Page 9 of Inevitable Endings
Soft footsteps crunching through the snow. Bare feet, light as a whisper.
I look up, and my heart stops.
Isabella.
She steps forward, the wind catching the hem of her dress. It should be white. It should be clean. But it’s soaked through with blood, her blood. It drips from the fabric, trailing behind her like ink spilling across a blank page. Marking her steps.
The storm howls around us, but she is silent.
Her lips move, forming my name, but no sound comes out. Her hands tremble, lifting a gun, a small, silver thing that gleams in the moonlight. The same moon that once bathed her in softness, in warmth. But here, it’s cold. Distant. A witness to something I don’t want to see.
‘‘Isabella,’’ I rasp, my throat raw. ‘‘Put it down.’’
Her shoulders shake. Her fingers tighten on the trigger.
Behind her, the shadows move, a shadow moves.
Her lips move again, a silent plea, a warning.
I lunge forward, fighting against the restraints, my body screaming in protest, but it’s useless. The chains bite deeperinto my skin. I can’t reach her.
The gunshot shatters the silence.
And I fall.
The snow rushes up to meet me, but it’s no longer soft. It’s cold, merciless, endless. The sky above fades, the stars swallowed by the dark.
I gasp awake.
The air in the cell is thick with dampness, the scent of rust and stone pressing down on me. My body jerks violently, my pulse hammering, my breath ragged and uneven. My skin is damp with sweat, but the cold still seeps into my bones.
I press a shaking hand to my chest, the phantom pain of the bullet still there.
I never dreamed before. Not once. Sleep had always been a void; blank, empty, a place of nothingness.
But since being here, all I do is dream of her.
And every time, I lose her.
The weight of it claws at my ribs, sharp and suffocating. The ache in my chest has nothing to do with the cold or the bruises or the hunger.
Love is not a weakness. It is not the naive belief in a gentle hand or the soft promise of salvation. No, love is raw. Love is power. A force stronger than any chain, deeper than any wound. It’s the fire that burns through you, turning flesh into steel, spirit into iron.
Before her, I was a shadow. The darkness had no depth, and the world had no weight. I walked through it like a ghost, taking what I needed, breaking what I wanted, never truly feeling anything, because I didn’t have to.
I didn’t need anything.
Then she entered my life, a light that shone in ways I never expected, mysolnyshko. But this light, it didn’t burn away the darkness. It consumed it. She didn’t soften me. She didn’t try tofix the pieces that were missing. She made me stronger. She gave me purpose, a will that could not be bent, a fire that could not be extinguished.
I was always told love weakens. But my father was wrong: her love doesn’t make me weak. It makes me unstoppable.
I can feel it in my bones now, that pulse of strength. It doesn’t matter where I am or what they do to me. The chains, the blood, the lies, they all pale in comparison to the force inside me now.
I will never be defeated for I know love now.
They should be terrified, I’ll go to the depths of Hell for her.
Chapter 5
