Romans & histoires Burning Ashes

She scoffed and stuffed the TV remote under her butt. I held back a laugh and shook my head, I dropped my food on the table in front of us. “Fine, I'll tell you.” I said as I looked between the two of them. Their eyes lit up and they scooted closer, their eyes fixed on me. “So, how was it?” Piper went first. “Do the girls really look like goddesses?” Bart piped in. I chuckled. “Delengade is massive. Everything's plaited in gold, gold walls, marbled walls with gold, gold pinnacles and archways.”

One review — the one that mattered, the critic who had said the second novel made staying feel like the bravest possible choice — wrote: The Morning is the final novel of the Burn Between Us sequence, and it does something I have never seen a four-novel sequence do: it ends by refusing to end. The last sentence is a morning. An ordinary morning, in a specific kitchen, with the coffee and the light and the person still asleep. Nothing happens in the last sentence except everything having been built. And the reader closes the book and looks up, and their own kitchen is there, and their own morning is coming tomorrow, and the novel has quietly handed you the only thing a novel can truly give: t

Elise rubbed Logan’s chest. “Don’t be mad, Logan. She doesn’t want to come out of hiding, so we should just go ahead and cremate her father. “Since she refuses to show up, let’s make sure she doesn’t get a chance to see him again.” Logan shifted his attention back to Charles’ body. It took a while before he said, “Alright.” I smiled cynically. It turned out that resentment could run deep. As Charles was pushed into the incinerator, Logan filmed the entire process and put it up on my social media page.

Just when I think I am about to die, he lets go. I collapse to the carpet, coughing so hard my chest feels as if it is tearing apart. Air scrapes into me in jagged, painful pulls. My throat burns. Every swallow feels like I am dragging glass down raw flesh. Someone presses a glass of water into my shaking hand. I barely see him or her. I drink too fast and choke again, water spilling down my chin. I empty the glass, then grab the bottle someone holding in front of me and gulp from it desperately, but the burning does not ease.

After sunrise, Dario returned to the manor. The east wing had been burned beyond recognition. Workers moved through the ruins to clear the remaining debris. Julia stood next to Dario. She was wrapped in a blanket, and her face looked pale. "Do you think Daisy might still be inside?" Julia asked shakily. Dario ignored her completely. He stared at the items being carried out from the wreckage. He couldn't tell whether he felt relieved or terrified. "Don Verdant!" one of the workers called out as he ran over. "We found this near the staircase on the east side."

“You’ll have to mean it, Lira.” “I do.” And I kept walking until the air smelled like fire again. The ground changed first. The path buckled underfoot, no longer soil but something brittle—ash fused with shattered bone, slick with marrow dust. The smell thickened. Not just smoke, but burnt herbs and singed iron, like old wards broken open. The trees around the clearing slanted away like they’d tried to crawl backward and died mid-motion. Ash crusted the moss. Bones laced through the roots—small, not human. Not all animal either. Kael didn’t flinch when he stepped over a half-buried jawbone. I did.

"Avril, have some water and calm down. I know you're holding a grudge against me now, but you shouldn't be so rash next time." I didn't accept the cup of water. However, Peggy got burned by the hot water in the cup and ended up splashing the water onto my arm. "Oh! It burns…" The hot water scalded Peggy's finger. Vernon hurriedly led her to the tap and placed her finger under the running water. As for me, I was dressed lightly. The hot water had soaked through my chiffon top, scalding my arm instantly. I went to the restroom to handle the burn on my own. Very quickly, red blisters began forming on my left wrist.

"To rising from the ashes." Natalie clinked her glass gently. "To whatever comes next." And beneath the velvet sky, with the city once again at her feet, Natalie Evans finally felt the fire inside her burn not with rage, but with purpose.

"Enough of this nonsense!" Samuel held out a protective arm towards Dana and stomped on Nina's ashes. "I'm warning you! Stop this at once! You think some flour will trick me?" "Ah—! Move aside!" I slumped to the ground, hitting his leg away. His leg did not move, so bit into it! Samuel grunted and lifted his leg up. "What a psycho." I carefully scooped Nina's ashes back into her urn. Some of the firemen could not bear to watch it. Some of them even bent down and helped me.

I was no longer recognizable, yet I still managed a faint smile at the camera. “Today,” I said, “I buried eighteen skeletons. Exile Island was never some romantic place. It’s a graveyard for boys.” Then, the scene shifted to me sitting beside piles of stark white bones. I wasn’t the only one brought here. There were far too many. At that point, I paused, then raised my hand and waved at the camera. “Hi, Agnes. Long time no see. I wonder, by the time you see this video, will I already be dead? But even if I am, my body will stay here, just like these bones. So, Agnes, don’t forget to come and collect my corpse.”