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)
“Rash? You’re gonna school me about being—” Kyle scoffs and shakes his head. “You better tell me where he is before I go and do something to you that you’ll regret.”
Think about it, please, my love …
Kyle grips Tristan’s shirt with his hands, brings their faces close, teeth gritted. “I am not your fucking love.”
Tristan’s misty blue eyes pour with sorrow, with urgency. When we find him, I think I know a perfect place we could all go and hide, you and your brother and me and Raya … at least until the dust settles … and there will be so much dust after this night …
“I’m not hiding anywhere with you,” hisses Kyle. “Not now and not ever again. When I find my brother and get outta here, we are gone for good. You won’t even be a thought.”
This place can really twist a person up. I am a villain in so many stories here. I am a hero, too. Kyle, you’re the only person I’ve ever—
“I swear to you, if you say another word …”
I still love you.
The next thing he knows, his fist has gone swinging, meets Tristan’s cheek, throws him back so far, he flies to the ground at the foot of a magnificent statue of a monster. It is an absolute shock to Tristan, his eyes opening, realizing he has been struck by Kyle. He brings a hand to his cheek, lips parted.
For an instant, Kyle regrets it. Then the anger takes over again, he crouches before Tristan, grabs the neck of his shirt even tighter. “This is not like last time. When you talked. And I talked. And we kissed. And buried feelings were still swimming around.” A tear falls from Kyle’s eyes, a tear he didn’t know was there. He wipes it away angrily, steels his voice from shaking. “I’m saying goodbye to you. Forever. For-fucking-ever. You do not get to come back from this, Tristan.”
Tristan’s eyes shine like two white-blue pools, gazing into Kyle’s, frozen in place, mouth parted, petrified by his words.
“Is it finally hitting you?” asks Kyle, his voice suddenly soft. “That you’ve lost me for good? That you and I are over? That in a world full of things you seem not to care about at all, in all your carefree indifference … the one thing … the one and only thing you may have actually loved … now despises you? You said my eyes never lie, right? Look in my eyes. LOOK IN MY EYES!” His fist squeezes Tristan’s shirt at the collar, nearly choking him. “All I feel … for you anymore … Tristan … ‘my love’ … is hatred.”
Tristan’s nostrils flare with emotion.
Tears fill his eyes.
Kyle … His lips quiver. He can’t in any way pretend not to be affected by those words, to play it cool, to make a joke. Don’t you realize … Don’t you realize by now that I’d … that I would set my whole world on fire … to make up for what I’ve done to you …?
“Yes.” Kyle grows closer, quieter. “And it still wouldn’t be enough.”
The words are another punch, right across the face, worse than the real one. Tristan chokes, sucking in a gasp through his clenched teeth, shaking. His eyes shatter right in front of Kyle, despite his efforts to hold back, and tears begin to fall.
Kyle stares into his melting eyes, hating that the first thing he realizes is how beautiful Tristan looks when he’s crying.
He also realizes one other thing.
He has never seen Tristan cry. Truly cry.
His spirit, broken before his eyes.
It’s almost enough to dislodge Kyle from his anger entirely.
He lets go of Tristan’s shirt, stands, wipes tears out of his own eyes, turns away. To the sound of Tristan’s soft sobbing, to the tiny rasps of his breath, to the music of his quiet weeping that Kyle has never heard, he makes the decision to continue on alone. He must seek out his brother on his own, even if it takes searching every room and hallway in this place. The more the illusions fall apart, surely the easier it will become, no more lies of the architecture itself to hinder his way.
But as soon as Kyle starts to go, he hears a voice.
“K-Kyle …”
He stops.
His Reach is arrested by something brighter than sorrow, sharp enough to cut through—something from Tristan. It’s just like bravery, nearly identical, yet cloaked in childlike fear.
Like the terror of a ghost in the night. A monster under the bed. Something primal and innocent and untouched by ego.
Something as naked as a baby’s cry.
It’s Tristan’s voice.
His real voice.
Kyle turns, faces him.
Tristan is still on the ground. Blood dresses the corner of his nose and lip where Kyle hit him. His cheek smarts, red and bright. Eyes shimmering, a tear resting on his cheek like a tiny diamond, hanging on. “K-Kyle …” he says again, with his real voice, not his words from the mind. It takes him great effort to speak the normal way. It sounds different than Kyle expected, too. Raw. Dusty. In a way huskier, yet still somehow carrying Tristan’s familiar loftiness.