No. No. No.
I fell into a crouch, unable to believe myself, unable to believe he was actually telling the truth. Memories swam me, and I folded into myself, recalling each and every one of them.
He didn’t have a shadow because he didn’t have a soul. He was a dead man walking. The scar on his chest...could it have been when it was taken?
How did I miss the signs? He’d shamelessly laid them out for me, and like a fool, I’d totally ignored it. I’d totally ignored it when he told me he was over a thousand years old. I’d seen him heal. He was born with healing ability, just like everyone else before the moon’s wrath.
Goosebumps were literally exploding over my skin as my mind went crazy. When he’d told me his future ambition was to die, he’d actually meant it.
Oh, gods.
I stood up on my feet and picked up my phone, my hands shaking so violently I almost dropped it.
Me
Where are you?
I waited impatiently, tapping my feet against the floor. Five minutes passed, and he didn’t reply.
That was it for me. I’d exhausted all my patience, and this silence between us was over. I was literally sprinting out of the library, ignoring Amelia when she asked me where I was heading to late at night in the rain.
The said rain hit like knives the second I stepped outside, slicing through my clothes to skin, drenching me instantly and stealing my breath, but I kept running. Streets blurred around me, puddles splashing beneath my frantic strides as I searched for him. Street after street. Every corner I turned, I expected to see him. But he was nowhere around.
My mind wouldn’t stop replaying the time he cut himself when I mentioned the dream, wouldn’t stop circling back to the time thearcher walked to the silver-haired dancer. If Thrax was really the archer, did it mean the girl was...the moon’s child?
She’d looked unnaturally real. It was only plausible she wasn’t human. Were they in love? Were they lovers? Was it really him in the dream?
With no aim, I walked in the pouring rain, trying to shut out the loud thing that was my mind.
Thrax isn’t the archer. He had not killed someone he’d loved. He’d not lived up to one thousand, four hundred and twenty-three years.
No, the Soulless Man was dead. He had to be.
The storm swallowed my soft panic as tears mingled with the rain. My chest constricted until I could hardly breathe, and by the time my legs buckled beneath a streetlamp, I could barely stand. I stumbled beneath it and crouched, legs folding with my arms around my knees, forehead pressed into them. My body shook with cold, but it was nothing compared to the inner turmoil that was ripping me apart.
The rain hammered down, deafening and relentless, and I stayed there—not sure how long—drowning in a pain I couldn’t completely comprehend.
The air on my nape stood.
A presence heavier than the storm itself pressed against me. My head jerked up, rain streaming into my eyes, blurring everything into streaks of silver and black. I swiped a hand across my face, the person coming into view.
Towering under the lamp’s halo, drenched to the bone, hair plastered to his skin, chest rising and falling slightly, was Thrax.
My breath hitched.
He stepped closer, and the world seemed to shrink to only him as he stared down at me. The storm raged around us, thunder groaning, lightning spilling white fire across the sky.
Slowly, he sank down onto one knee before me. For a moment, we only stared, his unwavering eyes holding mine. And then his hand lifted, fingers brushing my soaked hair back before cupping my cheek with a gentleness that undid me. His palm was warm, even through the rain.
“Did you run?” My broken whisper was barely audible over the storm.
He nodded.
My throat closed. “How…how did you find me?”
The silence between us was louder than the thunder as his thumb stroked my cheek, his gaze never breaking.
And then came his voice, deep and firm.
