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Some loves are written in ash. Some curses are older than gods. Lyra has always dreamed of fire. In the flicker of candlelight, in the shadow of strangers, she sees pieces of lives she has never lived—deaths she cannot explain, desires that feel older than her own body. When a stranger appears at a funeral, watching her with eyes that burn like centuries, the dreams sharpen into memory. Eryx is the man who does not die. Scarred by the hand of a god, he has walked through endless lifetimes searching for her—the woman he is doomed to love, doomed to lose. Each time they find each other, passion ignites, and each time it ends in blood. His immortality is both gift and curse, binding them in an endless cycle of reunion and ruin. But now, the god who cursed him has awakened. Whispers crawl through Lyra’s dreams, offering freedom at an impossible price: betrayal, blood, and a blade that can sever eternity itself. To break the chain, Lyra must decide whether love is salvation… or the final trap. Dark, gothic, and aching with desire, The Immortal: Until the End of Every Life is a story of obsession, sacrifice, and a love fierce enough to defy gods—even if it burns the world to ash.
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Seitenzahl: 110
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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CLAIRE SMITH
THE IMMORTAL
Until the End of Every Life
First published by GINNIE WRITES PUBLICATIONS 2025
Copyright © 2025 by CLAIRE SMITH
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
CLAIRE SMITH asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
CLAIRE SMITH has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Claire Smith can be contacted via Email: [email protected]
First edition
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy Find out more at reedsy.com
Here lies a love that would not die, yet could never live.
In every lifetime, I found you. In every lifetime, I lost you.
Death took her a thousand times. Immortality kept him chained to each one.
Their curse was not life or death, but always, always—each other.
Remember us, for we were never allowed to forget.
Love eternal. Peace denied.
Contents
Prologue
I. PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
II. PART TWO
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
III. PART THREE
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
IV. PART FOUR
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Prologue
The First Death
The chapel smelled of iron and smoke. Not incense—blood. Always blood. Seraphine knew before she pushed the doors open that he was inside. The air trembled with him, the way it always did when his temper spilled into the world. The candles on the altar guttered like frightened children. Shadows clung to the vaulted ceiling as if the stone itself dared not look down upon what he had done.
And there he was.
Eryx.
Her lover, her ruin.
He was kneeling before the altar, shirt soaked in crimson, hands pressed to a chalice that dripped thick and black. Not wine. Not holy water. Something older. Something that hissed her name even as it writhed in his palms.
She froze. Every part of her wanted to run, but she couldn’t—not from him, not from this. She had loved him too long. She had loved him too blindly.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice ragged, as if the words tore at his throat.
“And yet I am,” Seraphine answered, stepping closer. Her bare feet left little crescents of blood across the stone where the chalice had spilled. “What have you done, Eryx?”
He looked at her then, truly looked, and for a heartbeat she thought she saw regret. But it was gone as quickly as it came, swallowed by hunger—hunger for her, for life, for something more than either of them was ever meant to touch.
“I asked for forever,” he said. “And they listened.”
Her pulse hammered in her ears. “And the price?”
Eryx rose, towering, beautiful and monstrous, his body lit by the flickering candles. His fingers trembled as they reached for her cheek, smearing her skin with blood.
“You, Seraphine,” he whispered. “Always you.”
She slapped him. Not hard enough to break him—nothing ever could—but enough to leave the sound of her anger ringing in the hollow chapel.
“You gave me to them?” she demanded. “You traded my soul for your eternity?”
He caught her wrist before she could strike him again. His grip was iron, but his eyes were frantic. “Not your soul. Only your life. You will be born again, Seraphine. Again and again. Each lifetime, I will find you. Each lifetime, you will return to me.”
Her throat closed. She tried to pull away, but he dragged her closer, pressing her body against his chest, forcing her to feel the truth of him—his wild heartbeat, the unnatural strength in his limbs, the fire that already burned beneath his skin.
“Don’t you see?” he begged. “This is mercy. We will never end. Death cannot take you from me.”
She stared at him as though he were a stranger. Perhaps he was. The man she loved was gone, replaced by a creature with eternity in his veins and madness in his eyes.
“Eryx,” she whispered. “You damned us both.”
He kissed her then, brutal and desperate, as if he could silence her with hunger. She tasted iron, salt, and something sharp enough to cut her tongue. His kiss had always been demanding; now it was consuming. He devoured her, lips and teeth and the ragged sounds of his breath, as though she were the only tether left between him and the abyss.
She let him kiss her—let him, for one last heartbeat, before she bit down hard enough to draw blood.
He pulled back, startled. The wound healed almost instantly. His immortality was already knitting him together, proof of the curse in his veins.
“You cannot hurt me anymore,” he said, voice breaking.
“No,” she agreed. Her eyes burned. “But I can still leave you.”
The god chose that moment to appear.
The flames guttered low, plunging the chapel into a red twilight. From the smoke above the altar a figure unfolded, taller than any man, faceless, cloaked in ash and shadow. Its voice was everywhere at once, echoing against the ribs of the chapel.
A bond forged. A price paid. The immortal rises.
Eryx sank to his knees, head bowed. “I will serve. Only grant me her.”
The god’s laughter was like bones snapping.
She will die, as she always must. And you will live, as you always shall. This is the tether. This is the curse.
Seraphine’s scream tore from her throat, but no sound carried. The god’s presence pressed the air from her lungs, suffocating, immense. She stumbled, clutching at the altar to stay upright.
“Take me instead!” she gasped. “Take my soul, take my memory, take everything, just—don’t bind me to him.”
The god ignored her plea.
Eryx rose again, face wild, eyes blazing like a storm. He lunged for her, clutching her arms, shaking her. “Don’t you see? It means you’ll always return to me. Nothing—not even death—can keep us apart.”
She spat in his face. “Then death will have to try harder.”
She tried to run, but he was faster. Immortality made him a predator she couldn’t outrun. He caught her in the aisle, dragging her back, arms crushing her against him. She kicked, clawed, screamed.
“Let me go, Eryx!”
“Never,” he growled. “I would rather kill you a thousand times than let you leave me once.”
And he did.
He didn’t mean to—not entirely. But his grip was too tight, his hunger too fierce, his kiss too deep. She choked on the blood in her throat, gasping against his mouth. His arms trembled, crushing her ribs, snapping bone. Her last breath left her body with his name.
Eryx realized too late that she had gone limp. He tore himself back, staring at her slack face, her bloodied lips, her broken body in his arms.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
But the god’s laughter filled the chapel again.
So it begins.
Eryx clutched her corpse against his chest, rocking like a man insane. Her hair tangled across his face, her blood staining his immortal skin. He pressed his lips to her temple, her mouth, her throat, whispering every apology too late.
“Come back to me,” he begged. “Come back.”
And somewhere, in the stillness between heartbeats, her soul stirred.
The god leaned close, faceless and vast, and its voice slid into Eryx’s ear like a knife.
She will come back. In another body. In another time. And you will find her. Again. And again. And again.
Until eternity breaks.
Eryx clutched Seraphine’s body tighter, as if he could chain her to him by will alone. His tears streaked her blood. His heart—immortal, cursed—kept beating when hers had already gone still.
And in that endless moment, he swore an oath.
“I will find you, Seraphine,” he whispered. “In every life. In every death. You are mine.”
The god’s shadow dissolved into the smoke of extinguished candles. The chapel was silent once more.
But the curse had begun.
And in every life that followed, she dreamed of the man who killed her, and the kiss that would not die.
I
Part One
The Endless Man
Chapter 1
The Funeral Stranger
The rain had not stopped all morning.
It slicked the stones of St. Armand’s cemetery, turning the pathways into black rivers that reflected the weeping angels and moss-choked crosses. Umbrellas bobbed like dark blooms among the mourners. The sky was heavy with a weight that pressed against the lungs, as if even heaven mourned the dead.
Lyra Anselm hated funerals. She hated the silence, the hollow words, the way grief curled into polite phrases. But she had been paid to be here, her sketchbook clutched against her ribs like a shield. A “mourning painter,” the obituary had called her. Families wanted more than photographs of their dead. They wanted an artist to capture something else: the spirit, the essence, the echo that lingered in the face of the lifeless.
She hated funerals. But she needed the money more than she needed to breathe.
The coffin rested beneath a canopy of black cloth, pale roses spread like broken bones across its surface. She studied the man within—skin waxen, lips gray, hands folded with false serenity. She would sketch him later, in the quiet of her studio, when the whispers of the mourners no longer pressed into her ears. For now, she observed. She memorized.
It was then she felt it.
A presence.
Not the warmth of another body standing near, but something heavier, colder, like a shadow draped over her shoulders. Her pulse leapt. Slowly, carefully, she lifted her gaze from the coffin.
He stood at the edge of the cemetery.
Tall, dark-clad, no umbrella. The rain clung to him as if the sky itself dared not soak his skin. His hair was black, heavy, plastered to his brow, but his eyes—God, his eyes—burned even from across the distance. Not blue, not gray, but a color that shifted, alive, like smoke lit from within. They held hers with the weight of recognition.
Her stomach knotted. She knew that face.
But she didn’t.
It was impossible. She had never seen him before. And yet every nerve in her body screamed otherwise.
She looked away too quickly, ashamed of her own reaction.
The priest droned on about ashes and dust, but Lyra barely heard him. She felt the stranger’s gaze as if it were a hand pressed to the back of her neck. She dared not glance again.
Until she did.
He had moved closer.
No sound of footsteps, no splash in the rain, but suddenly he was no longer at the cemetery’s edge. He was within the crowd, standing among the mourners as though he belonged, though no one else seemed to notice. Their eyes slid over him as if he were invisible, a shadow passing too quickly to catch. Only Lyra saw him. Only Lyra felt the thrum of his presence in her bones.
The rain slackened to a mist by the time the priest began his final blessing. Lyra tried to listen, but the words blurred into rhythm, too practiced to hold meaning. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. She had heard it so often that the phrases clung to her like an old melody she could not shake.
She should have been sketching—the profile of the deceased, the slope of his hands, the hollow of his eye sockets—but her pencil refused to obey. Her fingers trembled too much. All she could think of was the stranger.
She dared another glance.
He hadn’t moved. At least, she didn’t think so. He stood several rows back, taller than the other mourners, rain plastering his coat to his frame. There was nothing remarkable about his clothing: black wool, old-fashioned cut, boots dulled by mud. But he wore it as though it had been tailored to his bones. He did not belong among the living, and yet he looked more solid than anyone else there.
When his gaze caught hers again, she felt the sharp shock of recognition strike her chest. It was like drowning in a memory she didn’t own.
She looked away so fast her neck ached.
Focus, Lyra. Just focus.
She forced her hand to sketch. Quick lines, unsteady, just enough to capture the body before it was lowered. Normally, drawing soothed her. Today it only exposed her weakness—the way her strokes faltered, the graphite smudged. Her work was never sloppy. Until now.
“Are you all right?”
