Chapter 42 #2
“So you’re lying, then.” My throat burned. “It has to do with me. It has to do with the fact that I saw what actually happened.” It has to do with what Winifred said about surrendering my life to break his curse.
“Sanora—”
“Isn’t that why you’ve been stalking me?
” The words came out abruptly, but I pushed on.
“You’ve lived in the same places I’ve lived for the same period, and”—I gestured between us, heat rising in my chest—“now we’re here, living together.
All that is a coincidence? You bought every single place in Nimorran so I’d have nowhere else to go.
Why did you move into this place? You don’t stay with people.
You probably have never even done that, yet it was easy for you to move in and stay with me. With me. Of all people—me?”
He didn’t speak, and the silence was enough. I took that as a sign that I was correct.
He had been stalking me, watching me. He had moved into this place with a purpose. It wasn’t a coincidence. I was dreaming about his past life because breaking his curse had something to do with me.
With me.
His curse could be broken, and it had to do with me.
How?
I stared at him, eyes locked, and knowing he wouldn’t tell me, I turned away and burst into the bedroom, putting on my clothes.
I just needed to breathe. I just needed to think.
My heart hammered against my ribs as my mind burned with questions on why I was connected to the curse, how I was connected to the curse, and what had to be done to break the curse.
..and knowing he knew something but wouldn’t tell me for ‘my own good,’ I couldn’t stay in the same house, staring at him with the knowledge that he was keeping important secrets from me.
“Where are you going?” he asked as I came out of the room.
I jogged down the stairs, not looking at him. “Anywhere but here.”
He caught my wrist as I passed him at the bottom of the stairs, his grip firm but not hurting. “Sanora, no. Let’s talk about this.”
I raised my brows. “And you’ll tell me everything I want to know?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Thought as much.” I wrenched my hand free and strode to the door.
“Sanora. Sanora!”
“I just need a second to think!” I shouted back, slamming the front door shut, the sound echoing painfully in my chest. I walked fast, wanting to get away before he found some way to pull me back into his warm arms. I needed an alone time to process, and with him being around, his scent clinging to all four corners, there was no way I’d succeed.
I walked for hours aimlessly, circling block after block with nothing in my head but the cruel realisation that I was connected to the curse.
When I finally slowed, breathless and still lost in thought, I found myself in front of the library.
It was ridiculous, really. Having nowhere to go except my ex-kidnapper’s workplace.
Sighing, I pushed the door open, the smell of books hitting and comforting me. Amelia was behind the desk, bent over her phone. She looked up as I approached, her eyes rolling back when they met mine.
“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t like seeing you.”
I cleared my throat, trying to crack a joke to ease the ache in my chest. “Why? Because you developed a crush on me?”
She grimaced. “Because you remind me of my only failure.”
I shrugged. “Which was all your fault, by the way.”
“That is why I don’t want to see your face.” She paused, eyeing me. “Unless you’re here to tell me if you found something about the curse.”
I’d die before I let her know. “Keep dreaming.” I walked past her into the library, towards the shelves that held so many lies.
So many lies.
I went to the section that held books on the wrath, about the Soulless Man, about The Crater, about everything that happened in the past. And as I stood there, flicking through every book, some written centuries ago with speculations or in this case ‘account closest to the truth’ of what happened the day the moon’s offspring died, I wanted to rip the pages.
Knowing what I knew now, rage simmered under my skin, growing thicker as I stared at the shelves. The urge to tear out every false word about Thrax was overwhelming.
Everyone had lied. Everyone had spun the narrative. Scholars had written nonsense to satisfy the public. They’d tainted him intentionally, made him the nightmare of everyone, made him out to be even more villainous than Selvanyra’s punishment already painted him.
Actually, all of this was Selvanyra’s fault. She had punished Thrax for what her offspring wanted. Had she even tried to understand what happened?
No, she just went straight to wailing, dumping the blame on him when he was innocent.
I didn’t know the full story—why the offspring died for him, how deep Selvanyra’s grief had been to stop blessing humankind—but I knew it wasn’t right.
Nothing about it was right.
They were all lies.
She had punished him because it was his fault her offspring died, not because he had killed her.
If he had never existed, she would never have loved him enough to die for him.