If eyes could kill, mine would have burned her alive on the spot. “Don’t you have nothing better to do?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” She fished a key from her pocket and dangled it in front of my face, a smile splitting her lips so wide it looked painful. “But thebestthing just happened to me.” She could’ve squealed like a child. “For this, I’m going to give you a pass and start trying my hardest to tolerate you more. Stand up.”
My brows knitted as my gaze darted between the key and her face, not moving an inch. “What is this about?”
“Where do you plan on going when you leave here? Back to where you don’t want to go?”
“And how do you know that for sure?”
“Like I said, not everyone is as slow as you. Your eyes are bloodshot, you’ve been here for almost six hours, and…” she shook the key slightly, “…the Soulless Man just swung by to give me this.”
I stared at her smiling face, ignoring the way my heart thudded at the sound of his name.
Amelia’s wide grin faltered as she dropped her hand. “Look, I don’t know whatever is going on between you two. But this is the real first time Italkedto the Soulless Man—we’re not going to speak on how I nearly peed in my panties—and he requested my assistance in something. Sanora, my body will rot in my grave before I fail to deliver exactly what he wants.” She sat opposite me, her voice lowering, like she was coaxing a child. “I spoke to the Soulless Man. Do you know how big that is? You might not, considering you speak to him every day. But this is big for me. For Merton. For my bloodline. The life my ancestors lived revolved around him. He was a god to them, one they worshipped throughout their lifetime. And not only did my twin and I find him, I also talked to him! Italkedtohim, Sanora. And he needsmyhelp.”
The happiness radiating off her was almost infectious. It thrummed in my blood even as my stomach knotted. I understood her. Her reaction was valid considering their history with Thrax.
But Thrax had been here. Was he gone?
“Why did he give you a key?” I asked.
“Why do you think?”
Because he wanted me to have somewhere to stay.
I remembered telling him that even if I wanted to leave the house and stay somewhere he wasn’t, I couldn’t. He’d bought every empty accommodation, and I had no choice but to be stuck with him.
Was this him giving me a key so I’d have somewhere to stay for a while even if it wasn’t with him?
“You don’t want to go back to him yet and you have nowhere to stay. If I don’t pull his request through, my butt will be kicked out to the curb when I meet them in the afterlife. So stand up.”
She rose, stretching out her arm to pull me up with her.
“I’ll show you the place. Do you need anything else from me? Like a massage? Food? Should I crack you a joke?”
I deliberately scrunched my face, yanking my hand free from her grip. “Don’t even dare.”
I could already imagine the unhinged, morbid jokes falling out of her mouth.
“Okay, great. Now, let me show you your new place.”
When Amelia told me she was taking me to the place Thrax had handed her the keys for, I’d assumed it would be one of the houses he’d rented. Well, yes, it was. But I’d expected cobwebs, stale air, and dust settling like a second skin over everything.
Instead, the place felt...lived in. The floors were warm under my feet, the rooms scrubbed spotless, not a speck of dust in sight. My clothes—and his—had already been arranged neatly in the wardrobe. My things sat in the bathroom as though they’d always been there. Even the bed had been made for me.
What made me pause, then smile despite myself, was the amount of clothes he’d brought. He’d sectioned them into six parts—morning and night, each neatly folded like I was a child being packed for school. Was he giving me three days, maximum, to process? He’d even separated my underwear: panties in one pile, bras in another.
Like a girl obsessed, I’d picked up one of his shirts—the one I usually used to sleep in—and pressed it to my face, inhaling the scent clinging to the fabric.
It was true that I’d wanted to leave this place the moment I got here, and it had only been two hours. But I couldn’t deal with him keeping secrets from me anymore, not when those secrets had to do withme. I was a curious person by nature, and looking at him made me want to claw open his head, dig through his thoughts, and force out every truth his mouth wouldn’t say.
I couldn’t bear to see him knowing there was a way to break his immortality curse and that it had something to do with me, and also the fact that he was staying with me. Had he been following me all these years because of it?
If he’d been stalking me because he wanted to break the curse, why wasn’t he telling me how? How was any of this for my own good?
On the bed, I grabbed a pillow and screamed into it until my voice was raw, until my chest ached and my lungs burned, until the weight sitting on me loosened just a fraction.
It was past four p.m. when my stomach growled, loud and petulant. I hadn’t eaten since morning. Rage had been filling me, and now that the fire had cooled, hunger clawed at me instead.
