Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
“Go!” cries out Kyle to his brother as he keeps his eyes on the lion, banging the cage with the chair over and over. “Up on the bars, if you can! Climb! Get off the ground, fast!” He starts thrusting the chair at the bars, the legs poking through. “Over here, you big fucking cat, over here!!”
Kyle feels his brother’s confusion and panic, blinded by the blood on his face, no idea how deeply the lion’s claws gouged, perhaps stunned he’s still alive. And it is with blind trust that he seizes the chance despite being entirely unaware of who it is that’s helping him, rushing to the farthest side of the stage to climb up the bars. Kyle’s heart pounds as his brother’s hands and feet slip over and over on his pursuit for higher ground.
It is truly Kaleb on that stage. His brother. His real, living, younger brother. Even his clumsiness is familiar, the same as it was when they were teens. The awkward way he grips the bars, in ways that Kyle would have once criticized and coached him through back in the day. How Kaleb is for whatever reason still clutching the neck of the violin with his free hand as if he still needs it, as if saving the instrument is just as important as his own life. His feet, the way they slip and slide down the bars as he climbs them, using every available part of his arms to gain purchase with little to no athleticism, zero grace, trying to hook one of them around the bars on his way up to the top where the bars start to curve. The cage looks over twenty feet tall. It is an unsettling height to hang from with nothing below to protect one’s fall except the jaws of a lion, yet there Kaleb bravely goes, climbing and climbing with all his might.
Kyle’s fascination is shattered by claws lunging out between the bars, causing him to fall back with the chair.
The lion roars at Kyle, pawing at the bars, claws drawn as he snaps his jaws with fury.
But too quickly, the lion loses interest in Kyle, turning back to Kaleb. Only now, Kaleb has climbed high enough to be just out of reach, arms and legs wrapped around a pair of bars as he fights to get even higher, clinging for dear life. The lion is soon under him, circling, licking his wide, magnificent mouth.
Kyle throws the chair aside, rises from the floor to survey the cage with panicked eyes. There doesn’t appear to be a door of any kind. No opening in the bars. No trapdoor.
How did Kaleb or the lion get in?
How can either get out?
The exit must be masked by illusion. Markadian, holding the key to the cage in the form of a trick of the eye.
“Easy, easy!” calls Kaleb down at the lion, shaking, scared. The lion has risen onto his hind legs to swipe at the dangling morsel that is Kaleb. After a few attempts, he sits back to watch, perhaps deciding to wait it out.
And considering how much Kaleb is struggling, there isn’t much of a wait left.
Kyle steps back, shoves through the crowd that’s formed, brings himself face-to-face with Markadian. “Get my brother out of there!” cries Kyle. “Now!”
“Why should I?” asks Markadian with frustrating sweetness as he observes Kyle, delighted. “He is the entertainment. All of my valued guests need entertainment.”
“I’m not asking you again!”
“Or else what? You’ll … hurt me?” Markadian frowns and clicks his tongue. “Hmm, did you not just make a deal with me? Should you hurt me, you and your friends are fair game.”
“Get him out of there!”
“I’d consume you in front of my guests, just like this lion is about to consume your brother. Suck you dry, at last learn what you taste like. Is your word so flimsy, Kyle Amos? Your honor?”
“There’s no fucking honor in that,” barks Kyle, pointing at the stage. “That is what a coward would do, feeding a human to an animal, an innocent human …”
“You know better than I that not one of us is innocent.”
“He is!” Kyle grabs Markadian’s jacket, shoves him against a table. People step back, gawking. “Get him out of that cage!”
Markadian all the while maintains an amused smirk. “And how do you propose I do that? There is no door.”
Kyle glances at the stage. The lion is back to standing on his hind legs and swiping his mighty paws as blood drips down from Kaleb’s face—an unintended invitation. It isn’t just the lion that the bloody display entices. Every single person in the room is on edge, creeping closer to the stage, eyes glued to Kaleb unblinkingly.
Except Ashara, who watches Kyle with intrigue.
“By the way, I have learned a few facts about the lion,” says Markadian in Kyle’s face. “Shall I share?”