Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
THRAX
The house stank of potions, incantations, dried herbs, and blind hope.
He paused in the doorway, inhaling the heavy, perfumed air like one might examine a piece of spoiled meat. It was almost choking, with the cloying scent of burnt sage, steeped herbs, and potion residue that clung to the walls like mildew.
It clung to his tongue, burned the back of his throat. Not because it was strong, but because it was offensive and insulting. As though a few scattered grains and candle wax could keep him out. As though the hands that brewed these spells had ever met real power.
If his seventeenth ancestor had made them, maybe he’d have felt a sting. But this? This was superstition passed down too many times.
He stepped through the threshold without resistance, the house welcoming him like a thing that had long since stopped believing in salvation.
He drifted through the cramped space, fingers trailing across cluttered surfaces, his touch stirring nothing but dust. Jars of dried petals, half-melted candles, handwritten sigils pinned to the walls. Everything was so desperate, protective charms meant for children afraid of the dark.
The floor creaked under his boots as he moved towards the centre of the room, where an old armchair sat before the hearth. He settled into it and crossed one leg over the other.
He felt him coming.
Winifred.
The air shifted as the old man approached the house. He could hear his erratic echoing like a weak drum. The door opened, and he stepped in.
He watched the man’s face collapse into fury and disbelief.
Good.
“You. Thrax,” Winifred spat, rage colouring his face like wine spilled on linen. His eyes scanned the charms strung around the room, every one of them useless. “Get out of my house this instant.”
“Sit,” he said, deep voice like frost sliding over glass. Not loud, not aggressive.
Winifred didn’t obey. “Get. Out—”
The rest died in his throat.
Thrax reached out through his mind and an invisible grip closed around Winifred’s neck like a collar. His hands flew to his throat, choking, clawing at nothing, mouth open and rasping, body twitching and stumbling as his face bloomed crimson.
It was a beautiful sound—his gasping. So fragile, human, and familiar, like a song he had longed to hear.
He waited, listened, eyes distant, slowly drifting into boredom until the man’s suffering was nothing more than a fireplace crackling too loud.
Then, with a blink of disinterest, he released him.
Winifred collapsed, coughing, wheezing, his body sagging into the floorboards.
Thrax rose and crossed the room in slow steps, crouching beside the old man like one might approach a dying animal meant for dinner. He drew the hilt of his blade and used it to lift Winifred’s chin, forcing eye contact.
The man had aged.
He remembered when he was born.
“Your ancestors were called The Protectors,” he murmured. “Your bloodline was tasked with protecting her. Keeping her from me. Ensuring that when she was reborn, she would never come close enough to me.”
He tilted the hilt higher, forcing Winifred’s neck to stretch painfully.
It was Selvanyra’s order. She had made the bloodline so that he would be denied of her soul till the end.
“Stay away from her,” Thrax tilted his head to one side, studying him. “I won’t warn you again.”
Winifred spat out his defiance, words slurred from the struggle. “Get out. You’ll never get what you want from Sanora. I’ll make sure of that.”
Thrax smiled, but it was empty. “Your ancestors will weep, for their efforts to keep her from me is vanity. Sanora was mine the moment the stars blinked her into existence.” His voice dropped.
“And if you ever think to place yourself between us, I’ll dry the blood from your body and salt what’s left of your memory so no one remembers you ever walked this world. ”
He rose to his full height, dagger spinning once between his fingers before vanishing into his coat. He stepped over Winifred and pulled open the door.
Fresh air hit him like a relief. The inside of Winifred’s house had felt like suffocating inside a dying prayer—
His breath caught in his throat.
Across the narrow street, just ahead of the crooked bookshop, she appeared.
Sanora.
She was wrapped in layers of matching fabric from head to toe, her figure bundled like some chaotic, beautiful gift—clumsy, too large, all wrong—and yet perfect, hair dyed brown, threads of green weaving through.
She moved hesitantly, as though she was navigating her own fear, reaching for a car door and opening it. The moment she turned the key and the engine obeyed, she lit up like a star.
Her joy was jagged and frantic, like a girl trying to outrun the fear blooming just behind it.
He felt both.
He couldn’t read her mind, but he had been living her emotions.
Her joy, full and brilliant, cracked against his ribs like lightning, and a quiet fear coiled beneath his skin.
She was chaotic, stubborn and uncontrollable.
And she wasn’t with the medallion.
He could feel it in the way the air didn’t burn. The way the distance between them wasn’t tearing at his skin. That cursed object wasn’t on her. If she’d been wearing it, he wouldn’t have been able to stand this close. Wouldn’t have been able to breathe without pain.
He could breathe her in from here. Peacefully.
She turned into the street, and he watched her until she disappeared. Until even the sound of her car became a memory. And he felt empty and soulless once more.
The hunger inside him clawed at his chest.
He needed to be close.
His being was sick of just seeing her from afar.
The medallion had to go.
Soon.
She was the end and the beginning of everything he’d waited for. And nothing, not gods, not curses, not her protectors, was going to keep her from him.