“You think he loves you?”Ouch?A short laugh burst out of him, sharp enough to slice my chest open. “He doesn’t love you back, Sanora. He’s confused. He’s borrowing your soul, borrowing life from you, and that has confused him.”
My heart froze mid-beat. I turned back to him fully. “Borrowing my soul? What do you mean by that?”
He held my gaze as if he wanted to carve his next words into me. “His curse can be broken,” he said, pointing at me, “and you’re the key to it. The two of you meeting isn’t a coincidence. It’s all him.He’s been deceiving you. He wants to use your feelings against you, Sanora. Come with me before it’s too late.”
I stood there, feet stuck. The old man with the mean stare brushed past me and muttered something to Winifred before closing his door. With one last, unreadable look at me, he slid into the driver’s seat and slammed it shut.
I blinked hard, looking around, willing myself to focus, to think, to drown out Winifred’s voice. He was a liar, a manipulator, a stranger I no longer knew.
But I knew Thrax. Or I was beginning to. And every word he’d told me rang true in my blood.
Still, I had to find out what this curse was, and how I was connected. And the only person I wanted to hear it from was Thrax.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
SANORA
When I reached the house, another food box was waiting on the front porch, this one in a different colour. How many boxes had he purchased?
I sighed, crouching to pick it up, my body still humming from the jog. With a small grunt, I pushed the door open and stepped inside, letting it shut behind me with a soft thud.
I strolled to the kitchen island and set the box down, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge and drinking before setting it on the counter.
Without even opening the food box, I drifted to my room, shedding my shoes at the door and heading straight for the bathroom. My sweat-soaked clothes clung stubbornly to my skin until I tore them off and let them fall to the floor.
The shower hissed to life, steam clouding the small room. I stepped beneath it, tilting my head back, the water cascading down my spine. I scrubbed every inch of my body clean, as if I could wash away not just sweat but the restlessness crawling beneath it. I took my time washing my hair, ignoring the way my breathing was unsteady.
I was nervous. So nervous I couldn’t bring myself to read the next letter waiting in that box. If it was about me, I didn’t want to open it.
Although every part of me wanted to. Gods, I wanted to. but fear sat like a stone in my stomach. I wanted to know how I was connected to all of this, what soul Winifred was talking about, how Thrax could be borrowing it. I wanted to know everything.
But what if I didn’t like what I found? What if it was the kind of truth you wish you could unsee?
With a tired breath, I turned off the shower and stepped out, water sliding down my calves to pool at my feet. I reached for the fourth outfit—another one of Thrax’s thoughtful pairings, the top folded neatly over matching shorts. It had become oddly easy to get dressed these days, and it was all because of his pairing.
Once dressed, I padded barefoot back to the kitchen. The box sat where I’d left it, and I stood in front of it for a long moment, just staring. Then finally, I reached in and began pulling everything out, piece by piece...including the letters that were lying flat under. Yes, there were two letters. On top of a big one was a small folded piece of paper.
My throat tightened as I zipped the lid back on the box and slid it beside the other three he’d delivered in the past days.
I didn’t eat properly yesterday because of the letters he sent, they kept playing like a loop inside my mind—his words. I couldn’t digest anything without suppressing the urge to throw up.
I didn’t want to repeat that. So I started eating right there, forcing the food down while my eyes flicked to the folded papers on the countertop, mind jittery like I was about to check an exam result I’d studied for a year to pass.
When I swallowed the last bite and cleared the plates, I drank from my water bottle to soothe my nerves. Then, finally, I sat down and picked up the small paper on top, unfolding it with fingers that wouldn’t stay still.
His handwriting sprawled plain and short across the page.
Sanora, while reading this next and last letter, I need you to calm down. You can do that for me, yeah?
If anything, that just made my pulse spike. My palms slickened with sweat, my heart beating out of rhythm. Still, I pulled a steady breath through my nose, exhaled slowly, and unfolded the larger letter.
The curse can be broken.
After the curse, a prophecy was made. If I’m being honest, at that moment, a part of me had wished I wasn’t given redemption. I’d already disrupted the balance by waking from the dead, and in some ridiculous way, the universe tried to even the scales by giving me a way out of the curse.
Kalimetryna’s soul didn’t perish with her. While Selvanyra took my soul and locked it away forever, Kalimetryna’s soul had been kept for the process of reincarnation which happened fourteen centuries later. Her soul was born again into a different body twenty-three years ago, and I’ve been tied to her since the day she took her first breath.
I didn’t anticipate being connected to her, but perhaps that was the point — they wanted me to know what it feels like to have a soul again after so many years of living without one, wanted me to know what it is to feel like human once again without completely being human. That way, the desire to feel complete would be so overwhelming I’d have no choice but to convince her to surrender her soul for me, knowing it’d kill her if she did. The reason she keeps dreaming of my past is because of the soul. The soul inside her had lived in that moment, andit remembers. She once asked me, but the only emotion I can feel is hers, and I meant it when I told her I break twice as hard when she’s hurt.
