Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Thrax was the only other person to ever taste my food, and he was the only one not recoiling.
Perhaps he understood. Perhaps he’d been in this position once too.
Oftentimes, people related to things they’d been through.
How long did it take him to perfect his cooking?
Hundred years? Less? It made me wonder if I was the first person to ever taste it, too.
A man like him had a long time to perfect anything.
The quiet filled the kitchen, his fork tapping faintly against the plate, his chewing steady as a metronome.
I just watched, unable to look away. Minutes passed, heavy and oddly soothing.
In that moment, I understood why he always watched me eat.
There was a strange calm in it, a grounding intimacy in the silence.
“Why are you still here?” His voice severed the silence.
I blinked. “What? Watching you eat?”
He set his fork down and fixed me with a flat gaze. “Why haven’t you left? To gather some information and publish? Why are you doing this?”
The air snapped taut. My pulse thrashed, hammering in my ears, taken aback by how quick the mood could change.
Suddenly, sitting across from him felt like being trapped in a cage with the wildest predator, my words the only thing between me and death.
My throat tightened, those same words tangling like knots.
He knew.
He knew that I knew.
My chest pounded.
“It’s not like that. Why would I do that?”
Because you’re researching. You’re the first person to ever see what the Soulless Man truly looks like. Historians would kill for this opportunity.
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Using him as research wasn’t on the list of things I’d ever do. I’d never considered him research material. Not once.
“It’s true you’re the topic for my thesis,” I admitted. “But that’s not why I didn’t say anything.”
His head tilted, the gesture urging me on.
“You asked why I haven’t left. Where would I go? Every place has been bought by a certain person. The train won’t be here for another eight days. I don’t have much choice but to be stuck here with you.”
His throat bobbed up and down with a swallow. He leaned back, clearing his throat. “Is that what you want? To leave?”
“I don’t think I have that choice.”
“If you did?” His jaw tightened. “Would you leave?”
“Do you want me to?”
His voice grated low. “Do you want to leave, Sanora?”
“If I wanted to, would you give me the key to one of the places you bought?”
“Is that what you want?”
I sighed. “No. Maybe I did in the beginning, but not anymore. And it didn’t cross my mind to run when I found out.”
“Why? To—”
“No. Not to get any fuck-ass information out of you.”
“Why then? Out of pity?”
I froze, my tongue thick in my mouth. Pity wasn’t the right word. I couldn’t say it was out of pity, but what would it be then? Love? Curiosity? Why else would I want to stay under the same roof with a cursed immortal with...superpowers? For fun?
None of that sounded sane.
He took my lack of response as an answer and returned to eating.
To break the awkward silence, I asked, “How did you find out that I know?”
It took him a moment. “You were sleep talking that night,” he said finally, still focused on the food. “You asked if I’d really lived for one thousand, four hundred and twenty-three years.”
My jaw nearly dropped. Out of all the questions, why that one? My stomach churned at the thought of those words slipping from my unconscious mouth. “Then why didn’t you say anything yesterday and today?”
“Why do you think?” He still didn’t look up, and I knew for a fact that my food was nothing worth concentrating on.
“Because you were waiting for me to bring it up,” I mumbled a guess.
He gave a single nod. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I thought you’d leave.”
His gaze finally lifted, pinning me in place. “And you don’t want me to leave because?”
My chest constricted as if he’d reached inside and squeezed. Why didn’t I want him to leave? I had no sensible reason; only the restlessness when he was gone and the reckless, electric firework inside me whenever he was near.
I cleared my throat, scrambling for a safer answer. “Because it’d be a shame since you make nicer meals than I do. Why would I want to lose an asset?”
That earned me a chuckle from him, loosening the knot in my chest. I let the air go slowly, trying not to show how much that sound had steadied me.
“Also,” I pressed on, “I have four questions of the day. I haven’t asked you any since you started avoiding me four days ago.”
“I had my reasons.”
My curiosity took root. “You were avoiding me for what reasons?”
Thrax watched me for a long moment, before diverting. “What is your first question?”
I pushed. “That is my first question.”
He closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again. “I wanted to give you space,” he confessed.
I frowned, disbelief twisting through me. For what? “That’s a lie. If you wanted to give me space, you’d have packed your things out as well. You have plenty of places you could stay.”
He nodded slowly, conceding the point. “I know that.” His gaze held mine. “Why do you think I always come back here?”
I blinked, words failing me. But I replied with a slow shake of my head. “I can’t guess.”
“Life,” he answered simply. “There’s life here compared to other places I’ve been.”
The way he said it made the hairs on my arms rise. “Would you mind elaborating—”
“Second question.”
“Would you mind elaborating?” I hit him with the same question stubbornly.
Thrax’s stare was heavy, the dark pool in his eyes drawing me in. Finally, he sighed. “I’m familiar with what warmth feels like. But here has a different kind of warmth.” He paused. “Do you know why?”
My throat tightened. “Because I’m here?”
A small smile tugged at his lips. “Smart.”
The air between us shifted, and my lips parted before I could stop myself. “Are you saying you’ve—”
“Yes, Sanora.” His voice was flat and emotionless. “I’ve never lived with anyone before.”
The admission hit harder than I expected.
What did I think? That he’d blended easily into mortal lives across centuries?
That he’d ever risked staying long enough for someone to notice he wasn’t ageing like them?
Of course not. He would’ve been exposed and probably used for displays and shit. Humankind wasn’t kind.
“It felt lonely here.” The words slipped through the cracks of my restraint as I stared at my hands on the counter. “It still feels lonely whenever you go out.” My breath caught, but I forced the rest out. “I was always waiting for you to show up when I went for my evening walks.”
“I always showed up.”
I looked up. “Seriously?”
He pushed the nearly empty plates aside and leaned forward, resting his hands on the counter.
His face was suddenly closer—close enough that I could see the flecks of shadow in his irises, close enough to have my heart racing.
And then he started naming the places I’d gone, the streets I’d walked, the corners where I’d waited, hoping he’d pop up.
Each detail rolled off his tongue like he’d memorised them for the purpose of revisiting them in his mind.
My lips were parted in shock by the time he stopped talking, dumbfounded that this man had stalked me without me knowing, while I’d been disappointed he didn’t think of me as much as I did of him to come find me like he usually did.
“You’re scary,” I managed to say.
“Not as much as the tale of the Soulless Man. Why would they say I sneak into little girls’ rooms to braid their hair at night if they don’t wash it before sleeping? Again, why would I lurk under beds and lick people’s ankles if they don’t sleep? Very deranged and insulting.”
A startled laugh ripped out of me, my body folding over.
I clutched my stomach as the absurdity hit.
Never in my life did I imagine hearing those words from the Soulless Man himself.
And never did I think he’d be so disgusted with them.
I knew those tales were exaggerated and he didn’t actually do them.
But watching him confirm it was something else.
“Whenever I lied, my nanny would tell me you steal the tongues of liars and string them on trees?”
His brows arched. “That is the most creative one yet.”
When my laughter subsided, he asked, “How did you find out?”
Slowly, I raised a hand and touched the back of my neck, indicating what I’d seen on his own nape. “Here.”
“The mark?”
I nodded.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “How did you know what it means? I don’t think there’s a book out there that does.”
“Well,” I said, lips tugging. “There’s one.
The only one. Written by someone’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
I was lucky enough to read it that night.
Before that, I’d seen it on the archer’s nape, and my brain connected the two of you together.
” I locked eyes with him. “You were the archer, right?”
Slowly, he nodded.
“And that wasn’t a dream?”
He nodded again.
“It happened, like, over one thousand years ago.”
He confirmed again by nodding.
“Before the moon’s wrath.”
Another nod.
Heat crawled across my skin, my pulse hammering. “She was the moon’s offspring you...killed.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
My breath stumbled out raggedly. “Why did something like that come to me as a dream? It happened in reality. And yes, it did feel like I didn’t belong there. Why did I see something that happened those years ago?”
He leaned back, his gaze unreadable. “Maybe too much interaction with me?”
I frowned, but then it would actually make sense like that. It was unsettling but believable. Nimorran itself breathed with magic, and I was sharing space with a man from over a thousand years ago. My dreams bending around him almost made sense. Almost.
“Your third question.” His voice cut through the fog of my thoughts.
My mind suddenly snagged on the day the box of beads had stopped, as though time had paused for it. “That day with the beads, it was you, right? You stopped that box. I read in the book that your kind possessed magic.”
He chuckled softly. “I, in fact, did not stop time. I can’t stop time.”
My brows pulled together. “So…telekinesis?”
He nodded. “I can move things with my mind. My control slipped when you panicked and tried to reach for it. Last question.”
A reckless spark lit in me, and I pointed at the plates, trying and failing to smother my smile. “Not a question. More like a request. Can you lift the plates with your mind? Show me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You can only ask questions.”
I scoffed, my smile dropping. “You’re boring.”
But then, the plates started lifting from the counter.
All of them.
My eyes went wide when they started spinning in the air, forming shapes and rolling like a circus act.
They hovered, aligned in the air before swirling into a slow dance.
Then they circled, spun, stacked, rolled end over end like trained performers.
My hand flew to my mouth, muffling the startled gasp that slipped out.
When I glanced back at Thrax, his eyes were already fixed on me, dark and consuming, watching every shift of awe across my face. He did not move, his expression didn’t even bare a flicker of effort.
The plates formed a circle and rolled again like horizontal wheels suspended mid-air, before lowering one by one back onto the counter. The food, miraculously, was still intact.
My gaze went back to him, going breathless at his closeness.
My throat was dry, but one thought pulsed loud and insistent in my skull, spilling out before I could stop it.
“That was...hot.”