I ignored him, my legs carrying me further away.
By my eighth step, he closed the distance in a blink, his hand clamping onto my shoulder, spinning me back. Both of his handsgripped my shoulders now, hard enough to steady me, his body leaning down until his storm-dark eyes were level with mine.
For a moment, he dropped his head, as though he needed strength to speak the words out without losing himself.
“This has nothing to do with you.” His voice was calmer, almost pleading. “You’re leaving in a few days. You’ll forget everything. It’s nothing serious. I’ll. Handle. It.”
He held my gaze, waiting—needing—for me to agree. But I couldn’t. My eyes blurred, and before I realised, tears slipped down my cheeks, hot against the cold rain. I didn’t even know why they were falling. Maybe because I wasn’t just angry anymore. Maybe because I was tired. Tired of being left in the dark. Tired of feeling like a pawn in something I didn’t understand. Tired of looking at him and realising I knew nothing, yet my life was starting to bend around him.
Even in the dim light, among the water cascading down my face, his eyes caught my tears. And I saw something shift in his expression.
Thrax sighed, his hands dropping from my shoulders as he straightened, dragging his fingers through his wet hair. “Fine,” he admitted, jaw clenching, gaze hard on me. “They’re after you. They want to kill you. Those things today were raised from nothing. That messenger? She was a girl who died in those hills. Her body was resurrected only to kill you that night. Hmm, what else?” He paused, then pressed on. “No, this has never happened to anybody. You’re the first. But when you leave here, they won’t follow you. They can only be created during heavy rainfall and thunder. You’re safe as long as there’s no storm. And even if there is, I’m here. Is that enough now?”
My heart stopped at the rush of words, eyes blinking rapidly against the rain streaming into my eyes as I stared at him, trying to process. I was the first?
“Who sent them? What’s the reason?” My voice broke on the questions I’d been aching to ask.
He shrugged.
He shrugged?
“Don’t give me that shit. I know you know.” I glared at him.
“I can’t tell you. You’re leaving in a few days—”
I took a step back. Then another.
His eyes narrowed, disapproval flashing dark across his face. “Don’t you dare move another step.”
I did.
My mind twisted back on itself. I knew I’d said his behaviour didn’t match that of someone with murderous intent, but what if I was wrong? What if he was working with them? What if this entire thing was a performance, and I was just the bait? Hewasthe Soulless Man. Who was I to believe otherwise?
He raked his fingers through his hair. “What, you’re scared? You think I want to kill you?” A dry, humourless laugh burst out of him. “Sweetheart, if I wanted to kill you, I’d have done itlongago.”
“You could be…catching fun with me,” I breathed, so faint I doubted he heard.
But he did. “Catching fun?”The rain hammered down again, his voice turning raw, furious than the storm itself. “No. Because if this was me ‘catching fun,’ watching you in pain wouldn’t break metwice as hard.”
I froze.
He stepped closer, his words spilling out in ragged bursts. “If it was a game to me, when you come close, it won’t feel like time has started running for me again, I won’t feel life growing on every dead part of me. I feel alive, and I never feel alive, Sanora! But you make me feel alive. You think I’d kill you?”
He dragged a hand down his face, eyes narrowing, his voice hardening. “I was fucking terrified running to you. I thought my chest would rip apart, because if I was even a second late…if I found you gone, that would’ve been the end of everything. So if the storm had to break, it had to break on me first. If you had to die,Nher, let it pass through me first. Do you understand?”
I swallowed, his words pulsing under my skin. Tears blurred with rain, falling hot and fast. My heart started pounding for a whole new reason. “You don’t mean that,” I whispered, though every part of me begged he did.
He stepped closer, towering, forcing me to crane my neck up to meet his stare. His palm pressed warm against my cheek, grounding me. “Believe it or not. It doesn’t change the fact that those are the things I feel.”
My lips trembled. “Do you mean them?”
“Does this look like a man playing with words?”
“Yes or no.”
“Fucking yes, Sanora,” he said gutturally. “I mean them. They’re so deep I don’t know where you end and where I begin.”
My chest clenched, confused and aching. It was unbelievable, really. He was over a thousand years old, and I’d only known him for weeks. Yet feelings had already rooted in me, wild and relentless. It was hard to believe I meant anything to him. He was the Soulless Man, what could a girl like me possibly offer that he hadn’t seen in centuries?
