If I hadn’t threatened to stab a pen through my own foot if another day passed without progress on this damn research, I would’ve done what I’d been doing all week—sat back and waited for Thrax to show up again.
But he’d left early, like usual. And I’d sucked it up, shoved my thoughts behind a wall, and forced myself to get ready for the day. He was avoiding me. I didn’t know why, but he was.
Which was ironic, considering not having him under the same roof I rented first was what I’d wanted in the beginning. But somehow my traitorous fingers had gone ahead and typed something to him after he left this morning without a word.Again. Three days without seeing his face, and my anger was starting to get the best of me.
Me
Really? Is this your ‘one minute’?
The message had been sitting there, staring and mocking me for eleven hours now. The sun was long gone, the world outside darkening, and still no reply from him. There was no way he hadn’tseen it. He was ignoring me. Boldly ignoring me, after I’d swallowed my pride and caved first.
I cursed and tossed my phone across the floor, dragging my hands through my hair. The bastard was taking up too much space in my head, which was a bad thing. Every thought I had seemed to circle back to him. It was infuriating.
So I made myself count from one to ten. Fifteen times. Then I walked the length of my room—back, forth, back, forth—twenty times.
Only then did I sit down again, forcing myself to focus on my notes, journal, and laptop as I ran over the things I’d learned in the last couple of days.
No matter how hard I searched, there was no record of the Soulless Man’s life before the curse. His record started after the curse. And up to that point.
Once the moon’s wrath had settled and the world returned tonormal, he vanished and could not be heard of again. He was a literal ghost walking. Even the popular dead scholars had nothing on him. Every account they had contradicted the next. Lies layered on lies. There was no real truth. Everything I knew about him was everything that was recorded, and that was in no way near the aim of my thesis.
“My life is over. What else are you going to do, Sanora? Hit dead ends until you rot?” I muttered under my breath, flipping through my notes.
An alarm shrieked from my phone. My reminder. With a groan, I pushed myself up and grabbed the book from my bedside, the one I’d borrowed last night. I’d set a timer to return it, and it was just in time for me to clear my head.
The weather sucker-punched me the second I stepped outside. One moment it was calm, the next, storm raged, wind carrying everything that was not human. I quickened my pace, not wanting to get caught in the rain. By the time I reached the library doors, fatdrops had begun to fall, thunder splitting the sky open just as I handed the book to Amelia.
“Hi,” I said, pushing hair back from my face.
She closed the book she’d been reading and stood with a smile. “Hey. Good evening.”
Her warmth tugged a smile from me in return. After a little more exchange, I turned to leave, but the rain had thickened into a wall, hammering the street in sheets.
I shook my head, stepping away from the entrance. There was no way I was entering that.
I went back in, looking around. The lights in the library were low, but there were lamps on each table for better and personal illumination. I walked to the shelves and plucked out a book about one of Nimorran’s oldest legends, going back to my usual seat and settling in it.
A loud thunder cracked in the sky as I opened the first page.
Thirty minutes passed in silence before a shadow spilled across my book. I looked up to see Amelia hovering with an unsure smile, clutching something close.
“What’s up?” I asked, my eyes flicking to the leather-bound volume in her hands.
“Can I sit?”
“Sure.” I gestured to the chair on the left of me.
She slid into it and pushed the book towards me.
I raised a brow. “And this is…?”
“I thought you might want to read it.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
The book was old. Not library-old, not cracked-spine-and-dust-old. Its cover was bound in leather so worn it looked like it had been pulled straight from a tomb. The leather cover was a type of leather relic that belonged in a museum vault, not on my library table. My fingertips prickled as I touched it, opening it carefully.
The pages were browned to the colour of withered leaves, edges so soft it was almost crumbling. Strange symbols crawled across the parchment, an ancient script that had faded a little bit. They weren’t letters, not like anything I recognised. They were more like sigils, loops and strokes.
“What is this?” I breathed.
