Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Like… I’m not a slave caretaker of you or Saint Mark’s. I’m really a caretaker of the prisoner slaves down in the Bottoms.”
This makes me tired. Life is wearing me down. I can feel it. It’s slow and gradual—so much so that it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when things passed a point of no return. But we’re there. The line has been crossed. There is no going back now. The fuckin’ sanctuary is crumbling, the curse is breaking, and nothing is going to turn out the way I want it to.
Not that I’ve spent any amount of time dreaming of what freedom from the curse looks like. I haven’t. I gave up hope on breaking my curse hundreds of years back, at least. But in the beginning, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what comes next.
What comes next?
Losing. That’s what comes next.
It’s funny, too. This whole voice thing with me, and Pie’s spelling, and even Tomas being able to leave the sanctuary as a human—it felt so much like winning a few weeks ago.
But it isn’t. Wasn’t then, either.
It’s just… we didn’t understand what was happening.
My voice is destroying the sanctuary.
Pie’s spelling is just drawing her closer to her real destiny.
And Tomas… Tomas isn’t ever going to stop being a dragon. No matter how many different bodies he inhabits. He is… an evil thing. And I’m not saying that to be disparaging. I like Tomas. Maybe I even love Tomas. But he’s a fuckin’ dragon. I think he’s held it together pretty well over the centuries. He’s found ways to cope with his innate nature.
But it won’t last.
We are who we are.
And maybe we’d have a chance to fix shit if we actually understood ourselves.
But we don’t.
I have no idea who I am. I have no idea who Pie is. I have no idea how Tarq fits into things, or why the devil is chasing us, or what the fuck all those prisoners are doing down in the Bottoms. Hell, I can’t even get down there. I’ve tried. The door Pie says she came through from the Bottoms is actually the door she opened using the pink-stone ring to get us into the palace bakery.
So I don’t even know. I have no clue what the Bottoms is about.
“Why are you so quiet?”
I look over at Pie and just sigh. “The Bottoms. And the door that leads there. And how nothing is what it seems.”
Pie squints her eyes a little. “Do you need to see it?”
“The Bottoms?”
She nods. “Do you need to see it to believe it?”
“No. I believe you. If you say there’s a hidden prison filled with tomb monsters, then there is.”
“OK. But you didn’t answer the question. Do you need to see it, Pell? Because I’m pretty sure I can get us back there.”
“You don’t want to go back, remember?”
She nods, but her shoulders slump. “I don’t. I don’t want to go to the Bottoms, I don’t want to go back to Vinca, and if I’m being honest, I don’t even want to go back to Granite Springs. But…” Her blue eyes meet mine.
“But what?”
“But I think I’ve been running this whole time.”
“Running from what?”
“The truth? The devil? My mother?” She shrugs. “My past, Pell. Because it’s catching up with me and there’s nothing I can do to stop that.”
“Yeah.” I let out a long, tired exhale. “I’m starting to get that feeling too.”
“There’s a part of me,” she continues, “that wants to just forget everything. To find a door, and a ring, and say a spelling, and take your hand, and pull you through with me, and start a brand-new life.”
This plan makes me smile.
“And we could do that, I guess. But… what about everyone we leave behind? And I’m not just talking about Tomas, either. Or Jacqueline. I mean the prisoners, and Madeline, and all those monsters in Vinca. I don’t like Callistina. Even if she is my sister, I don’t want a future with her in it. But even if Tarq is the bad guy I imagine him to be, not even I could walk away from him now. Even if all the people we’re involved with are horrible and did terrible things to be put into the Bottoms, or used as pawns in another realm, or end up being held by the devil’s magic—they’re still part of our story, aren’t they? And doesn’t that mean we have some responsibility to them?”
My smile falters halfway through her monologue. And by the time she’s done, I’m in a full-on frown. She’s right though. I can feel it. Whatever is happening to us is part of the plan. I don’t know whose plan it is. Saturn? Juno? Ostanes? Tarq? The devil?
But does it matter?
One might think to themselves, I will not do the devil’s bidding. I will not be a part of it.