This Inevitable Ruin Audiobook の小説・ストーリー

But in the way ruin loves fire. Devotion, after all, is just another kind of destruction.

I knew then, the bond had dissolved. "The marriage is dissolved. The titles are revoked." The lawyer added, arranging the document and immediately getting on his feet. “This meeting officially comes to an end, you can all leave." The Council elders began to disperse, talking in low, hushed tones. Jax stood up, looking like a man who had just survived a shipwreck only to realize he was stranded on a desert island. He looked at me, perhaps wanting to say something, but Silas stood up, and Jax’s courage failed him. He turned and fled the study without a word.

“Let him live a diminished life. That is its own kind of sentence.” Aurelian pulled him gently away from the entrance as he spoke, keeping their movement natural, two people walking together with nowhere urgent to be. “That’s an interesting thought.” Aurelian said. “It became more than a thought the moment I saw him standing in that yard.” Darius’s voice dropped slightly, the lightness leaving it. “We don’t have to kill every single one of them. Killing takes time and carries risk. But ruin?” His eyes sharpened. “Ruin can be slower. More complete. We can take everything that makes a person who they are and leave the shell standing.” He paused.

“You think this is endurance? This is mockery. Scrubbing at my choices as if you can wipe me clean. You want to play defiant, Nyssa? Then understand—I am not a mess to tidy, I am the ruin you kneel in. And if you dare raise your hand against my will again, I will show you what it means to endure me.” My whole body trembled, but I didn’t bow. I pressed the cloth harder into the stain, my voice a hiss between clenched teeth. “Then show me. Break me if you must. But I won’t stop cleaning the blood you dragged into my home. If that makes me a fool, then I’ll be a fool who chooses, not your silent shadow.”

“You’re like a beautiful ruin dressed in fire and silk, and though I see the cliffs ahead, I follow still, longing for the wreckage you’ll leave me in.” Fuck, why was that so… sexy? I wasn't supposed to be getting wet. I had a goal I had to achieve. He raised his eyes to mine, his dark and clouded with lust. “Because, my love, that’s all that is going to come out of this. Ruin and wreckage. For both of us. Fuck, all of us. We’ll be your damnation and vice versa. You want to know why you should run away? Fine, I’ll tell you.”

Whatever knowledge the priestesses had possessed had mostly been lost when the temple burned. I eventually found a book about Arden hidden in a back corner, like someone had wanted to forget it existed. I pulled it down and sat in one of the reading chairs. It described his power in detail, how he’d been unstoppable before the madness took him. How he could kill with just a thought and bend everyone to his will. But it also described his descent into insanity, how grief had shattered him. By the end he couldn’t tell friend from enemy anymore. He’d killed thousands of his own people in his rage, destroyed entire settlements without even meaning to. The book called him a warning about what hap

He let go. I stepped into the chute. The locks hissed shut. As it descended into black, I whispered, just for me, just for the truth that couldn’t be spoken aloud. “Remember this, Damon Thorne: If I don’t make it, it’s not because I lost. It’s because I gambled everything on becoming free.” The floor trembled, and the estate began to burn. And I went to find the man who’d written my ruin, so I could erase his name from the story entirely.

“Dri… baby, please. I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m drunk and miserable without you. Come back to me. I’ll do anything. I swear I’ll—” I hung up before he could finish, my hands trembling. A second later a video came through. I opened it before I could think. The footage was from my old apartment. Carter had broken in. He was smashing things, my favorite mug, the framed photo of my mother, tearing clothes out of my closet, throwing books across the room. His face was twisted with rage. “You think you can replace me?” he screamed at the camera. “I’ll burn everything you own. Come back to me or I swear I’ll find you and make you regret it.”

“His father. Yours. Mine. We just get handed the wreckage and told to make sense of it.” “We’re not just handed wreckage,” I said. “We’re handed each other too. That’s the part I keep coming back to lately. Whatever this costs us before it’s finished, I don’t think I would have survived getting this close to the truth without you standing in it with me.”

They were charred and black at the edges, but they were safe. "I'm fine," I wheezed. Suddenly, a deafening crack echoed through the estate. We watched as the roof of the West Wing caved in completely. A massive plume of sparks shot into the dark sky. The library was gone. Everything I had studied and hidden was buried under the rubble. "It’s over," Gideon whispered. He sat on the gravel, staring at the ruin of his family home. "Everything is gone now." "Not everything," I said softly. I looked at the sketches in his hand.