“Sanora,” he pleaded. “If you stay in there too long, you won’t be able to come out again. Come out, please.”
He had spent almost twenty-four years coming to this cave, years spent trying to sabotage Sanora’s chance of giving him her soul. From the day she was born, he’d known he would never accept salvation like that again.
And so he had kept returning to this place, again and again, preparing for the day she might find her way here. He had sworn she wouldn’t succeed in sacrificing herself for him. She wouldn’t find the one thing that could take her life.
The pin.
But the pin was immovable. The only thing that could easily remove it was that soul. Sanora was carrying the soul of the pin’s owner, and the pin would know her.
Thrax had dedicated days and hours to remove and vanquish it from this world, poisoning the earth with his cursed blood, just so he could rot the grounds, thereby rotting the pin from the roots and making it easier to pull out.
And now, everything he had done was in vain. He had been so close, the pin had begun to shift. It had only needed a little more of his blood, a little more time.
Thrax continued pounding the shield, though he knew. He had seen it in her eyes the first time she spoke of it—how ready she was to die so he could live. He had seen the raw desperation and the plea in her gaze.
And he had hated it. Hated that she even thought he could live in a world without her, where he couldn’t feel her warmth, couldn’t hear her laugh, couldn’t watch her sleep, couldn’t watch her turn the smallest, most meaningless actions into something that fascinated him.
The ground trembled beneath his feet.
The pin.
She had removed the pin.
Terror locked his body as he hammered the barrier harder.
“Sanora!” he roared, the name tearing out of his throat, his whole body trembling from the reality of losing her.
He didn’t want to lose her.
But it already felt like he had.
The pin punctured her skin.
In the night, a wail tore from him, so deep and devastating it shook the very sky. It cut through the storm louder than the rain, louder than the thunder, a sound that was not just a scream but a shattering, jagged, broken thing dragged out of the depth of his being, heart splitting in two.
He sank to his knees as he felt the thread between them snap, agony burning through his chest until it sent him sprawling forward. His hand clawed at his sternum, over the scar, as though he could hold his heart together by force alone. He could feel her slipping away, feel death’s cold fingers prying her from his skin.
And gods, it hurt.
It hurt more than the day she had first been bound to him. This severing was worse. He felt it in his bones, in his marrow.
It tore him apart. And in that moment, he didn’t want to survive it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
THRAX
Thrax mourned her, staying with her in what was now her last moment on earth.
He knelt before the cave, which glowed brighter than ever. The stones blazed with light, inside and out, their brilliance flooding the space around him.
He was beyond devastated. He had done everything in his power to prevent this day, everything to keep her alive. And still, it had come. Still, it had stolen the only love he’d ever had.
Death, the one thing he had longed for all his life, was now the thing he despised most.
Sanora was gone. He couldn’t feel her anymore. His body felt empty, reverted to the same hollow shell he had been before she was born, before she had stepped into his world and lit it with her impossible light.
He stayed there for what might have been an hour or more, watching the cave’s shield flicker, praying it would weaken just enough for him to reach her, to hold her one last time. But it didn’t. If anything, its strength only grew.
