The words stabbed me clean through. “Why do you keep saying that? That was all you chanted before you left.”
Weeny Man lifted a hand from the steering wheel to run down his face. “I’m sorry. You just have to leave Nimorran.”
I sank back into the seat. “I think that option is out the window. Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“There’s nowhere safer than Thrax’s place.”
“You cannot go there.”
I leaned forward, staring at him in disbelief. “What?”
“You cannot go there, Sanora. You have to stay far away from him until you’re able to go home in a month,” he said with finality.
I almost laughed. Almost. But my throat closed on it, and instead it burned in my chest like acid. “No, I need to go to him,” I said, but he paid me no attention. “Right now.”
“You’ll be safe where we’re going. You just need to stay there and away from him till—”
“And you think he’s not going to know that I’m in Nimorran for one month? This drug in my blood is going to fade in no time and he’ll find me.”
He shook his head. “Do you think it’s only the twins that are practitioners?”
My body jerked back like I’d been stung. The car seemed to tilt for a second, and my stomach lurched with it. He didn’t even flinch at his own slip up. “Are you saying…”
He spared me a glance. “It’s for your own good, I promise you.”
“No!” My voice broke. “That is—you’re not trying to protect me. You’re going to inject me daily to keep me away from him. That is not protection. What you’re doing is…” My brain fumbled, words clashing with the dizziness. “…re-kidnapping. You have to take me—”
“Are you in love with Thrax?” His words cut through my words as he stared at me like he wanted—needed—to be wrong.
I looked away from him, leaning back with no intention of arguing or convincing myself or him on that one. I was hundred percent certain I’d fallen head over heels for the immortal, and I couldn’t find it in me to regret it even though I knew how it’d end.
His hands on the steering wheel started to tremble with my silence. “No, Sanora. Snap out of it. You can’t.”
“It’s done.”
“How—how did you—why—” He stumbled upon his words. “He’s trying to manipulate your feelings and use you.”
I rolled my eyes, even though the motion hurt, making the inside of my head slosh like water. He’d been back barely thirty minutes and for the first time since I met him, Weeny Man was making meangry. Little me would have never thought. “What do you mean by that? You don’t even know him outside the fact that he’s the Soulless Man.”
“And you also don’t!”
I was losing it, my voice rising even as my body begged me to shut down. “Winifred, just take me home. I’m fucking tired.”
He shook his head. “No, Sanora. You’re coming with me.”
“You’re kidnapping me.”
“For your own good.”
“Gods!”
I exhaled loudly, my fingers pinching the bridge of my nose as I tried to steady my breath, but it rattled as though the air didn’t want to stay in my lungs. I was weak and starving, and the drug was still clawing at my system, making every beat of my heart feel like a hammer to the ribs.
Weeny Man had to be kidding me. There was no way he was serious about locking me up for a month while injecting me like some lab experiment. But what if he was serious? He wasn’t a man who joked about things like this.
“At least tell me why you need to lock me up and keep me away from Thrax,” I said, calmer now as I opened my eyes to look at him.
