Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
SANORA
I woke up with my face streaked with tears, sitting up in bed with muscles weak from last night’s activity. My chest rose and fell in uneven breaths, the sheets twisted and hot beneath me.
I stared out the window at the gloomy morning, watching clouds roll across the sky. My mind was sluggish, heavy and struggling to process what I had just witnessed.
Thrax wasn’t in bed. The space beside me was empty. I strained my ears but heard no sign of him anywhere. There were no footsteps downstairs, no water running in the bathroom. The house was very silent, and I was grateful for it. I needed a little space and quiet to make sense of things.
My body was weak, but I forced myself to move. My legs trembled, and I wobbled when I tried to stand, nearly sinking back into the mattress.
I closed my eyes, steadying myself, my whole being sore from the sex the night before. Even the memory of it made my thighs ache, my skin hypersensitive as though he had branded me everywhere. After a few deep breaths, I pushed forward, stumbling—half walking, half lurching—into the bathroom.
Standing in front of the mirror, I shoved my hair back from my face, touching the ears that had been bleeding in the dream. I eased out a breath when I found no trace of crimson, only my reflection stared back at me, pale, swollen and haunted.
My physical body wasn’t in that timeline, yet I’d been affected by the wail.
I hadn’t even lasted five minutes under her wrath, and history recorded that it went on for seven days. Seven days of destruction, killing nearly everything and everyone.
A tremor ran through me, and my breath shuddered out as I gripped the sink, knuckles whitening, too weak to hold myself upright without it.
Thrax had not killed her. At least not directly.
She had begged him to. She had sacrificed her life to save him.
Hold on.
She had sacrificed her life to save him?
The thought looped in my mind, hammering.
It didn’t make sense. She was the offspring of the moon, the god who used to bless her creation with magic.
If she wanted to save Thrax from death, why would it cost her life?
Why would her hair and dress turn black, as though she had absorbed something darker than death from his body?
There had to be more to it, more to why she gave herself up for him.
Maybe they were truly lovers.
The idea made my stomach twist. Thrax had lived for over a millennium with people who believed he was a murderer, but the real tragedy was that someone had loved him enough to die for him.
She was content dying in his place.
He had not killed her, yet the moon had seen it differently, interpreted it as his sin.
I splashed cold water on my face, trying to quiet the racing thoughts, then dried myself off. After pulling myself together, I returned to the bedroom just as my phone dinged on the bedside table.
I had clearly dropped my phone along with my bag in the sitting room last night. But it didn’t surprise me that it was here.
I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed. Three text messages lit up the screen, all from the same number. My thumbs hovered before I tapped, and from the first message, I knew who it was.
Unknown
You probably know the basic things
about him, so I’m going to get straight
to the point. You might think we know a
lot about him, but we don’t.
She had sent it last night. The last message, sent only minutes ago, read:
Unknown
Not even a thank you?
I exhaled, more of a sigh than anything, and clicked the second message. Attached was a three-page PDF.
Three pages?
That was it? She had to be kidding me. She hadn’t even attached photos of evidence like I thought she would. No documents. No snapshots. Just words she’d typed out herself. And most of them were things I already knew—or could piece together if I thought hard enough.
Still, I scrolled, read, skimmed, and then froze at one paragraph.
Did you know he’s the founder of Verlnic Ju University?
The one in the city. Yup, that university.
The one that’s been standing for over two hundred years.
It’s his. He’s sat on fortunes that could buy out nations, and yet he lives like some quiet recluse, pretending he’s no one, when in reality he’s been pulling strings and has enough money to go around for ten generations to come.
The words blurred as I stared too long, my stomach knotting.
Verlnic Ju had always felt…untouchable. Prestigious.
Powerful. It was an ancient university, the kind of place you only gossiped about if you weren’t worthy.
It was the university of every child’s dream.
Mine, too, but I heard it was hard to get into.
And she was saying he had built it? Two hundred years ago?
I scrolled further, but the rest were scattered notes on how his wealth was endless, though he hid it; he owned popular places, then erased himself, passing them to trustees so the world wouldn’t see how he never aged.
At the end, Amelia wrote that after they found him two years ago, they began tracking back his activities—where he had lived, places he’d been.
The towns and cities were listed neatly beneath. I skimmed them, my heart pounding harder with each name. At first, it felt harmless. Thrax had already told me these things, and I knew we’d lived in the same places before.
But what made my jaw drop wasn’t the places.
It was the dates. The years. The exact months he had moved.
They lined up perfectly with mine.
The same month my mother and I had relocated was the same month he moved, and the next cities we had lived in were the next cities he’d lived in. Every single one.
A chill prickled across my skin.
What was happening?
Could this really be a coincidence?
Was it just chance that he had lived in every city I had, for the same lengths of time, and relocated at the same time we had? Was it coincidence that he’d moved in with me after purchasing every house in Nimorran?
Did he know who I was before I came here?
The sharp click of the front door opening cut through my spiralling thoughts.
My head snapped up. I dropped the phone, rising to my feet. My pulse hammered as I moved to the door, letting in a deep breath before I opened and walked out.
I stopped at the top of the landing, staring down.
He stood at the first step, one hand on the railing, about to climb. His head lifted, his gaze colliding with mine. And then he stopped.
So did I.
Before he could say anything, I clenched my fists, dragging strength from somewhere deep inside me. My nails bit into my palms, his eyes skimming over me as he stood there in his coat and gloves, making me wonder if he was coming back from the cave.
He took one step up the stairs. “What’s wrong—”
“You…” I stepped back, needing to say it while he was far away enough, where his hands couldn’t touch and distract me. “You didn’t kill her.”
Thrax froze, his expression unreadable, before a small shake of his head betrayed that he knew what I was talking about but didn’t want to admit it. “You don’t look good. Let’s—”
“You…” I drew in a long breath, my tone firmer. “You didn’t kill her.”
He exhaled. “What did you dream about?”
“That day,” I said quietly. “The day it happened.”
He nodded once, running a gloved hand through his hair, sending a few strands falling back over his forehead. “And your conclusion is that I didn’t kill her?”
I frowned. “It was obvious,” I said, remembering the dream, the way she had begged him to drive the pin through her. “Besides, you were unconscious when she started the ritual...you couldn’t have stopped her—”
“I killed her, Sanora. I think that was quite obvious.”
I blinked at him, confused. “It wasn’t your fault. Why are you saying all this?”
He let out a short laugh. “It was my fault. She died because of me.”
“That doesn’t equal you killing her.” I shook my head, staring at him, wondering if he’d actually carried that guilty burden all along, making himself believe he was a monster who killed her. He hadn’t killed her, yet he was cursed and made a bad omen, everything evil in one man.
Thrax took another step up towards me, the wood creaking under his foot. Instinctively, I stepped back, hand lifting between us.
“Why am I seeing all these dreams?” I wasn’t buying his convenient explanation about my dreams bending around him because he was near. There was more. I couldn’t be seeing something from over a thousand years ago just because we were under the same roof.
“Because I’m—”
“No, Thrax.” My voice rose, echoing against the walls. “Don’t give me that. There’s something you aren’t telling me.”
“That’s because you don’t need to know.”
I went still for a heartbeat, staring. “So there really is something you’re hiding.”
He closed his eyes, drawing in a breath. “Sanora—”
“Why am I dreaming about your past life, Thrax? Why did I see all that?”
His jaw clenched, and from that alone, I knew he wouldn’t tell me.
I let out a shuddering breath and began to pace the landing, fingers raking through my hair. Tugging at it was like flicking a switch, a stupid assumption snapping into place. “Is it...can your curse be broken?”
His brows drew together sharply, the first crack in his mask. “Who told you that?”
“Can it be broken, Thrax?”
Typical Thrax—he didn’t respond. But his silence and the tick in his jaw confirmed I was right.
I nodded slowly, feeling the truth slide into me as I slowly digested it. “How?” My voice came out low. “How can it be broken?”
“Drop that subject. You shouldn’t even be thinking about it.”
“Does it have to do with the fact that I’m seeing the dream?”
“No. It has nothing to do with you at all.”
“You keep lying.”
His gloved fingers pushed through his hair again, dragging it back. “Believe that everything I say is for your own good.”