Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 329 short novels in Revenge
"I can't breathe," I said into the phone, though the wind did most of the screaming for me. "Dillon, there are flights—" I forced the word out. "You stay. I have to sort things here. Wait for me," Dillon Mercier said, calm and small over the line. I watched the skyline of Reykjavik blur into a smear through the balcony glass. The aurora would come tonight, a promise I'd kept to myself for ten years. Dillon had promised to be there. He didn't take the next flight. He did not keep his...
I am Aarón Cross, a junior psychiatrist in a public psychiatric ward. "I'm the new one," I told them the first week and tried to mean it as a small excuse for my mistakes. I had not yet learned how a ward's quiet rules hide endless storms. The ward had a woman everyone avoided. "She's gentle," Emmett Stevens, one of the male nurses, said the first time he pointed her out. "Dorothy sits with the window closed all day and smiles at the girls like they're birds." He made a face, like he could...
I watched my own life get unpacked like a suitcase I could no longer close. The sofa we bought together had my faint coffee stain on the arm. The game console I gave him sat on the shelf, its little LED breathing softly. The bag of celery dumplings I had wrapped and frozen the night before his birthday hummed in the freezer. Their smell belonged to me. Their shape was my quiet proof that I had tried, again and again, to make a nest where the two of us could survive. Then they sat on that...
“You crawled into my bed and still thought of another man?” He spat the words like venom as he pushed me down. I tasted dirt and shame. I had been traded like a coin, first handed to a penniless scholar who rose to power, then sold to this noble as cover for someone else’s rise. “You promised my father safety,” I said through a broken throat. “You promised him freedom.” “Get out,” the noble snapped. “Don’t make me vomit.” I stood and bowed because my hands were empty and the only...
1 The first time Franco Yang hit me, it was on our bed. His hand closed around my jaw. "What were you thinking about just now?" he asked, low and hard. I stammered. He tightened his grip. "Say it," he ordered. I couldn't. He pinched my neck, pulled my head back until my throat shouted. When he let go the bruise bloomed into a dark, angry moon. "I thought you said something about that chandelier," I said later, voice small. "In my bed, thinking of another man?" he whispered in...
I woke to a photo on my phone and the way a single image can break a life came back to me like a fresh cut. "Who is that?" I said to myself, because a picture of a man cradling a small, sleeping bundle in his arms is not a private thing when it arrives at midnight. "Who is that?" I said out loud, though the room was empty except for the lamp and my fevered breath. "Gideon, are you awake?" I called down the hall, meaning the voice to be steady. It broke. There was silence for a long...
I was twelve the first time the world split open beneath my feet. "Tell me where your parents live," the man with the goat-whisker beard said. His breath smelled like old cigarettes. "I… I don't know," I lied. "Please." "You little liar," he laughed, then hit my face. "You can make dumplings?" "Yes," I said, because the only thing that felt like a rope left in a storm was a memory of flour on my mother's hands. "Make dumplings then," Bowen Clark ordered, and three rifles swung up...
"I warned you to be careful," Quinn said over the phone, his voice low enough to be dangerous and soft enough to make me feel like a child again. "I know," I said. "I'm at the hospital picking up my meds. I'll be home in twenty." "Don't dawdle." I hung up, stepped into the elevator, and the ordinary doors felt like a seam shutting behind me. "Why does it feel like someone's watching?" I told myself. I checked the mirrored walls, the row of buttons, the polite man whose eyes were stuck...
I have a terrible talent for waking up in the plots of other people's tragedies. "I think your mother was beautiful," he said, blood on his lips and a smile that did not reach his eyes. I tightened my fingers so hard I left crescent moons in my palm. He wiped at the red and looked at me like a man naming a prize he already owned and decided he wanted to break. "Shame it's not mine yet," he whispered. "Not now," I breathed. "Not ever." His laugh went thin and sharp. "What did you...
"I want you to understand one thing," I said, "I will not be your backup plan." "You're being dramatic," my mother said. "You're always dramatic." "Then call it what you like," I answered. "But I won't replace anyone's choices with my life." I fold my hands. My voice is thin but steady. Around us, the light in the hallway is yellow and tired. I can still smell the shampoo from the little bubble of soap on Chelsea's head, the one she leaves in the bathroom like a trophy. I look at...
"I said I had to work late," I told myself, though my voice trembled. "You sounded like you'd rather be somewhere else tonight," Samuel said on the phone. "You know the project—" I started. "It’s Valentine's," he cut in. "Be home." "I will," I said, and the word felt small in my mouth. He did not come home that night. A post appeared on someone’s feed an hour later. "Some people just won't listen when I ask them not to come keep me company," it read. "If his girlfriend...
I wake in a pool of light. The room smells like flowers that were meant for a funeral. A bright red sheet is spread under me like a stage. Chains bite my wrists and ankles. People count money in voices that smell like rust. “Tonight’s third lot—Night Lithe,” the auctioneer says, as though this is an ordinary evening. I remember darkness. I remember how a blind world swallowed me last time. I remember the last beat of my real life, when truth reached through whatever light I had and tore...
I remember the first time Henry Harrison looked at me and did not truly see me. "It was three days after the battle," I told no one but the moon. "You do not know what it is to be taken, sir?" He wore silver armor that flashed like knives in the weak sun. He had led the cavalry that broke my father's line. He had taken my younger brother and dragged us into his world of commands and punishments. "You speak freely for a captive," he said once, folding his cloak. "Do you wish to die now,...
"I ripped the veil off and threw it at his polished shoes." "I thought you loved me," I said, and my voice did not sound like mine. "Forbes," I had called him that for years. Forbes West stood there in his wedding suit, flawless, and his eyes were clean of any warmth. "Why?" I asked again. He looked at me like he was reading a script. "Therese, falling from heaven to hell hurts, doesn't it?" I should have hit him. I should have run. Instead I let the world tilt and let the guards...
I remember the smell of the anniversary candle: sweet and a little smoky, like the end of something I thought would last forever. "You smell like a bar," I said when he came in. "Long day," Wyatt Daniel answered. "They dragged me into an inspection meeting. I'm sorry I missed dinner. I'll make it up to you." "Tomorrow," I said flatly. "We agreed." He kissed my forehead like he always did, soft and automatic. His hands were warm. His voice was steady. It was the kind of sorry that...
I remember the weight of the wooden basin on my feet, the way the boards beneath me tilted as I pretended to gather lotuses. "Smile, Leia," Lily whispered, pressing a sour plum into my palm. "You sure this won't show?" I asked, tasting the puckering sweetness and feeling small relief. My belly was five months round, and every taste felt like a risk. "Don't look so pale," Lily said. "You worry too much." "Better to worry than to be careless," I answered. "Petra is not kind. You know...
I carried him through the snow. "It is heavy." I said nothing else, because the city had already turned its face. Snow fell in deep, soft sheets and hid my footprints as if it would hide the world’s opinion of us both. "Do not let go," I told the corpse, though I did not know if he could hear. My fingers had stopped feeling because the cold wanted everything and gave nothing back. They said the snow was a good omen. "A good harvest," the town criers shouted on the warm days before the...
"Did you know?" Margherita said from the doorway, the sarcasm so soft it sounded like a knife. "Know what?" I tried not to let my pen tremble. My fingers were wet with sweat even though the exam hall was full of air. "About the math problem?" "No." She stepped closer. "That Dad and Mom—actually, your real parents—are coming tomorrow." I didn't look up. "I heard." She laughed in the kind of way that had always made me small. "Of course you did. They called. They're so rich. They have...
I was supposed to marry once—once, in the simple way children bind futures with ink and promise. "You will be his," my mother had whispered long ago. "And he will be ours." "It will be all right," Fabian had said the day he asked my hand in that small, reckless way boys do in summer. He had been wearing the metal of a young guard then, sunlight catching the edge of his helmet. His voice had been steady. "Arianna, will you trust me?" "I will," I told him. I was twelve. The word was...
"I cut meat for a living," I said, and the knife in my hand flashed like a promise. "I do not belong in a house of silk." "You fuss like you do," my father said, spitting pork fat on his thumb. "But you can act the part for a day." "I won't be a bird in a gilded cage," I told him. "You will do as you're told," Finch Choi warned, and he did not bother to hide the way his voice shook. "You will go to Cooper Carr's house. They'll call you their daughter and you will wait. One year. Do the...
