Chapter 36 #2
I pleaded silently with myself, grinding my teeth, fighting the pull of waking—
Something plastic smacked the back of my head, jolting me fully awake. The cave, the light, her, him, all of it vanished like breath from a hand. A wince clawed my throat, swallowed by a louder, sharper grunt as awareness came crashing back, every nerve in my body screaming.
My body hurt—gods, it hurt. Every part of me ached, and the aches pulsed deep in my bones, flooding me all at once as I tried to regulate my breathing.
My legs, my back, my stomach, my head—all of them throbbed with pain.
My arms were tied behind me, and my left shoulder bore the brunt of my weight against the cold floor.
My shoulder was fucking numb. How long had they kept me like this, tied up and left to sleep on the floor?
A pair of legs in heels appeared in my blurred vision, followed by a voice that made my stomach twist. “Oh, look at that. She’s finally awake.” The heels clicked closer, and she crouched, dropping the bucket I assumed she had struck me with. “I told you you weren’t hitting her hard enough.”
“Or maybe you just gave her too much of the dose earlier,” a man’s voice responded from somewhere behind me.
Merton.
Amelia’s fingers brushed my forehead, pushing my hair aside. “I thought she wasn’t ordinary. You thought that too, brother.”
Her head tilted, lips curling into a smile—one that might have seemed warm days ago. But she had shown me who she really was. I glared at her with the little strength I had.
“I thought she might have some fascinating element in her blood,” her brother’s voice cut in from behind me. “But according to the sample I experimented on, she’s fully human. Boring.”
Excuse me?
They’d taken my blood? Sampled it? For what?
“You must be exhausted,” Amelia cooed. “I should lift you to sit.”
I wanted to resist, to keep her filthy, betraying hands away from me, but I couldn’t take the agony of leaning on one shoulder any longer. My body screamed for relief, and with my wrists bound behind me and my legs tied, I needed help.
She dragged me upright, scraping my body against the dirty floor until she had me leaning against a wall.
“There you go,” she said proudly, adjusting my bound legs before stepping back.
The smile stayed plastered across her face as if she’d just done me a favour.
She looked neat in a pink dress, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her heels echoing in the hollow space with every movement.
Finally, I found the strength to croak out the question that had been burning through me since before I lost consciousness. “Why?” My voice was weak. For how long was I asleep?
We were in some kind of warehouse. The dim green light left everything hazy except for Amelia and her brother.
A table was shoved against the wall beside me, crowded with scientific and medical equipment—probably what he’d used to test my blood, right here in this filthy place.
Another table farther back was cluttered with shapes and objects I couldn’t quite make out.
“Why we only decided to kidnap you today?” Amelia asked, mock innocence dripping from her voice.
“Look, baby, I told Merton we should’ve done this long ago, but fear kept him biding his time until today.
” She glanced at her brother. “Well, yesterday. You slept through the whole evening, the night, and here we are at nine a.m. We were patient with you, weren’t we? You definitely had a lovely nap.”
Her tone was giddy, deranged. Was she even mentally stable? How the hell had she been able to hide this so perfectly well?
But another, sharper thought crashed down. It was morning. My mother would be worried sick that I hadn’t called. And Thrax...Thrax must have thought I’d gone.
No, he wouldn’t. He always knew where I was, even when I wasn’t in danger. Could he feel me somewhere in Nimorran now?
“No,” I rasped. “Why are you doing this to me? Why did you drug and tie me up?”
“Because you have something we want,” Amelia said smoothly, crossing her arms as she paced while her brother’s hard stare burned into me.
“And what is that?”
She stopped in front of me, crouched low, and tilted my chin up with one long finger. Her whisper was a venomous caress that crawled right into my ears and poisoned my blood. “The Soulless Man.”
My eyes widened with furrowed brows, heart slamming against my chest in surprise.
“How… how—”
She laughed, brushing off my shock as she rose. “Oh, don’t stress, Sanora.” Her heels clicked as she returned to her brother’s side. “We’ve known that for two years now.”
“What?” My gaze darted between them, panic clawing through me. How did they know about Thrax? Who were they?
And did Thrax know they’d been watching?
“I know what’s swimming in that head of yours,” Amelia sang, dragging a chair forward and settling gracefully into it. She crossed her legs, beaming. “Let me put you out of your misery. But I’m getting something from you in return. Deal?”
I clenched my jaw. As much as I wanted answers, I wouldn’t trade away a secret of mine or Thrax’s. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll make a deal with you.”
She rolled her eyes dramatically. “We know, we know, baby. But we dragged you here anyway. Look, my twin brother and I are just hungry researchers, the same way our ancestors were. Let’s say we’re carrying on the mission of the bloodline because everyone has refused to rest in peace until we search every crook of this world for the Soulless Man.
And we found him two years ago. So they’re probably at rest now.
The hunger has been running in our blood, you see.
” She cast a conspiratorial glance at her brother.
“We should ask them for a treat in the afterlife for being the ones who finally tracked down the immortal, don’t you think? ”
Her brother actually smiled at that.
Disgust was evident on my face as I asked, “How did you know he was the one?”
She smirked. “Please. Our ancestors died piecing it together. Each of us picked up where the last left off. Before they got to our generation, everyone had gathered enough clues. We only followed the trails.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard.”
My jaw tightened as I remembered the book she’d given me in the library, claiming she’d taken it from her grandfather’s belongings right before it was burnt.
How much of that story had been the truth?
Was the life she projected to the outside world, was everything a set up?
Were they in Nimorran simply because Thrax was?
“So why am I here? To tell you more about Thrax?”
“No,” she said, smiling wider. “Yes. But no. We’re just curious.”
I frowned at her.
This time Merton spoke, his voice cold. “Why is the Soulless Man living with you? At first we thought there was some kind of history, a bond or maybe there was something extraordinary between you two.”
And?
“But then,” Amelia picked up, “we realised you didn’t even know who you were living with.
” Her laughter was grating. “It was hilarious, watching you gather books on him while he was under your roof. I thought you two were some kind of…special arrangement, something beyond us mere human understanding.”
My brows knitted as the truth struck. “Did you give me that book because—”
“Yes, baby. Because I wanted to juggle your senses in the right direction. I was hoping you’d catch up on who you were living with in that book, and you did. Hurray!” she said, suddenly sounding bored.
“How could you not know? And why is he staying with...you?” Merton said, and the you could not have sounded more irritated.
I sighed, lowering my head. Damn obsessed researchers, the type that saw everything, including kidnapping, a positive thing so long it benefited their research.
I would never have guessed Amelia and Merton were history-crazed, carrying on a hunt most people had abandoned long ago because it was hopeless trying to track down the Soulless Man.
No one really looked for him anymore, they wouldn’t even find him if they tried.
The world outside was evolving and constantly changing.
He’d blended with humans, and if there was no backup help for the twins, they probably wouldn’t even have found out.
And I understood Merton’s anger. I’d be baffled too if I weren’t in my own skin—why Thrax stayed with someone like me.
“And you didn’t know about the cave.” Merton scoffed, and I dragged my tired gaze up to him.
“I’d cooked up the story about going there with my friends to get a little hint from you on why he always went there, but you didn’t even know the cave existed until I mentioned it.
Do you even know anything?” He turned to his sister, definitely disgusted with the fact that I was not of any help to him like he’d expected.
“I told you we shouldn’t waste any time on her that day. ”
My stomach clenched. Wait. Did he say Thrax frequented the cave?
Could it be the cave from my dream? The one where Thrax had lain on the floor lifelessly?
“What do you mean? He goes there?” My voice cracked.
Merton threw his arms wide. “She didn’t even know until now!”
I ignored him, staring at Amelia, who still watched me with a desperation to claw through my brain and fish out what I knew about Thrax.
“He goes every single day,” she said. “We can’t get close to the cave. It would kill us if we tried.”
My mind reeled. So that was where he disappeared to everytime. That was his “unfinished business.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Why do you think you are here? Because we want to know as well.” Amelia stood up, checking her watch before glancing to her brother, “It’s fading.”
Merton nodded, retrieving a syringe from the lab table and advancing towards me.
“Don’t you dare.” Panic surged through me, my body scrambling backward against the wall. “Stop this, Amelia!” I barked, not wanting to fall asleep again. “Do you think Thrax won’t find me?”
“When you wake up, you’re going to tell us everything you did in that house with him.
And that needle might knock you out for a little time.
We have not perfected the formula. The soporific component is stubborn.
Right now, the best we can manage quietens connection and induces a short sleep—thirty minutes, maybe an hour if you’re unlucky.
He’s trying his best to exclude the sleeping effect, so be patient with us. ”
I frowned. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying...we are also practitioners, Sanora. The thing I’d injected you with wasn’t a mere sedative. It is a severance draught, an art handed down through our blood. Think of it as a temporary but practical drug that dulls perception and feeling towards external magical stimuli.”
I blinked, trying to find purchase. “Severance draught?”
She nodded, as if I should already have known.
“Our ancestors compiled recipes from both herb and rite. My grandfather played a huge role in distilling it. Merton refined them—part chemistry, part ritual. The compound severs the sympathetic thread between two beings and places the subject’s emotions out of the reach of occult connection.
” She waved it off. “Not that you need to know all that.”
Angry tears clouded my vision with the new information. She was right. If Thrax could find me, he’d have done that many hours ago when my mind blanked out in the station. They were trying to break whatever link I might have with him. He must truly think I was on the train.
“For our purposes,” Merton said, dropping on one knee in front of me, “it must render you unfindable to the Soulless Man while you’re with us.
We weren’t even sure you two had some kind of connection or anything that needed to be severed since you’re just basically human.
But we did it in case. Because you never know with the Soulless man. ”
Amelia continued after another glance at her watch. “Right now, if you don’t inject her again to keep the two apart like we’ve been doing, brother, we will join our ancestors sooner than planned, and the Soulless Man will be the one sending us there.”
Before I could completely process everything that was said, Merton stabbed my neck, liquid ejecting through the needle and flooding my veins.
And then, like a marionette with its strings cut, I sank back into unconsciousness.