Nightfall Audiobook Novels & Stories

And Nicholas felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. --- Three months after the funeral, half the city whispered that Nicholas Rhodes had lost his soul. They were wrong. He’d buried it with Rafe. He stopped speaking to most of his men. Stopped entertaining deals unless they were necessary. Stopped trusting anyone. He worked with perfect, surgical detachment. He ate when reminded. He slept when exhaustion physically forced him. But every night—every damn night—his body betrayed him. Because Nicholas would wake gasping, haunted by the ghost of Rafe’s voice.

The chains had finally snapped, and the Cenotaph was drifting away, its iron spire glowing with a final, satisfied heat. ​"We did it," Leo whispered, looking at the clear sky. "The static is gone." ​"But the mountain is spent," Vane said, looking at the cooling forges. "We're a dead rock in the middle of nowhere." ​I looked at my hands. The orange fire was fading, leaving behind a dull, matte grey. We had won the audit, but the lighthouse was finally out of fuel. As we drifted in the ruins of the High Archive, a new signal appeared on the horizon—not from a Surgeon ship, but from the thousand "Errors" across the galaxy who had just felt the Silence break.

They didn't know they were watching a countdown. I walked over to the bed, collapsing onto the fur throws, still wrapped in the heavy black wool overcoat. I closed my eyes, the crackling of the fire sounding like the distant, echoing explosion of The Sovereign, counting down the hours until two in the morning. The clock was ticking, the empire was burning, and the devil was waiting for his final payment.

The edges of her vision began to fray, dissolving into a thick, unstoppable black mist as the sheer exhaustion of the night finally caught up to her. As her head rolled back against the leather headrest and darkness completely swallowed her consciousness, the last thing she heard was the frantic, deeply worried vibration of his voice echoing through the quiet cabin. "Just hold on, Seven... please, just hold on!"

There at the center of every gaze, he'd forgotten even to set the letter knife down. He opened his mouth, wanting to call my name. But only a broken rasp of air came from his throat. A mouthful of blood surged out, spattering across those scraps of pure-white gown. A ghastly sight. Amid the horrified screams of the whole hall, he collapsed in the church he'd decorated himself. This wedding that no one attended ended, in the end, as a farce. And I, far away in the polar region, was recording the first set of data sent back from the deep sea.

The ground shook, and the sound of the insides of the mountain falling apart rumbled through the entryway. “This is it,” Jo thought to herself. “This is the disaster I knew was on the horizon.” Even though they all believed her aunt wasn’t capable of dying, it certainly seemed now like perhaps they had made a mistake, and she was vulnerable to death, just like everyone else. As the rumbling increased, Cassidy’s IAC went to black, and there was no way of contacting her. In Jo’s experience, that usually meant the worst had happened.

I shaked violently,as soon as I did, I felt him pour in me. He rolled off me ,mye became blurry.. "I love you Michael"I told him exhaustedly. I thought he didn't hear me...I just fell into a deep slumber. "I love you Natty" I heard him say but I was already asleep.