When Her Death Couldn't Break Him Novel Novels & Stories

The slender neck I had held in my hands a thousand times. ​She wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking out the window, toward the ocean. Toward the fire. ​She wasn't dead. ​She had never been in that water. ​The glass frame shattered in my hands, the tablet screen spiderwebbing under the sudden, brutal pressure of my grip. White hot rage, cold realization, and a sickening, terrifying surge of hope violently collided in my chest. ​She had faked her death. She had let me grieve. She had let me drown in remorse, let me carry the weight of her blood on my hands for half a year, while she planned... what?

This—this—was what broke him. The thought of her lying alone, afraid. The knowledge that she believed loving him might cost her life. His chest ached, deep and sharp, as if something inside him had cracked and kept cracking with every breath. He wanted to go back in, to hold her, to roar that he’d burn the stars themselves before he let death take her. But he stayed where he was. Because she asked him to. And because if he broke her wish now, she’d never trust him with anything again.

“They remember her strength. Her beauty. Not the way she broke trying to love all of us. Not the way she shattered when she realized there wasn’t enough of her to go around.” I closed my eyes, but the image of her didn’t fade. “You’re close, Elarys,” he said softly. “Closer than you think.” And then he was gone. The air barely stirred. The door never opened. But I was alone again. And I couldn’t unsee the ending I was headed toward. Then his voice echoed faintly, just before it faded entirely: “She broke trying to be enough for all of us.” I stilled. That’s what he thought? After all this time? That she died because she wasn’t enough for them? Because she loved them too much, because she was

"I'd keep looking if you want, but I won't take more of your money pretending I'm close to something I'm not. In my experience, Mr. Hart, when someone vanishes this cleanly after an accident, it usually means one of two things. Either she had serious help from someone with real resources, or she didn't survive it and whoever's covering the tracks isn't interested in you finding that out either." I didn't answer that. I didn't let myself answer that, not even inside my own head, because the alternative to believing she was alive somewhere was a thought I had no idea how to carry alongside everything else I was already failing to hold up. I left his office with the same empty folder I'd been c

Yes, he’d seen the news the night before, when the fire was barely hot. He’d gotten a call, he’d seen the pictures first-hand while Solene was in the shower when they got back from his launching. And it’d taken everything in him to have some shut-eye beside Solene without tearing something apart. Because the moment he saw those pictures, he knew exactly who had taken them. His jaw flexed as he leaned back into the sofa. “You know that thing is going to kill you,” he said flatly. The woman shrugged, taking another slow drag. “Something has to kill a person, right?”

, I said, wishing that he would stop, “ look, I love you, so much, but I can't. I just can't” “ What do you mean you can't?” He asked, obviously confused, and I just felt sorry for him. I felt pity for him. He didn't understand, and he never will. The fact that my heart had been broken beyond repair, the fact that my mind and body would never allow me to become so vulnerable before anyone again, the fact that Hakim killed me, not with a sword or a gun, but with his eyes, and the fact that even though his hazel eyes looked nothing like those of Hakim, it still reminded me of him, of that day when he finally broke the spine of my heart, along with my ribs. He didn't understand, he never will u

⁠ Some pages hold only a si‍ngle sentence‌, but⁠ the‌y hit harder th‌an anything e⁠lse. She wr‍ites about w‍anting to die and prayi‌ng for it. Bel‍ievi‍ng death is the⁠ o‍nly way she will e‍ver be free. I reach into my jacket and pull out my flask, un‌screwing the‍ cap with stiff fi‌ngers. The bu‍rn of the alcohol is the only‌ thing that keeps⁠ me from s‍lamming‍ the book shut right then but the⁠re are too many pages.

He said my name and still gave her what used to be mine. And I watched it all. I watched her hands where mine used to rest. Her lips on skin that once belonged to me. And I broke. Goddess, I broke. I broke like glass being thrown against stone shards, flying in every direction, slicing through everything I had left, and I had no control over it. Every part of me begged for it to stop. But it didn’t. I thought dying would be the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I was wrong.

She doesn't have to be scared, they can never happen as long as I’m still alive. I place my hand on hers, But don’t worry,” I add firmly. “I’ll never allow that.” Her eyes lock with mine as he nods unsurely, then hesitates before asking, “So… what happened next? Did he really kill her?” I exhale deeply. “No.” “Remember? He was deeply in love with her—he couldn’t do it. He loved her too much, cherished her too much. No matter what she did to him, he couldn’t kill her with his own hands. So… He let her go, giving her the freedom she had always wanted. But this was behind my grandfather’s, Warren Zephyr’s back.

Fractured. She didn’t speak again. Not for a long time. She just looked at him—truly looked. As if trying to remember what they were before the world started burning. He broke first. "You saw something, didn’t you?" Her lips parted, and for a moment, she said nothing. Then— "Aedric’s death wasn’t the end of it. There’s more coming. Worse. And I don’t know if we’ll survive it." "Then let me fight beside you. Damn the curse. Damn the mark."