“I felt your heart breaking.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SANORA
For a fleeting moment, warmth stirred in my chest at his words, a single tear breaking loose. But then I reminded myself not to let anything this man said slip through unchecked.
“Felt?”
He nodded once then cut in with his own question before I could push further. “Why are you in the rain?”
I swiped at my cheeks, though the rain made the gesture useless. My head shook stubbornly. I couldn’t tell him, not when I had the gnawing sense that he’d vanish if he knew how much I knew. Most people believed he was long gone, some even believed his part in history was a lie since no one had had an encounter with an unaging man, and perhaps he wanted it that way. If I told him I knew who he was, he might pack his things and disappear before morning.
“Because I wanted to see you.”
Thrax’s brows drew together, as if just realising how terrible I was at lying. Both his hands landed firm on my shoulders and grounded me as the cold rattled through my bones.
“You’ve been avoiding me for days,” I whispered, my gaze sliding away. “I had no other choice.”
A sigh escaped him, his mouth parting as if to speak, only to close again. Then, wordless, he stepped around me, hooking one armunder my knees, the other under my arms. In a single effortless motion, he lifted me up against his chest. My breath hitched as my body pressed against his warmth, fireworks exploding inside me.
“I wasn’t avoiding you,” he said in a whisper as he gazed down at me.
I pressed my face against the solid heat of his chest, scoffing softly. “Says the man who leaves before I wake and returns when I’m already in bed.”
Instead of replying, he adjusted me up in his arms and started in the direction of the house, his strides quick as ever.
By the time we reached the house, I was trembling from cold and exhaustion, every shiver muted by his hold. He set me down gently in the bathroom, then tucked me into bed with not one but two blankets, after pressing a warm cup of sleeping tea into my hands.
Sleep claimed me even before he was done tucking me in.
When I woke the next morning, the world felt wrong again, like I’d been ripped out of a dream and thrown back into the bleakness of reality. Panic tightened my chest as I rushed downstairs, whispering silent prayers to the gods that last night hadn’t been a dream, that he was still here.
But the kitchen and living room was empty, bare of his presence.
My stomach sank to the floor, knees buckling as I sat onto the last step, pressing my palms into my face.
He was gone again. Gone after finding and carrying me in the rain, after telling me he wasn’t avoiding me, after making me tea and tucking me in with a tenderness that felt almost human. If he was onlygoing to give me a cold distance once again, why show me warmth at all? Why let me taste it, only to snatch it away?
Dragging myself up the stairs, drained and aching, I froze mid-step at the faint sound coming from the bathroom.
My heart lurched as I sped up and stood in front of the door. When it swung open, steam poured out first, curling around the tall frame of a man who stepped through with wet hair, damp skin, and a body that stole my breath away.
Thrax.
Shirtless, every detail of him struck me at once—the sharp cut of his jaw, the droplets trailing down his chest, the heat radiating off him against the mist. I hadn’t seen his face properly in days, and now it felt like seeing him after a year, like memory itself was flooding back too strong and bright.
He ran his fingers through his soaked hair, sweeping it back, halting when he saw me in front of the door. I stood too close, blocking his path, caught between moving aside and being rooted in place.
My eyes betrayed me, shameless in their descent: from his eyes, to his mouth, to the corded lines of his throat that worked as he swallowed once, the bob of his Adam’s apple hypnotic. That throat. That neck. It was thick and strong, veins threading under taut skin, and I had the wildest urge to sink my teeth into it just to see if he’d flinch or if he’d snarl and remind me exactly who I was dealing with.
The Soulless Man.
My gaze dropped to his chest.
The scar.
That diagonal mark slashing across his chest, from the left shoulder to the right side, just above his breast. Thrax could heal, and seeing the scar slash across his chest like it was recent meant the pain it caused had been worse than death and was beyond his healing. It wasn’t fading.
