Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THRAX
Drained, Thrax walked into the house and closed the door. He yanked off his gloves, revealing the thin red line that ran across each palm—two delicate, angry seams, fresh and bright.
Before he left the cave, the cuts had not healed completely. But he had slid the gloves over the raw lines anyway because he could not risk Sanora waking while he was gone and finding the bed empty again.
He used to resort to a single palm, slicing the same line over and over until the skin refused to knit.
He’d watched the wound gape and bleed, let the dark warmth seep into the earth until the soil drank what he offered.
He would wait until his head loosened, until he could not stand, until the dizziness painted the edges of his vision and the world flattened into a placid, grateful nothing.
That was until Sanora confessed what she felt whenever he left the house.
Loneliness.
She had felt lonely without him. It was a first, sure.
And he didn’t want the first person to ever crave his presence lack it because he knew what true loneliness felt like.
He couldn’t bring himself to leave her drowning in the emptiness of his absence.
So he’d shifted his ritual. He started going only when she was asleep, bleeding under the cover of night, hoping she wouldn’t wake until he was back beside her.
And to make up for the entire day he should have been spilling his essence away into the ground, he’d begun tearing both palms open to bleed out faster.
It had been his cycle since the day she was born.
He’d started twenty-three years ago. One month in, one month out.
A month inside Nimorran, offering his blood in the cave.
A month outside, observing from a distance.
He was always watching. The only time he’d broken that pattern, when he’d not gone to Nimorran for four months, was when Sanora got her first boyfriend in college.
Perhaps that was when she started breaking through the walls of his feelings.
But he’d kept his distance despite it, forced himself into the corner and watched the small theatre of her life play out with that boy.
He had not interfered because he told himself he would not sabotage her attempt at figuring out life.
But gods, he’d stalked them. Every smile she gave him was like a knife turned in him, every laugh she shared with him was a reminder that she was capable of giving herself to someone else, no matter how much he tried to ignore it.
He’d told himself it wasn’t his place to intervene, that he had no right.
But four months later, when he saw them arguing in a restaurant—when he saw her finally dunk his smug head into the cake he’d bought for her birthday and called their relationship quit—Thrax had smiled. A true, unrestrained smile.
Because that fool hadn’t even bothered to learn her.
Not the way he had. He’d spent years following and memorising her.
He knew her favourite foods, drinks, her dislikes, what made her laugh, the little habits that shaped her day.
He knew the angle she liked her books when she read.
The details accumulated like moths around a light until he could not deny that her small presence made the thing inside him that had been crusted for centuries bloom.
He did not know when watching her became a need.
And he knew everything about her without exchanging one conversation with her.
But her ‘boyfriend’ couldn’t even tell she didn’t like raisins.
The idiot had the audacity to bring her a cake studded with the one thing she despised on her birthday, despite seeing her countless times pick them out of her cereal, bread, and even rice dishes.
That was the tipping point for her. He never knew her.
Thrax hadn’t planned on developing a weakness for her.
Not until after her second year in college, at least. But somewhere in the endless hours of stalking and borrowing life from her, he’d slipped.
She became the only light that bled colour into his otherwise grey existence.
Near her, he felt whole and human—something he hadn’t believed possible for him anymore.
Then came her second boyfriend. He’d told himself again to endure it.
To let her live her life, to let her stay in control.
But when he’d caught him cheating—cheating on Sanora—the control he’d clung to for centuries had flung out of the damn window.
He’d cheated on her? Unforgivable. He didn’t kill him, no.
He made him mad. He’d mind-controlled him at odd hours, suffocating him and making him gasp for air whenever he was with his friends, or when he was having sex with someone.
Until he actually believed an evil spirit was tormenting him.
But because the fucker’s strange attitude was affecting Sanora, Thrax had put him out of his misery and left him instruction notes, and he’d confessed his sins to her with tears, begging her on both knees.
That was the last person she dated because it had freaked her out of her mind. She’d pulled back from relationships right then, pouring her time into her education. And Thrax—fool that he was—had never been prouder for that fantastic decision.
Fast forward to some months ago, when she bought the train ticket to Nimorran.
Thrax had been ecstatic and worried all at once.
Worried because he didn’t want her to find out about her fate at all.
Ecstatic because he thought it wouldn’t be so bad to be selfish for once and study her from up close.
In a small town. So he’d come to Nimorran a month ahead, waiting for her.
After Sanora had wandered straight into death’s mouth twice, he’d had no choice but to intervene. He’d moved in with her to keep an eye on her. He hadn’t planned to do that, she’d forced his hand.
And he knew he’d made the right decision when he found out that Nimorran’s forces were planning to eat her up.
They’d anticipated that he’d bring her there himself and coerce her into handing him her soul, which would have given them their chance to strike her down before he could claim it. But since he had no plan of bringing her, The Crater had called to her and been trying to pull her to her death.
All so she wouldn’t be able to give Thrax her soul.
All so she’d die before she thought about handing it to him.
Selvanyra’s cruel handiwork. The goddess didn’t mind killing her offspring's soul over and over if it meant his endless torment continued. She wanted Sanora destroyed before she could even think about surrendering to him
Defying the universe in her tricky way.
He pieced everything together some days after Sanora came to Nimorran, and he’d spent an hour laughing because oh, wasn’t Selvanyra cruelly creative?
The creak of a door opening upstairs yanked him out of his thoughts, followed by light footsteps.
Sanora.
She stepped out of her room, adjusting the strap of her black nightie, her messy bun making her look half-wild, half-innocent.
She was fanning herself, skin flushed from heat, as she made her way to his room.
She paused, though, sensing him below. Then she backed a walk to the landing, stilling when her eyes found him.
He believed she’d woken up to change into a lighter wear because that wasn’t what she went to bed with. And the fact that she’d been fanning herself meant she’d been hot in his room.
Nimorran’s weird weather.
“You’re back,” she murmured, voice husky with sleep.
She started down the steps, the glow from the living room catching her frame. He drank her in—the cascade of strands that escaped her bun, the dazed glimmer in her eyes, the softness of her lips, the delicate line of her throat...until his gaze caught on the scar above her shoulder.
His eyes darkened at the memory of the day it had happened.
He’d been in Nimorran that time, scheduled to leave in a week.
When he got back and found out about the incident from the neighbouring whispers—and the fact that the bastard who had done it had run away before he could be arrested—he’d hunted him by himself.
Thrax never had the chance to bloody his hands because the man didn’t last long. He wouldn’t say he didn’t kill him either. But the scum had died two days later from a deadly disease that had been left untreated.
It was the first time Thrax was seeing the scar up close.
Sanora didn’t like showing it. She preferred clothes that hid it, and that made him want to map it with his thumbs the way someone marks a possession.
The other times he’d seen the scar were from afar, when she’d stroll past her room window briefly in strapless tops.
She stepped down fully and stopped in front of him, reaching out and taking both his palms in her hands. The contact did what nothing else could do: it ignited him.
Her fingers brushing the fresh skin sent a thrill slamming through him so intense he clenched his teeth because he could not let himself jerk his hands away from her grip.
Whenever she touched him unexpectedly like that, especially when his body was still recovering from blood loss, it would feel as though his body was trying to tear itself apart just from her skin against his. It was agony and ecstasy in one breath.
She rubbed her thumbs along the line of wound on his palms. “You’re not going to tell me what you always sneak out to do?” she whispered, curious and affectionate.
He could not lie to her. Couldn’t even say a word. If he opened his mouth to speak in this moment when his guards were down and he was vulnerable and at mercy to her touch, he might start spilling all that he’d kept a secret.
Instead, he stared at her for a long moment before freeing his hands and cupping her face. He lifted her head gently so the green in her eyes met his. He always needed the simple geometry of her face to remind himself he was still tethered to something human.
“I’m doing okay,” he said, voice dry but steady for her sake. Then he asked, “For how long have you been awake?”
“Maybe ten minutes. Not long.” She wrapped a hand around his wrist. “Come to bed with me.”
Goddamn.
The single sentence hammered through him with more force than necessary, and she didn’t know.
She was oblivious to the power she had over him. And that ignorance maddened him more than anything.
“I have to shower first,” he muttered, leaned down, and pressed a quick, possessive peck to her lips.
He swept her hair back, fingers lingering longer than necessary, forcing himself to take one last look at her before turning away.
He had to climb the stairs. He had to put distance between them before he did something unamendable like pushing her against the wall just to kiss and taste the desperate gasps she’d make, or fucking her hard enough that she wouldn’t even have the strength to beg him to stop.
Both images haunted him as he mounted each step, and he wanted both.
Fuck, he wanted everything. He wanted her on the couch, against the wall, on the counter, against the door, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, and in every corner possible.
The need was insane—that was all he could think about since he crossed the line he drew for himself and ate her out like the starved monster that he was.
Her gaze seared into his back as warmth started heading south.
He clenched his teeth to stop himself from turning around, regretting that he’d not drained more of his blood in the cave earlier—if only he had bled until nothing remained, perhaps blood wouldn’t be rushing to his cock, perhaps he wouldn’t be walking to the bathroom as it throbbed stiffly from the wild, obscene thoughts tormenting him.
He was going to jerk himself off like he’d done multiple times, that was for sure. He was breaking apart under the weight of his own need, and he knew he was a breath away from losing control.
He could feel it in his bones.
And he needed her to stop him.
He badly needed her to hold him back from claiming her more than he already did.
Because if she didn’t—if she kept looking at him like he was the air she needed to breathe—then the carnation he dreaded would come, and he would drag her into ruin with him.
And gods help them both, he wanted it.
Giving up on fighting himself for the moment, he paused on the steps before he turned.
Her eyes were waiting and expectant, and he could sense her thoughts like they were his own. She wanted to come with him.
This woman didn’t know it, but she was oxygen in a world where he had only ever known suffocation.
She was his, even if it was only temporary. He would cherish the three weeks he got to be close to her. He would drain every drop of her into him until it was enough to keep him breathing for the next lifetime of torment he was cursed to endure.
Thrax’s voice came out low and rougher than he expected. “Come and undress me, Nher.”
Immediately, her face lit up—so bright it tore his chest apart—and then she was moving in eagerness, skipping up the stairs to him. With his pulse thundering in his ears, his restraint snapped another thread as he watched her radiate life and everything he had been empty of for centuries.
Sanora followed him into the bathroom, and he shut the door after her.