My eyes widened as my hand flew to my mouth, tears rushing forward.
He had watched everyone in his household die. Those stone stacks were for them.
And in the cave...he had died from the sickness too.
The moon’s offspring had known about the disease killing him before she even rushed into the cave.
Had she performed the ritual for him? To take the sickness away?
My knees buckled with the new knowledge, and I dropped into a crouch, shoving my fingers through my hair, pulling until strands tore at my scalp.
My chest heaved, as if his pain had reached across time and lodged itself inside me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
SANORA
When a knock came on my door that evening, I all but sprinted to it.
Like I expected, he wasn’t there. The porch was empty save for the food box in another colour.
I dragged it inside and shut the door mutedly. My legs folded beneath me the moment I dropped down onto the floor beside it. I didn’t even bother with the kitchen this time—I couldn’t wait that long. My hands were already tugging at the lid, zipping it open.
I’d been on edge since morning, checking the clock every ten minutes, willing the evening to arrive faster.
That meal he’d sent in the morning…I could hardly eat it. The food had been sweet, rich, everything it always was, and I’d been starving right from when I’d woken up. But after reading his letter, every bite I’d taken had turned to stone in my mouth. I’d chewed, swallowed, forced it down, only to abandon half the plate because my thoughts wouldn’t leave me be.
Now, as I unpacked tonight’s box, I chanted in my mind.
Please, please. Please let there be a paper.
I grabbed the last box and lifted it, my heart lodging itself in my throat.
There was a paper!
A sharp gasp ripped out of me, and in my haste, I nearly overturned the entire meal, spilling it across the floor. My hands fumbled clumsily, dropping the food just to snatch up the letter because I couldn’t find it in me to care about anything else at the moment.
But I paused
I was too agitated.
My pulse was hammering, and I was nervous. I could barely feel my fingers around the paper.
Closing my eyes, I forced myself to breathe—slow, steady. One. Two. Three. Four. Five deep breaths. My chest loosened only slightly, but it was enough.
Then I began to peel the paper open.
Her name was Kalimetryna.
She was a friend to me, and the only good one I had. She was light where my life had been shadow, laughter where mine had been silence, she stood with me when the rest of the world only saw my ill blood. And she knew. She knew about the sickness that killed every one of my kin, and she swore it would not take me too.
She also begged Selvanyra to lift the curse from my veins. I didn’t care if it meant losing every ounce of magic. I didn’t care if I became powerless. I only wanted to live. I was afraid that my heart would harden like my father’s, like his father before him, all of them dead before their lives had begun. But Selvanyra would not listen. She could not undo her own blessing.
So Kalimetryna did what no one dared. She told no one, not even me, but she began searching and digging into rituals to pacify other gods. From the day I turned twenty-one, she wasalready working to save me. She started preparing, every day, every night. The dance you saw the first time in your dream was one of the practices. It was the final part of her ritual, the final step that would absorb my sickness.
But I never knew. Nobody did.
And when the time came, she was too late. The sickness claimed me the same way it had all before me. I died, Sanora. I felt as my blood turned to stone gradually in my veins. I was dead before she started her ritual.
