As I ate, I thought deeply about the questions I wanted to ask, one he wouldn’t answer superficially. I knew the messenger was from The Crater. I could ask why the message was sent to me and why it tried to kill me. But he’d told me yesterday that he didn’t know. And I doubted his “unfinished business” had anything to do with me or finding out what was trying to kill me. That was a risk I wasn’t ready to take. I couldn’t waste my question on a ‘I don’t know’ response. So I went for something else.
“How old are you?”
Without thinking, he replied like he’d known the question before I even opened my mouth. “I don’t keep count.”
“That is cheating!” The words burst from me in a rush, heat flaring in my chest. “You don’t always know.”
He leaned against the counter, his posture infuriatingly casual. “That is the answer to that question. Would you have rather I lie?”
“Yes. Honestly, I’d prefer that.”
The corner of his mouth lifted in amusement before he said, “Between a thousand and fifteen hundred.”
The age crashed into me like a wave, and I choked on my food, coughing hard enough to feel my ribs protest. As I reached for my glass, his hand was there, sliding it towards me without looking away. I gulped the water, the coolness doing nothing to steady the dizzy, breathless shock crawling over my skin.He can not be for real.
When I could speak again, I flicked my eyes at him. “No.Thatlie is an obvious one. There is no way.”
One brow arched. “You think so?”
“I know.” I went back to eating.
“Next question,” he said after a while.
I swallowed, meeting his gaze before pointing my fork straight at his neck. “The claws.”
“It was a fight.”
My brows drew together. “You got into a fight? With...what?”
“Something with claws.”
I rolled my eyes. One more sarcastic response from him, and I would shove my head against the counter. “Obviously,” I gritted out and exhaled a sharp breath. “What creature was it? There seem to be a lot in Nimorran.”
“Creatures that are in love with me,” he said with a wink that was equal parts mockery and confusion. Then he pushed away from the counter, rounding it and going towards the stairs. My gaze followed in curiosity but he didn’t say a word as he climbed up.
When he came down, I was done eating and was by the sink, rinsing the plates. I glanced over my shoulder and stopped, sponge slipping from my fingers when I saw him dressed in his usual black outfit.
“Where are you going?”
“Unfinished business.” Those words were void of emotions as he said them, and then he walked out the door.
Just like that.
My eyes stayed locked on the wood, as if staring hard enough might make him turn back. But the door didn’t open. He didn’t come.
Four hours later, fresh from a bath, I padded downstairs with the book I’d borrowed from the library just after ending a conversation with my mother. And as usual, I’d told her everything was fine, I was eating, and I was in the best health I could possibly be. Anything to calm her nerves.
I made myself a drink, curled into the couch, and opened the book to the place I’d left off.
I’d read to the part where the Soulless Man was cursed, which was still the beginning. I’d read that before the moon’s wrath, magic flowed in human veins like blood. Every person had some kind of magic. They were born with it—some could slip into another’s mind and twist thoughts to their will; some could move objects or shatter them with a thought—what we called telekinesis; others could coax a withered tree and breathe life into them to bloom overnight; some could knit torn flesh and bone back together with their healing ability, or bend fire, water, wind to their command. The world had been alive then with magic.
But Selvanyra’s grief had stolen it all. The text described it as a grief so vast it split the sky, rattled the world until it trembled for seven days straight. The rage made humanity restless. Those who survived that wrath either possessed the strongest bloodlines...or bysheer accident. The rest—people, animals, entire forests—withered into dust.
I turned another page, and my fingers brushed over a map sketched on the page. After a while, I rushed upstairs to pick up my notepad, journal and laptop so I could keep note and slowly digest the new accounts I was reading.
One hour and four cups of drink later, I realised the Soulless Man had lived through everything I was reading. He had survivedthe wrath he had caused.
My chest tightened like it always did for him.
