Us Dark Few (Us Dark Few, #1)

by Alexis Patton

She used to believe that love was like the sun. Unseen in the underground. Unwavering. A bright spot within a bleak universe. But love wasn’t like the sun. Love was like gravity. Pulling and tugging you down to the deepest depths, exposing your core vulnerabilities, ripping barriers apart, and leaving you with nothing but space.

I am not a singular object or definition Infinite variations of my soul exist

Reading was like sucking in a gulp of air after holding your breath for a lifetime. Or falling in love. Khalani had never been in love, but she imagined that that’s what it felt like. An emotion that gave your soul wings.

You hide from devils in your sleep. I smile at them in greeting.

“Then don’t give up on your planet if it hasn’t given up on you.”

“Some people might think they were just words on a paper, but it was more for me. Each page was an expression of all the hope and despair in my life, as if the author’s thoughts were an extension of me.

“No, no, dear. Keep going! If you have a thought, do your mind a favor and speak it, so it doesn’t have to house it forever.”

“Because the dead don’t want you to die with them,” Winnie stated. “Love transcends space and time. It holds no bounds or limits. Dear girl, love is stronger than death because if you love someone, they can never truly die. Sarah lives on. In me. And your parents live on in you, too.”

“Yes. You feel out of control, weak. But that isn’t you. You need to take back that control and prove that you are not to be thrown around and discarded. You, Kanes, are strong.”

Justice wasn’t true unless it was coated with blood.

It was the most minimal connection, but those skin cells connected to his were like electrical rods, pulsing and beaming with energy. She didn’t remember what purpose her pinky ever served before it was touched by his.

He pierced through her armored heart and never patched the hole. Why was life always like that? The ones who inflicted the most damage never thought to repair it. They just left you broken for the next person to deal with those twisted scars.

You didn’t have to physically be with someone to know them intimately. When someone touched your mind, kissed your memories, and licked your dreams, you became intertwined in ways beyond the physical.

Some things are better left in shatters, lest they use their strength to topple the world.

How sad a fate, to be born out of pain, only to have the cycle of suffering continue. As if humans pass down the misery inherited from their mothers.

Khalani’s eyes lingered on the bloodstained spot, and a disturbing chill set in her bones, as if the souls of the dead lingered. Watching. Judging the dark few who remained.

In the present, nightmares lived in reality, and the truth resided in fables. And the clock could never be rewound.