I scoffed, my smile dropping. “You’re boring.”
But then, the plates started lifting from the counter.
All of them.
My eyes went wide when they started spinning in the air, forming shapes and rolling like a circus act. They hovered, aligned in the air before swirling into a slow dance. Then they circled, spun, stacked, rolled end over end like trained performers. My hand flew to my mouth, muffling the startled gasp that slipped out.
When I glanced back at Thrax, his eyes were already fixed on me, dark and consuming, watching every shift of awe across my face. He did not move, his expression didn’t even bare a flicker of effort.
The plates formed a circle and rolled again like horizontal wheels suspended mid-air, before lowering one by one back onto the counter. The food, miraculously, was still intact.
My gaze went back to him, going breathless at his closeness.
My throat was dry, but one thought pulsed loud and insistent in my skull, spilling out before I could stop it.
“That was...hot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SANORA
I was back in the dream.
But this time, the archer was the only one I could see. The silver-haired girl was nowhere to be found. Around me stretched nothing but rocks. I wasn’t simply standing on them, I was swallowed by them. Everywhere my eyes turned, the landscape was crowded with rocks, some only knee-high, others towering above me as though desperate to reach the sky.
And there were also stones. In the midst of the big rocks were stones balanced one atop the other, as if defying gravity through sheer intent.
I knew what they were. Stone stacks were markers, tributes and monuments raised for the dead. Each one meant remembrance and loss of a loved one, and there were five stone stacks, four of which were taller than the person stacking them.
It was him—the archer.
Thrax.
He was standing before the smallest of the stacks, a slab of rock gripped in his hand. I was hidden behind one of the taller mounds, as I watched him place the stone gently, almost reverently, on top of the fifth stack.
My throat tightened. Five lives. Five graves. Five people he had loved enough to remember in silence.
When he turned after placing it, I saw his face fully for the first time. No hair or haze to blur him from me. And even in a dream, my heart stuttered in my chest, pounding painfully at the sight of him. He looked…rugged here, more raw than he ever did in reality. His hair was longer and unkempt, falling in wild strands around his face, his expression hollow.
He stepped away from the little stone monument and sat against a great boulder, his shoulders dropping. Thrax brought out a dagger—his dagger—and he began to spin it loosely between his fingers. His head was tipped back against the rock, his gaze fixed on the towers of stone as though they were the only things anchoring him to the world.
My chest ached slightly at the sight of him like this, like this when no one was watching, when it was just him surrounded by memories of dead people.
And then he shifted his grip. My stomach lurched as I realised what he was doing. He angled the blade so the sharp edge cut against his own fingers as it spun. I gasped, clamping my hands over my mouth, eyes wide as crimson lines split open on his skin. But before the blood could even well, the wounds sealed, vanishing as though they had never been. Again and again, he let the steel bite into him, only for his body to heal before pain could even have its moment.
My gaze dragged up to his face to see there was no emotion there. No sign he even registered what he was doing to himself. His expression was empty, a void stretched across sharp features, and somehow that hurt worse.
It made me wonder if the timeline was after the moon’s wrath, if I was seeing him as he had been when the world crumbled, after everyone was gone.
But before the thought could properly settle inside me, a white glimmer appeared at the edge of my vision. I turned and saw her—themoon’s offspring, her silver hair gleaming like frost, her white dress glowing unstained against the grave-like stacks. She walked towards him so quietly that he didn’t even notice, lost in his own torment with the blade still spinning endlessly.
Suddenly, the image of them began to fade, replaced by the familiar heaviness of my bed beneath me. A pressure clamped on my bladder, tugging me back to reality with urgency.
I sat upright, swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, and dragged myself out of my room, squinting against the harsh light in the hall. The bathroom door gave way under my push, and as I took one step inside, I froze.
The faint drip of the shower echoing in the air peeled my squinted eyes apart, then they began to widen by a fraction.
I didn’t really think much of the image of Thrax appearing in front of me. Until I remembered I was in the bathroom, and he was standingunder the fucking shower.
