The curse may have chained her soul to me, the universe may have thrown us together. But don’t mistake my feelings for fate. She is mine because I have chosen her, because I would tear down gods and moons and every century I’ve endured just to keep her. Salvation means nothing to me anymore. I’ve loved her, and the depth of that love terrifies me. Eternity was empty and meaningless until her. She is the first thing in centuries that has ever made me want to truly live.
The only way the curse can be broken is with her death...if she gives me her soul. But Sanora, I will damn the altar itself before I let her die for me. What is the point of living when the only life that makes mine worth anything is gone?
So yes, Nher, the curse can be broken. But I will not break it with her blood. I would rather carry my curse into a thousand more lifetimes than sacrifice the only girl I have ever truly loved.
And you must not even think about it, because no prophecy, no god, no curse, is worth you.
My hands shook as the paper slid from my grip to the floor.
I was…I was carrying Kalimetryna’s soul.
Kalimetryna’s soul was inside me?
“...I won’t let you surrender your life to break the bastard’s curse.”
That was what Winifred had meant all along. Thrax’s curse could only be broken…by me.
But setting him free meant…dying.
A tear slipped from my eye as they dropped to where the sheet lay on the ground, the words swimming up at me and circling through my skull like a broken loop that refused to stop.
Thrax’s freedom was at the cost of my life.
How? Why? Why? Why? Why?Why?
The realisation reached inside my chest, yanked my beating organ out, trampled it, shoved it back into place and drove a blunt knife through it again and again.
I couldn’t even breathe without the pain splintering through my chest. I couldn’t cry the way my heart wanted to, not in the desperate, choking way it demanded. It was as if I had no more tears to shed. Or maybe I was just in shock, maybe my mind was just too numb, struggling to process that I was only a vessel, that I was nothing but a container for the soul of the moon’s offspring. That the sole purpose of my existence had been mapped and decided before I’d ever drawn breath. My life wasn’t mine. I was something moulded and created to fulfil a prophecy.
The soul inside me wasn’t mine.
I didn’t even have an original soul.
My entire existence was a lie.
The Soulless Man could only be saved with my death.
He could only truly live when I no longer existed.
And as if a love between a mortal and an immortal wasn’t already tragic enough, the man I loved would live again…but I had to die.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
SANORA
I hadn’t moved from the bed since reading the letter that morning. It was past eight at night now, and I lay curled up, my mind too full and empty all at once.
Safe to say I handled the aftermath well—if “handled well” meant not shedding another tear since I found out. I just kept staring at the wall, thoughts running a relentless marathon through my head. I was exhausted from it alone, desperate for sleep, but my mind wouldn’t rest.
Both dark and hopeful thoughts looped endlessly. Whenever the darker ones began eating me alive and dragging me close to tears, I’d lift the letter clutched in my hand and read it again.
Winifred’s voice echoed in my ears, telling me how Thrax was confused. That he had feelings for me only because of the soul inside me. Because the soul inside me made him come alive at a close distance, and he’d mistaken that for real feelings.
If I didn’t carry the soul, if he didn’t feel human whenever I was close, would he still see me the same way?
If I wasn’t the key to his salvation, would he still look at me like I was the best thing he’d ever crossed paths with?
I didn’t know.
