Her initial plan was only to take the sickness from my blood. That alone would have cost her...maybe weakened her power or maybe stripped it from her completely, but it would not have killed her.
But I died. It was not part of her plan.
And she did the unthinkable. Not only did she pull the sickness out of me, she defied life and death themselves, altering the flow. She brought me back to life in exchange for hers. She took me back and gave herself to death. She absorbed the sickness into her own body, and if you noticed it, her divinity turned black. Her brilliance dimmed and blackened because of what she did. Because of the impossible, unforgivable thing she did for me.
She died for me.
So yes, Sanora, I killed her. In every way that matters, I killed her. I deserve every single thing that is happening to me now.
With eyes teary and throat clogged, I turned the paper to read the last sentence written on the other side.
The one thing, though, that I do not deserve, is you.
“No.”
The word cracked out of me as my head shook, tears raining down onto the paper. The ink blurred beneath each drop, my fingers trembling as I clutched my chest. I didn’t understand why it was breaking so much, whyIwas breaking so much.
But I was.
Something in me was breaking on their behalf.
Images of Kalimetryna lying on the ground flashed behind my eyes, black hair fanned across the stone like a pool of ink, black dress clinging to her frail body. Back then, I didn't know. I hadn’t realised she’d absorbed Thrax’s death and sickness into herself.
Now I understood why Thrax had hesitated. I understood the tremor in his hand when he’d held that pin, the war behind his eyes. She was his friend. She had died for him without him even knowing.
He hadn’t wanted her to die. And she hadn’t wanted him to die.
They’d both been desperate to keep each other alive, even at the cost of themselves.
It made me wonder if she’d have still gone through with the ritual if she’d known the outcome. She had wanted Thrax to live so desperately. But if she’d seen what her sacrifice would turn into, if she’d known he would be trapped for over a millennium, cursed and soulless because of what she’d done—would she have stopped? Would she have found another god and saved Thrax without dying and triggering Selvanyra’s wrath?
I didn’t know Kalimetryna, but somehow, I knew she wouldn’t have let this happen.
Thrax had gained life unnaturally, so he was made to live unnaturally—no soul, no rest, no end.
And he’d been living with that burden for centuries. Beyond the blame the world had hurled at him, he had been carrying his own endless, suffocating guilt. He’d been slowly killing himself from the inside out, convinced everything was his fault.
“Fuck,” I whispered, my voice breaking.
None of this was his fault. Not a single thing. He was innocent. He hadn’t known. He wasn’t the monster the world painted him to be.
Thrax is innocent.
I sat there on the floor amid the box and packaged foods next to the door, the letter in my grip, reading it over and over until the words burned into my mind. By the time I finally rose, carrying the untouched food to the kitchen, I felt...empty.
My appetite was gone.
Not that I’d had much to begin with.
He was in a wheelchair.
Winifred.
I had just finished my morning jog, trying to run the weight of yesterday off my chest, when I slowed to a halt beside his bookshop, peering through the space leading to his house behind. Winifred was seated on a wheelchair, an elderly man behind him, easing him down the steps and towards a waiting car.
I pulled out my earpiece without realising, my pulse stumbling as I stared. He was struggling to hoist himself into the car, his arms trembling with the effort. The sight of it punched a small ache behind my ribs. This had happened because of me—because of what he’d done to me, yes, but still because of me. Whether temporary or not, the damage was there. And yet, beneath the ache, the little girl inside me was quietly disappointed, angry even, that he’d wanted to lock me in a dark, dusty room for a whole month while drugging me.
My heart stopped when the old man pushing the wheelchair looked up and saw me. His brows crashed together, first in disinterest, then it slowly morphed into loathing.
