The Other Half Book Novels & Stories

It was my turn to ask him that question. He stared at me with a distant expression before nodding at me. "Don't mind me, let's keep reading," he announced. Then he looks back down at the paper. "Cause of death— " We both stopped reading both out loud and inwardly as I had been doing. That part of the paper had been ripped out. "Th— there has to be the other half in the book," I stared in desperation. But Kael did not find the other half. It was almost as of it never existed in the first place. Kael dropped the book and threw me a worried glare.

The slightly bitter liquid slid down my throat, but the aftertaste carried a hint of sweetness. It felt wonderful. Freed from my parasitic marriage and that disgusting scumbag, my life as Helena Sutton was only just beginning.

His damp bangs clung to his forehead, and the sunlight streaming through the window caught his freshly washed hair, making it gleam like polished gold. At that moment, I suddenly realized that Theo would make a good partner.

The entire hall smells of old books and bleach. Row after row of neatly lined books with their spines facing outward, colour-coded with dots, fiction section arranged in alphabetical order. She scanned slowly until her eyes met Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Half of a yellow sun". She took it out, and then went behind in search of a place to sit and devour the book.

Mom used to say there was no point for a girl to buy property in a big city and that there would always be a room for me at home. I had believed her. I thought she just didn’t want me to exhaust myself, that she meant home would always be my safe harbor. However, when I actually returned, I realized not a single tile in that house belonged to me, let alone a room. Lying on the soft bed in my own apartment, I remembered how my coworkers had reacted recently when they saw me. "Wow, Elowen, you look totally different lately. You’ve gotten prettier. What are you using?"

“Okay, Sky, just show him the photo of the book you took. That way, he’ll see it’s nothing suspicious and everyone can calm the hell down.” She immediately shook her head. “No, I can’t.” I frowned. “Why not?” She hesitated. Then, leaning in, she whisper-yelled, “Because… because it’s a photo of an erotic book and it would be embarrassing to show him that I’m interested in reading it.” I pressed my lips together so hard I nearly pulled a muscle trying not to laugh. “Sky, be serious. You—the same woman who once made eye contact with a waiter while ordering ‘extra creamy’ pasta without breaking a sweat—are embarrassed about an erotic book? This is your line?”

"You are a half-blood, Elif. Torn between two worlds. Too human for the wolves. Too wolf for the humans. You've spent your entire life feeling like an error." My throat tightened. "How do you know that?" "Because I once walked in your shoes. I am also a half-blood." He sat on a fallen log, gesturing for me to join him. "I lead because I am a half-blood, not in spite of it." He scooped up a handful of soil, letting it sift through his fingers. "The purebloods deem us inferior. Broken. But they are mistaken. We are not broken, Elif. We are bridges."

I'll head back once I wrap things up here. On my way out, I slipped off the ring I had worn since the wedding and dropped it into a trash can by the door. I didn't need something that belonged to more than one person. Not a ring. Not a man. When I got home, I packed up everything Miles and I had bought together and threw it out. By the time I finished, half the apartment was empty. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I could breathe. The next evening, when I got back from work, Miles was standing outside the door. He was wearing a gray shirt I had never seen before. A faint, sweet scent lingered on him.

"We don't have to get divorced. I've cut all ties with Henry. We can go back to how we were." If she had said that long ago, I might have been moved. That promise was the whole point of the act. In the end, that amnesia act showed me the truth instead. I fished my phone out and played a voice recording. It was the night I stayed in the storage room, the night they went at it in the main bedroom. Every passing second of that recording drained more color from her face. "I've signed the papers, and I don't need the house. All I need is for you to disappear from my sight and never show up in my world again."

I kept my guard up in case she tried anything funny because no one knew when her switch could just flip, "What did you want to talk to me about?" "A while back I found a book. It was two halves, Sylvain found the other half. The half he found was all about fae whereas the half I found was about your kind. I've been studying it ever since and going through the spells and facts listed inside. It's written in a very old language which I can read but I'm starting to realize the spells in there can be translated and used in multiple ways," she supplied, halting on the landing of the second floor.