Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
Am I sick?
Is something wrong with me?
First the disappearing shop and now this?
Cyrus stands, throws his jacket back like he’s annoyed it’s heavy, and starts walking decisively across the flames that suddenly carry him across the Sound.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper to myself. “None of this is real, I’m in a coma or something.” I smack my thigh then pinch my arm.
Rat stops moving. He sits by my feet and watches while I move towards the rocky edge.
Bast somehow makes it out to me and walks, slowly, resolutely toward the cliff and sits, like he’s waiting for his owner, like this is normal.
My voice is stuck in my throat as Cyrus moves across the flames, his coat blowing in the wind, his expression fierce. Oh, shit his coat is on fire too!
He’s angry.
An angry god among men.
Reality is gone.
All I have is fantasy.
All I have is him walking.
I start to count the steps he takes to keep myself from screaming, from freaking out, calling the cops, from getting admitted to the psych ward.
My hands can’t help but cling to the rock harder like it can somehow anchor me in my own reality rather than this.
Cyrus stops halfway on the flaming bridge and looks up. I half expect fire to start falling from the sky, but instead he kneels on both knees like he’s about to pray, immersed in both flame and water.
The sky rains fire.
And while I’m watching, he opens his eyes. They lock onto mine, and I’m burning in them.
Singed alive with the heat of them.
I start to walk.
And I don’t stop until I’m at the cliff, near the path’s edge, standing.
Bast meows at my feet.
Rat nips at my ankles.
I take the first stair.
The second.
I take the third, and I don’t move my gaze from Cyrus’s. His eyes swirl with madness.
And something tells me, that in seeking his wrath, I’ll finally be free.
CHAPTER 15
CYRUS
“Fear not death for the hour of your doom is set and none may escape it.” -Volsunga Saga, ch. 5
Iknew she was there the minute Ken threw the second tree into the sea.
I knew she was watching, and what’s worse? I wanted her to see. I wanted to reveal everything. Expose myself.
Bleeding.
Tortured.
Dead.
Yet alive.
And say, “This is me. This is what you signed on for, watch me rule the world.”
Instead, I decided to walk across the old bridge. It never really left, it’s always existing as long as you have the sun, and maybe I’m just exhausted, tired from all the manipulations, the sacrifices, the living only to kill.
I exhale. Hilarious, how humans cling to life as if it’s something so wonderful when all I want to do is to burn.
I no longer feel the way I used to. I no longer find joy in the things I created or had. Food is dirt. Sex is…well I’ve never gone there with any of them. I’m not supposed to, and I don’t break the rules even if they are my own.
She’s the one who tempts me to keep her. Tempts me to show her my power and get on with living with humanity.
Is it lust?
Or something else?
I’ll murder Enki if he poisoned my brain by way of wine the way he did her, because something seems off.
I know everything, so why don’t I know her better? Why can’t I understand why she’s standing on that cliff?
Slowly, she walks toward the stairs and takes a step. Then another.
“That’s new,” I whisper to myself, intrigued why she isn’t screaming and running toward the house, calling the cops, or at the very least fainting against the grass.
Her steps continue until she’s at the bottom by the dock. Her eyes stare at the water, and slowly, they raise and lock on mine.
Fury.
Anger.
Rage.
She gazes at it.
She sees it.
She sees me.
Her eyes illuminate a bright blue and green, and this small human starts to walk toward me, step after step until she stops at the fire flicking at the sand of the beach.
I imagine she’s afraid.
I can almost smell the fear.
Instead, she leans down and presses a palm toward the heat, I feel that caress of her palm all the way down my body as if she’s doing it to me. After all, the fire is me, it’s always been me, the one connection between me and the sun, the one thing anchoring me to this world.
A groan escapes from between my parted lips and causes the waves to crash over the bridge.
She quickly stands and takes a step into the water near the flaming bridge.
Home.
It’s the only word that comes to me, as if the bridge needed her, as if I needed her.
It’s all my imagination, but what a lovely fairytale. With its clean happy endings and love.
A lie.
After all, every one of us lies in order to stay alive. So I watch her walk toward me in the water. I flick my wrists and force the flames to harden to an ice walkway as she makes her way toward me like she didn’t just see what I did.