we know rachel reid keeps joking about “killing ilya” in the next book, and it’s obviously a bit. fandom laughs, we cope, etc.
but rereading the long game… the airplane-crash scare plotline basically confirms something that’s been sitting under ilya/shane the whole time:
grief isn’t just pain for them — it’s a survival threat.
in that chapter, shane’s mind goes to the worst possible outcome and what it would do to him:
“what if ilya had died?”
“shane would have died too. alone, and secretly…”
that line matters because it isn’t poetic. it’s practical horror. at that point they’re still hidden, so shane isn’t imagining a clean grief. he’s imagining the kind that rots quietly. the kind where you keep showing up to life but you’re already gone.
then we get ilya’s side and it’s even more revealing, because ilya does what he always does: he turns love into a vow.
“whatever happens, i am with you. safe in your heart.”
he doesn’t think “i’ll move on.” he thinks “i will stay.” he believes the people you love stay with you until it’s your time to go. he even thinks of his mother, how he still feels her with him, and you can see him already building the same future for shane: i’ll be with you, however i can.
and underneath all of it is regret. ilya begging for more time because he knows he wasted years hiding how much he loved shane—from the world, from shane, from himself. he needs more time not just to be happy… but to love him properly.
so here’s the part i keep coming back to:
if ilya dies first, shane is the one who could survive longer. not because it wouldn’t destroy him—IT WOULD—but because shane has structure. routine. coping skills. people. he’d keep going because that’s what shane does. he’d make survival into an act of love, even if it’s alone, and quiet and private.
but if shane dies first… ilya is not far behind.
Because Ilya loves like a religion. he clings. he mythologizes. he would feel like the world ended. shane isn’t just “the love of his life”—he’s home, safety, identity, the proof that ilya can be chosen and stayed. and if that anchor is gone, ilya doesn’t just lose a partner—he loses the thing holding him to the world. he wouldn’t just be grieving. he’d be disappearing.
So yeah, Rachel jokes. and we laugh .. Ha Ha 😭 (don't even pls).
but canon already laid the groundwork that for both of them, losing the other isn’t just heartbreak.
It’s existential.
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