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)
Kaleb frowns. “Found out I’m what?” She doesn’t answer. “Raya …?”
The noises of flames and screaming still reach their ears, as does a sudden roar of a lion rippling through.
Raya sighs. “We don’t have time for this right now.”
Kaleb can’t stop his stomach from spinning. He might be sick. “Okay,” he says, deciding to trust her judgment, and no sooner than the word leaves his mouth, they’re running again.
They pass through an archway into the Midnight Garden. All around, the trees pop in and out of existence, but only some. Others remain when the illusionary ones twist away, the real trees and flowers mixed with the lavish embellishments of Markadian’s talent. Pretty cobblestone roads flickering away to plain cement and brick. Kaleb’s lone eye gazes upward at the glass dome that should show a beautiful array of stars, but all he sees is old rafters and beams stretched over a barren roof of a warehouse.
Like a dream fading away, showing its bare bones, showing its unremarkable truth.
Kaleb, waking up.
“Your life is about to start,” says Raya as they take a corner, hurrying down another path, passing the flickering trees and the real ones, the colorful flowers, the dull ones. “I’m going to find a new life, too, outside of this evil place. I’m never coming back.”
The words seem to chill Kaleb’s bones. “Really?”
“There’s nothing here for me. Not anymore. Perhaps there never was in the first place.”
Suddenly, it’s the escape plan all over again. His fellow Bloods. The night they crept down twisting, changing hallways. The night they trusted their lives to a nurse they’d never met, with dreams of a better life outside of this place.
But this is no test in disguise. This is the real thing.
Kaleb stops again. “We need to get the rest of them.”
Raya stops. “The rest of what now? Kaleb …”
“The Bloods.”
Those words cause Raya’s face to change. For a moment, she shakes her head, surely preparing to tell him no, to say it’s too dangerous, to say there’s no use—but she doesn’t seem able to let the words out.
“All of them,” says Kaleb. “They don’t deserve to die. My friends I made over the years. The ones who tried to escape with me. If they’re still alive … if Ashara didn’t actually kill them … I can’t leave them behind.”
She closes her eyes. “What you’re asking … I don’t know if we can, if it’s even possible, if—”
“You know the way,” he says. “You visited me those times, down in my cell, to hear my music. You can take us there. Let’s free everyone, every last one of them.”
Raya averts her eyes, appearing to regret seeing the truth of it. “Alright,” she at last concedes. “Yes, that seems like the right thing to do. It’s close by, just that way through the infirmary.” She eyes him. “That’s a lot of people, I hope you realize.”
“Every last one of them. We have—” Kaleb fights a sudden lightheadedness. He staggers, squints, grips his head.
Raya touches him. “Kaleb?”
“We have to get—god, it hurts—all of them out of here.”
“We really should clean your wounds. That poor, starved lion really did a number.” Raya looks him over. “Your cuts are so much deeper than I realized. Oh, and … and your eye …”
“I’m fine,” insists Kaleb. “Just feeling my pulse in my face. Or everywhere. Bit difficult … to breathe. I think. Let’s go … Let’s go and save the Bloods. I—I’m totally fine.”
“Kaleb …”
“Totally fine,” he repeats, takes a step.
And collapses.
35.
My Whole World on Fire.
—∙—
The screaming from the burning banquet hall follows Kyle and Tristan no matter where they run, or how many stairs they fly down, or how many flickering hallways. Sitting rooms with shapeshifting walls. Windows that blink in and out of existence like winking eyes. The fighting and mayhem follow.
My love, I assure you, he is fine.
Kyle stops in the middle of a gallery, enormous paintings hanging on the walls, sculptures of beasts and gladiators around them on all sides, real sculptures that the illusions only touch up in color and detail, the air in the room stifling.
Kyle turns onto Tristan. “Tell me where he is.”
My dear friend Raya has him. She rescued him from the cage, he is safe and sound, and—
“As long as he’s still in this fucking place, he is not safe, he is sure as fuck not sound. Where is he?”
Can we find a place to talk? So that I can explain everything? I can’t bear you leaving here without the full truth …
“Where is he?”
And what is your plan once you find him? Return to Nowhere? To your life with Elias? That isn’t a future. Elias is a mortal.
“Where is my brother?”
He will grow old. He will die someday. You and I … Tristan’s eyes beseech him, growing desperate. We are where it all began. I am the one who will always know you, the true you, the mortal you. Your eyes never lie. I see the hope in them. Please don’t be so rash …