Prologue:

I could feel the gun in my hand, cool metal against a sweating palm, absolution against utter uncertainty. She was crying, but they were silent tears rolling down her face in swirls of black, like the walls of the room, like the shade of my heart. Beating still, but not for long.

I so longed to reach for her, to steal away that shred of pain she wore. She was broken in a way I myself barely understood, so torn between the life she led and the tantalizing thought of what came after.

But that would only offer her hope, and whom was I do such a thing in a world so hopeless? All that had once held meaning was empty to me now. And her, that girl who had once filled all the space between…she was the emptiest of all.

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