Tiredly, he looked down at the hollow at his feet, dark and wet with his own blood. Thrax had dug a hole and bled into it for the pasthour. And the soil had drunk so deeply it felt as though there was nothing left inside him to give.
With a crouch, he dragged earth back over the hole he dug, glancing at the long metallic pin jutting out of the ground some centimetres away from him. The pin was something he desperately wanted to remove and erase from this world. And he would continue poisoning the ground with his blood until it was gone, because only then would he be at peace. He straightened back to his full height. Around him, the cave ground was a pitted graveyard, poked with other filled holes, proof of the countless times he’d cut his palm with his dagger and let his blood spill until his head swam and his limbs begged for mercy.
And with each time, his power bled out with it. His strength was fading day by day, and his body was taking longer to mend.
Perhaps something would kill him, after all.
The thought followed him out of the cave, his legs carrying him through the forest with the graceless stagger of a man half-drunk on his own weakness. Every few minutes, he braced a hand against the rough bark of a tree, breath scraping down his throat.
Too much blood this time, Thrax. Too much.
When the jagged treeline broke, Nimorran’s rooftops came into view. He wasn’t sure how far he’d walked, but it felt like hours, the pull in his chest telling him exactly where to go.
To her.
Just like in the library when he needed to borrow her strength for a few seconds. He needed it now again.
Sanora had asked how he always managed to find her. She didn’t realise it was never him doing the finding. She was the one who drew him in. Her soul reached for him with a voice only he could hear, tugging him from a distance.
And when you have been void of life for over a thousand years, you don’t ignore the one thing that fills you with it. She was cure, butshe was also a cruel hunger that gnawed until there was nothing left of you but the need.
Like a starving man catching the scent of food, he could no more turn from her than he could will himself not to breathe. She was the one thing that made him hesitate, the thing that made him afraid to take the first bite, because once he did, he knew he’d never survive without it again.
And she terrified him, too.
Gods,she terrified him so much.
He sighed as his feet stopped, the current of Nimorran’s busiest street spilling around him. He had no memory of crossing half the distance here, but he could feel her close. He could feel the thrum of her heart and the hum of her joy as it touched the edges of his broken mind. Strength began to stir through his veins, curling around him as he scanned the crowd for her.
He found her at a cart, head tipped forward, eyes bright with interest at whatever the merchant displayed.
Leaning against the wall of a leather shop, he took in the sight of her. The first thing he always noticed was her hair, that glint of green that threaded through her chestnut waves.
He remembered the first time she had dyed it, an all-over green to mark her adulthood. A week later, she returned to brown. A year after, she hid green in black before going from black to brown two years ago. He had stalked her long enough to understand why. She despised the pale grey streaks she’d been born with anytime she looked in the mirror. Green, she had decided, was her colour. It matched her eyes anyway.
The merchant handed her something and she beamed so brightly he could feel it. Then she lifted her head to something the other woman said before turning, her gaze finding his.
The effect on him was devastating.
It was as if his body had been nothing but brittle wood until that moment. And now, warm rain was soaking into his roots, waking the sap, loosening the bark, letting green life push through again. The ache in his bones receded as though she’d commanded them out. His lungs filled without the effort it had taken moments before. Blood surged hot and alive through every vein, like they’d just remembered what to do.
All with just one look from her. He feared her touch might have set his body on fire at that moment.
And perhaps the sparks prickling under his skin wasn’t all his.
He could feel her heartbeat picking up, her joy spilling across the tether between them. She turned back to the merchant, but that was enough.
He smiled, a grim satisfaction sliding over his bones, knowing he was not the only one undone.
Pushing away from the wall, he walked to her. And with every step he took, his hollow chest filled with life and warmth.
All because she washere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SANORA
“He wants one.” I smiled at the merchant, pulling her attention back to me after she’d been staring with jaw slack and eyes stuck at Thrax like she’d just seen a god walk straight into her. He’d stopped beside me soundlessly, gaze angled down at the bracelet on my wrist, his face unreadable.
