Nova

Chapter 50

CHAPTER FIFTY

SANORA

Cold air.

That was the first thing I felt, needling across my skin, sliding into my bones like icy fingers.

Incoherent chanting.

That was the only thing I could hear, low and rhythmic, like waves pounding a cliff over and over again.

I parted my lips and dragged in a shaky breath. The cold burned down my throat, making me shudder as I fought to open my eyes. Even before my eyelids fluttered, I could feel the light on my face, but I hadn’t expected it to be moonlight.

The full moon stared down at me, white and nearly blinding.

I lay flat on my back, and above me, the sky stretched like black velvet, the moon a single, pale coin.

I could hear the whispering and the whoosh of trees at the edge of the clearing.

But where I lay, there were no branches overhead, no cover.

The trees stood back as if this space had been cut out just for this.

My heart stumbled, then began to race.

Shards of memory pierced through the fog: the library, the smoke, the text message.

My blood boiled.

Winifred.

The persistent chanting brought me back into the present.

My eyes darted around.

I was on a flat, cold slab of steel. Ropes bit into my skin. I could feel one around my calves, another cinched tight around my torso, and a third compressing my chest.

I was bound like an animal on an altar.

I turned my head as I fought the ropes, searching for the source of the voices.

To my left, figures stood in a small circle, hands linked, heads bowed, murmuring what I didn’t understand. They were tall and faceless in red cult robes, their hoods casting shadows over their faces.

Fire lanterns burned wildly in a rough ring far around me, their orange glow clashing with the silver-blue of the moon.

I bucked against the ropes, knowing it was useless but doing it anyway. The steel was unyielding beneath me, the cords digging into my skin as I thrashed.

My breath came fast and hot against the cold.

Then I barked.

“Hey!”

No reaction.

“Hey, you stupid fuckers!” My throat scraped raw as I tried again, twisting my arms, trying to wiggle them out.

They didn’t even twitch. The chanting rolled on, steady and unbroken, like I wasn’t there at all.

I let my head fall back, panting, my chest heaving as I tried to think again.

And the thought of him came crashing in.

Thrax.

Back then, I’d not felt any fear, so he couldn’t have picked up on the fact that I was in danger. Even if he had, he would have asked me what was wrong, not told me to run.

Fear lodged itself in my throat.

Did something happen to him?

That had to be the reason he wasn’t here. He always knew where I was. Always—

Unless they’d severed the link.

“Fuck,” I hissed.

Tears burned behind my eyes at the thought of him tearing through the town in search of me while I lay here like an offering. Anger surged up right behind it, white-hot and searing, burning through my veins.

“Hey, bastards!” I thrashed against the ropes, my voice ripping my throat raw. “Look at me!” My muscles strained, wrists twisting, heels digging into the steel. “LOOK AT ME!”

I continued my tantrum, doing everything I could to get to them.

But it wasn’t until they were done chanting did they break their circle.

And even then, they did not pay me any attention.

Five of the figures bent and each retrieved a long white cloth from the basket they’d been chanting over.

Without looking at me, they spread out in a larger circle around me, each holding an edge of the cloth so it connected them like a spider web.

Only one figure stayed empty-handed. He stepped forward, his hood still hiding his face. Something in the way he moved told me he was the centre of this.

I squinted, trying to make out who he was through the shadow casting down on his face.

“Who the fuck are you?” My voice cracked. “Where is this place? Where’s Winifred?”

He bowed his head slightly, then raised his hands. In a slow way that grated on my nerves, he pulled back his hood.

“I’m right here.”

Fucking bastard.

My teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached, a pulse of pain shivering through my skull.

My nails cut into my palms as I glared at his figure standing beside where I lay strapped to the steel.

It was jarring to see him upright. The last time I’d seen Winifred, he’d been broken, body confined to a wheelchair.

I’d been certain it would be months before he stood again. Months before he could even walk.

And yet here he was.

Now I regretted calling Thrax’s name that day, stopping him from doing more than breaking his bones.

“What is this? What are you up to? Why am I here, Winifred? Answer me!”

He didn’t.

He only circled me like a patient predator, his footsteps muffled against the ground. He stopped on my other side, his face turned upwards. The full moon hung high and round above us like an unblinking eye, its pale light spilling down the clearing in silver sheets.

But this moon wasn’t just full. Its light had a strange bright clarity. It glimmered almost white-blue, casting cold fires across Winifred’s face as he dropped his gaze back to me.

“It’s full moon. But this isn’t just any full moon,” he murmured, voice thick. “It’s a cosmic window, Sanora. Her light tonight reaches through the veil, light she hasn’t given in centuries but blessed us with tonight.”

“I don’t give a fuck. What does that have to do with me?”

“You see, Sanora…” Winifred stepped closer, palms flat on the steel slab, his breath ghosting across my face as he leaned in. “I wouldn’t be doing this if you’d just listened to me. Know that I tried every possible thing in my power to keep you alive.”

Saliva gathered hot in my mouth, and without thinking, I spat it at him, satisfied as it landed close to his mouth.

“Release me and go fuck yourself. I didn’t ask for your help.

I know you’re doing this solely to save face.

You just don’t want to fuck up the mission your bloodline has been carrying for centuries. ”

“I see. He told you all about that,” Winifred drawled, wiping his sleeve across his face.

“Now you know. I can’t fail the moon.” His eyes flicked upwards again to that white-blue disc above us.

“That is why we’re ending it under her watch, so she can grant you an easy passing and bless our work tonight. ”

I frowned, my heartbeat pounding against my ribs so hard it felt like it might burst through. “What work?”

“Giving you back to the one who made you.”

I froze. “You mean killing me?”

He nodded once. “I don’t have any other choice—”

“Are you sick? Thrax doesn’t even want the soul. If you watched him closely instead of hating on him for nothing, you’d know.”

“Did he tell you he doesn’t want it?” Winifred’s expression didn’t shift to relief, instead his features twisted further, his anger knotting deeper, dragging his face into an older, uglier mask.

“I think it’s quite obvious.”

“He’s manipulating—”

I screamed.

The sound tore up my throat like shattered glass, raw and uncontained. Birds hidden in the trees above burst into flight, scattering into the night sky. My heels dug into the slab beneath me, scraping metal as my body arched.

When my voice finally cracked and fell, I glared at him through heaving breaths. “I don’t want to hear that shit from your mouth when you barely even know him. He’s not manipulating me. He never had.”

“Oh, really? You think you know him? You don’t know anything about him, Sanora.”

I shook my head, recalling the nights we’d spent together, nights when he’d slowly tell me about himself, piece by piece, one story after another.

We were getting there. I was getting to know all of him.

He was letting me into his life. He’d told me the things he’d done all these centuries to keep himself busy, even for a while. He’d told me.

“I guarantee that I know him more than you do.”

“And your conclusion is that he’s going to let his only chance at becoming mortal again slip away from his grasp?”

“If the curse ends with your death, then let me suffer forever...just don’t leave me.”

He’d said that, and I’d seen in his eyes how much he meant those words.

Tears blurred my vision. “Maybe if you weren’t blind, you’d see it too.”

Winifred’s shoulders sagged as he moved back, circling to my other side.

“Everyone standing here is here because they care for you. They walked for twelve days through dangerous and deadly paths. For you. We walked through a cursed and deadly forest for you. Know that this was a backup plan, Sanora. I never meant to let you die at all.”

Cold settled in my stomach as realisation clicked into place. “You disappeared from Nimorran for weeks because you went to get them?”

He shook his head slowly. “Oh, no.” He gestured to the hooded figures surrounding me, their hands connected with strips of cloth.

“I went to look for them. I went out of Nimorran to gather them, to prepare them in case there was a need for this option. They’re all of my blood.

Distant blood, but still blood. When that cursed bastard broke my bones—bones that will never completely heal—I knew then I had to call them to Nimorran.

You were hopeless. You fell in love with him. ”

I let my head drop back against the steel, the chill of it biting my scalp. My breath rattled as I closed my eyes. “Thrax was never going to let me give him my soul, you slow fucker.”

“Okay. What about you then? One day, you’ll turn around and give it to him, no?”

I opened my eyes, forcing my neck to turn, pinning him with my stare. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how.”

His brow furrowed. “He didn’t tell you about the cave?”

My body tensed automatically. “The cave? That is where—”

Winifred’s voice rose sharply, cutting me off. “Let’s start. It’s almost time.”

“Hey, Winifred!”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he strode to the basket where the cloths had been taken from and drew out a knife, its blade catching the moonlight, glinting.

I flicked my eyes between him and the blade, my heart battering against my chest.

I swallowed hard. “Hey...”

He came closer, raising the knife to eye level, its steel reflecting both the moonlight and the firelight of the lanterns.

“Winifred.”

But instead of aiming it at my body, he slid it under the rope across my torso, pressing the hilt against my stomach to hold it in. The movement forced a shuddered breath from my lungs as the rope bit tighter into my ribs. I glared up at him because glaring was all I could do.

Winifred turned away, walking to one of the lanterns and lifting it with care. Flames swayed within, throwing shadows like writhing hands across the grounds. I frowned, confusion warring with dread.

What did he want with the fire? He sure as fuck wasn’t going to—

The steel.

Was he...was he—

He bent down.

—going to put the fire under me?

For a heartbeat my body went still, shock rooting me in place. But then the heat licked up from beneath, slow and creeping, and I snapped.

I thrashed against the ropes, the movement forcing the knife’s edge to nick my skin, blood welling in small, hot beads where it bit into me. But I didn’t care. I fought harder, teeth bared, tears rising and blurring the edges of everything.

When Winifred straightened, he calmly walked and set the lantern back in its place.

“Hey, hey. Winifred. Untie me now! This is insanity.”

He only pulled the hood of his robe over his head, his voice disturbingly calm. “It’s only a small fire. It’ll take about thirty minutes for you to start feeling it properly.”

Oh, thank you. As if that would ease the terror gnawing at my bones.

Amidst my screaming, Winifred ignored me, stepping into his space within the circle and taking up the strips of cloth on either side of him, sealing the chain.

My chest caved as I watched them all tilt their heads back to the sky, the night filling with incoherent words, their chants rising and curling into the trees.

I kept screaming. My voice went ragged, my bones weak. Still I fought, even as the knife dug deeper, even as my skin grew warmer over the fire.

Their voices rose, ancient syllables echoing like ghosts across the clearing, into the night, preparing me.

Preparing me for my death.