But I chose to believe he would. He’d written it in the letter, told me not to mistake his feelings for fate. That he chose me. That I was his.
I’d read that letter so many times I could recite it by heart. Those words were the only thing keeping my thoughts from eating me alive, and I clung to them desperately.
I still couldn’t sort my thoughts. Everything felt fake. It was hard to believe I was carrying something so important, something that mattered so much to someone. He’d claimed he didn’t want it, that he’d rather live another thousand years than take my soul, and I understood him.
He wasn’t saying that entirely because of what he felt for me. Kalimetryna had once died for him. She’d died so he could live, and she had been his only friend.
Giving him the soul inside me and dying would be repeating history—reliving what I supposed was the worst day of his life.
He said he loved me. The last thing he’d want was someone close to him dying because of him again.
I closed my eyes, my head aching from the spiral of my own thoughts. I’d been circling them for hours, and I was numb.
If I stayed one more minute in bed, my head might explode.
Weakly, I pushed myself up, feet finding the floor. I padded to the bedroom door and then to the kitchen, pulling the fridge open to drink some water.
As I drank straight from the bottle, I closed my eyes, pressing back the pounding ache in my head as my neighbour’s music filtered faintly through the walls.
It was almost nine p.m. when I remembered I hadn’t eaten dinner, and Thrax must have dropped my next meal outside the door.
With fingers rubbing slow circles into my temple, I walked to the door, turned the knob, and pulled it open.
A soft gasp escaped me before I could stop it, my legs nearly losing their balance as I staggered a step back. There, leaning against the pillar of my porch as if he’d grown out of the wood itself, was a figure I knew by instinct before my eyes could name him, his head bowed and arms crossed over his chest.
He lifted his gaze at the sound of the door. Our eyes locked for a heartbeat, then those dark, bottomless orbs that had once seemed to swallow entire nights moved, roving down my body in a slow, unreadable sweep. His throat worked with a swallow as his gaze returned to mine.
My heart thumped violently in my chest, so loud I thought I might pass out.
It felt like seeing him after twenty years. My chest couldn’t contain itself. It was as if my caged heart had begun battering against bone and wanted out—excitement, relief, fear—all of it swelling just at the sight of him in his usual dark coat and darker hair, that face so calm and unreal I found myself falling in love again.
I couldn’t speak, I didn’t even know what to say. I hadn’t expected him here. He’d been nothing but a ghost these past days, appearing only to leave food at my door and vanish. And yet here he was, standing on my front porch and ending my self-imposed exile earlier than he planned.
“Hi.” His voice rolled out the same as I remembered — rich and gravelly, deep enough to reach into me and tug at the threads of my heart.
He uncrossed his arms and slipped his gloved hands into his coat pockets, pushing himself off the pillar and taking a single step towards me.
I drew in a small, steadying breath, anything to keep my voice from breaking. “How long have you been standing here?”
As if not expecting that to be my first question, he paused, thinking. “Ten minutes.”
Ten minutes. Really?I shook my head slowly. “Don’t lie to me.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Twenty-five?”
I sighed. “Thrax.”
“Fine.” He took another step closer. “I don’t know how long, but I’ve been here long enough for your neighbour to play fifty-two songs, five of them twice and three of them four times.”
My heart stuttered.
He moved closer again. “His music taste kind of sucks, don’t you think?”
I wanted to answer, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, words dissolving before they could make it out. I could only stare at him, the tears I’d successfully kept at bay since morning threatening to break free.
“You should ask if I even know what a music taste is.”
That almost made me laugh, but I rolled my teary eyes with a scoff instead. “What the hell are you even saying?”
