Breaking Dawn (Twilight, #4)

by Stephenie Meyer

How did people do this—swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had—with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me? If it weren’t Edward out there, if I didn’t know in every cell of my body that he loved me as much as I loved him—unconditionally and irrevocably and, to be honest, irrationally—I’d never be able to get up off this floor.

Fire and ice, somehow existing together without destroying each other. More proof that I belonged with him.

This time I wanted to obey. The murderer stared past Rosalie’s shoulder at me, its gaze more focused than any newborn creature’s gaze should be. Warm brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate—the exact same color that Bella’s had been. My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning. It was a glowing.

Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space. I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was. Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing—to the very center of the universe. I could see that now—how the universe swirled around this one point. I’d never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.

And, for a never-ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and my soundless shrieks, pleading for death to come. Nothing else, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. One infinite moment of pain.

I am purely full of joy, because I am missing nothing. No one has more than I do now.”

I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.

It seemed hideously ironic that the puzzle pieces would fit together just in time for all of them to be destroyed.

And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.