Chapter 43 #2
I dropped my gaze to my palm, picking at nothing on my nail bed. “Well, I don’t know anymore.”
Satisfaction dripped from her voice. “So there’s something going on.”
“A little.” A lot.
“And he’s the reason why you’ve been ‘surviving’ until now.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Yes.”
“So what happened? Has he left? Did you two break up?”
I drew in a shaky breath. “We never dated. It’s...it’s complicated.”
“Hmm. I love complications.” She teased the word so warmly it made me laugh and made me want to spill everything.
It had been hard keeping my relationship with Thrax to myself.
With the kind of attention and relentless love he gave me, I sometimes felt like I might burst if I didn’t tell someone.
I was always so excited, so desperate to pour all that I felt for him onto someone’s shoulder.
But there had been no one. I hadn’t told my mother before because I thought I was leaving him very soon, but at the moment, his secrets and my feelings were tangling heavily in my chest.
“I think I love him,” I whispered, letting the words tumble out.
My mother’s tone softened. “Oh, my dear.”
“I know, I know. I’m not supposed to.” I covered my face with my palm, muffling my voice. “It should have never happened.”
A love between an immortal and a mortal? The most tragic thing I’d ever heard. If this was a movie, I’d save myself the heartache and not watch it.
“Why? Doesn’t he love you back?”
I would’ve said without doubt, he sure as fuck loves me, if she had asked me this the day before yesterday.
But now—knowing he’d moved in with me, that he’d been watching me all my life because I was the key to breaking his immortality curse—I wasn’t sure anymore.
Everything felt rehearsed. Like none of this would’ve happened if I wasn’t his chance at freedom.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“So did you leave?”
“Kind of. Just for a little while—”
A knock on the front door cut me off. My head snapped up, and I lowered my hand from my face, waiting for the person behind it to say something or knock again so I’d know I hadn’t imagined it.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hold on, Mother.”
I padded to the door and twisted the knob. Peering through the little crack I allowed, I saw no one. Frowning, I pulled it open fully—still no one on the porch.
I might have dismissed it as my ears playing tricks, but then my gaze fell. A box sat neatly at my feet, the same one he’d brought last night’s, only in a different colour.
My pulse stumbled.
Stepping past it, I hurried down the four porch steps, scanning the neighbourhood, but there was no trace of him.
Why was he leaving meals and disappearing? At this point, was he giving me space or was I the one giving him space?
Sighing, I walked back inside, carrying the food box with me. The food came in just when I was hungry, and it made me feel very slow—like Amelia had claimed—that I actually thought living away from him meant no more of his meals. I should have known better. Thrax never let me go hungry.
“What was that?” Mother’s voice floated from my phone as I set the box on the counter. I tapped the loudspeaker and dropped the phone beside it.
“Food,” I said. “He sent it.”
Her swooning sound made me roll my eyes, though I bit back a smile tugging at my lips.
“Guess you don’t have to worry about that one now,” she said eventually. I started unpacking the box, one container at a time.
“Yeah, but he wasn’t here.” I frowned as I reached the last dish, noticing a folded piece of paper beneath it.
“Weren’t you the one who needed space?”
I pulled the paper free. “Yeah, but I didn’t tell him to take it personal. You’d think I was the one giving him space.”
Her loud laugh echoed through my empty kitchen as I carefully peeled the paper open, my chest seizing at the sight. Every inch of it was covered in his handwriting.
He’d sent a letter.
“I’ll call you back, Mother.” My knees weakened, so I dropped onto the stool, eyes locked on the page.
Something shuffled in her background. “Yeah, I have to go too. Take care. Love you. Bye.”
She didn’t give me a chance to respond before the line went dead.
Swallowing, I forced myself to steady the thudding in my chest before I began reading his words.
I’ve endured centuries of silence, of emptiness, of just living. And still, nothing terrified me...until you. Until I realised the only thing that could truly come close to killing me...is losing you.
I looked up from the letter to suck in a deep breath to calm my racing heart before continuing.
Long before I was born, Selvanyra began blessing humans.
She gave them fragments of her power — strength, healing, longevity and so on — weaving pieces of herself into their blood.
But my family was different. She poured too much of herself into us.
Our veins held more of her essence than any mortal body could bear, and our bodies couldn’t sustain the divine spark.
What was meant to be a blessing turned into something else entirely: a sickness woven into our blood.
For centuries, we carried more of her power than we were ever meant to. At twenty-two, without fail, the blood flowing in our veins would grow thick, and every son and daughter of our house would weaken.
Generations passed, and with each one, the pattern repeated. The sickness was called Silvering of the Blood. It slowed the heart, clouded the mind, and then hardened inside us until nothing could pass through. Our lungs would strain, our hearts would stop, and our bodies would turn lifeless.
Generations of mine begged Selvanyra to cleanse it, but to strip the sickness away would mean stripping the magic too, leaving my bloodline powerless.
And she would not undo her own precious gift.
Her silence sealed our fate, and for years, every child of my house lived with the knowledge that their last breath would come on the cusp of twenty-two. No matter how much strength, no matter how much healing we carried, death was the one thing we could not escape.
I turned the piece of paper around, searching for more, desperate to know what came next. But the back was blank.
With my chest thudding, I shot to my feet and rushed to the door, half-certain I’d find him there waiting.
He wasn’t.
How could he begin his story and stop halfway?
I went back inside, shutting the door with more force than I intended. Every step across the kitchen floor carried the urgent need to storm out, to find him and demand the rest. But I didn’t. Something inside told me that he would send another letter, just like he’d sent this one.
Maybe he couldn’t say it to my face. Maybe this ink on paper was the only way he knew how to talk about himself. And as badly as I wanted to run to him, I knew it wasn’t for the best.
If by chance the next meal didn’t come with another letter, I was bolting straight to him.
Silvering of the Blood.
Again, something I’d never read about because it wasn’t recorded anywhere. Understandable. Thrax was the only one who knew; it belonged to his bloodline.
The sickness killed them at twenty-two.
The words screamed through my head, rattling every part of me.
Did that mean he’d been lying on the cave floor, dead, when he was twenty-two?
Wait.
I froze mid-step, puzzle pieces tumbling into place.
The five stone monuments I’d seen in the dream the other day.
They were his family. They had all died at twenty-two.
And he had buried them.
My eyes widened as my hand flew to my mouth, tears rushing forward.
He had watched everyone in his household die. Those stone stacks were for them.
And in the cave...he had died from the sickness too.
The moon’s offspring had known about the disease killing him before she even rushed into the cave.
Had she performed the ritual for him? To take the sickness away?
My knees buckled with the new knowledge, and I dropped into a crouch, shoving my fingers through my hair, pulling until strands tore at my scalp.
My chest heaved, as if his pain had reached across time and lodged itself inside me.