’t let go.

“Can’t you make it stop?” My throat ached with struggling not to cry more. I hated this, halfway hated him, except how I wanted him as much as I wanted music.

“I’d give anything to make things right for you.” He caressed my cheek, my hair, my back. Everywhere he touched, the angry fires cooled. I wished he’d touch my heart. “But I can’t. I can help, but the hard work is all up to you. If you don’t feel real, no one else can do it for you. I promise, though, you’ve always felt real to me. From the moment I saw you jump off the cliff.”

“Sometimes I still feel like I’m jumping off the cliff.”

He nodded and kissed my head again. “Can I tell you something?”

If he felt that strongly about it, I had little choice. “Okay.”

“Come out of the washroom.” He nudged me toward the door. “It won’t make your thunderstorm stop, but maybe it will help. Proof you’re real to me. Important.”

I looked up and sought his haggard face, his eyes. How could I be important? I was an afterthought, five thousand years later. A mistake, because Ciana was gone. I was the dissonant note on the end of a masterpiece symphony. I was the brushstroke that ruined the painting.

“Come on,” he urged, and I allowed him to guide me back into the bedroom, where he draped a thick white blanket over my shoulders. We curled up in the top corner of the bed, by the headboard and the wall. “Are you comfortable?” he asked, when I was leaning against him.

“Are you?” If I twisted, I could see his face from the corner of my eye.

He rested his cheek on my head. “When I went north in my last life, I was searching for inspiration. I hadn’t written anything new in a generation. I felt empty. I didn’t find anything no matter how far I traveled. I just died. That was autumn of the Year of Darkness, three-twenty-nine.”

I waited.

“Usually, it takes a few years to be reincarnated, but it took just over a year for me to be reborn.” From the way he said it, I should have understood what that meant.

“And?”

He sighed, but his tone was endlessly patient. “That was the three-hundred-and-thirtieth Year of Songs. That’s your birth year, too. When we met eighteen years later, that was the first time in a generation I felt inspired, the first time I felt music in me again.”

I couldn’t move. A million emotions flooded me — awe, joy, fear — and what did he expect of me now? I was raw inside, too much back-and-forth today, not enough just… happiness, like it should have been. So I didn’t move or speak, because I couldn’t.

His voice lowered, as though to cover hints of hesitation. “I think I died to be reborn with you. To find you in the lake. I found my inspiration.”

“But you had to die for it.” What a dumb thing to say. My mouth hated me.

He turned his head slightly, so his whisper came by my ear. “If I’d looked like a ninety-year-old man when we met, would you have wanted to be with me?”

I wanted to be able to say yes, because I’d known him at the masquerade, and in all the photographs and videos from other lifetimes, but this was the Sam I wanted to kiss. As much as I felt for him, I couldn’t imagine being attracted to a ninety-year-old, at least not while I was eighteen. Maybe when I was ninety, too.

He gave a soft chuckle. “I thought not. I’d worry if you had said yes. Even people who’ve loved each other for lifetimes aren’t always attracted to each other when their physical ages are so different. It does matter, at least some.”

Like what Armande had said about Tera and Ash arranging to be reborn as close together as possible. “That’s sort of a relief.” I wished it didn’t matter. It didn’t change that he was five thousand years older than me, just made it easier to forget sometimes. “So it doesn’t bother you that I don’t have four digits in my age?”

“Saying I never thought about it would be a lie, but it doesn’t change how I feel. Ana, you make me ache in places that aren’t even physical.” He held me tighter, and for a moment I didn’t understand what that meant. Then I remembered how I’d felt while we were dancing. That yearning. “Does it bother you that I do have four digits?”

“Well, you don’t look fossilized. And it’s helpful that you like girls your physical age.” I bit my lip. “But it is sad that you had to die to get back here.”

“Well, I’m glad about it. I’ve never been particularly attractive, but at least this way I have youth on my side. I don’t know how I’d have convinced you to stay with me if I was ugly and half- fossilized.”

“Sam?” I twisted around, freeing myself from his arms.

He tilted his head. “Hmm?”

“You think too much.” I took fistfuls of his shirt and kissed him, somewhat more confident now that we had a little practice, still nervous because I felt like we balanced on a razor blade. One wrong move and we’d slice apart.

His fingers curled against my back as I faced him, careful of scrapes and bruises, of jabbing each other with knees or elbows. “You were amazing tonight, the way you danced. Beautiful.” He brushed his fingertips across my cheeks, chin, and lips. Down my throat, across my collarbone.

I splayed my hands across his chest, unable to move while he touched me like echoes of dancing. Softer, more delicate than before, but heavy with tension and — too amazing to believe — desire. How could he desire me?

Sam continued his mapping of my face and arms, completely engaged in his study. I took in his captivated expression until I couldn’t anymore, and closed my eyes, willing him to touch everywhere.

I didn’t have to understand why he felt this way. I could be grateful for now, and enjoy it.

Hands stopped above my breasts. He hesitated, and chose a path down the sides of my body. He made me tremble, made me ache inside. My heart wasn’t big enough to hold everything I felt, but I couldn’t bear the thought of asking him to wait while I caught up.

He traced patterns on my stomach. I held my breath, waiting.

“Ana?” A mere whisper.

“I’m nervous.” I kept my eyes closed and hoped he’d understand everything I couldn’t say. “I don’t know what happens next.”