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)
That man who was shouting at him earlier.
Shouting at him to climb up the bars.
Banging against the cage to draw the lion away.
Kaleb could have sworn that voice … was his brother’s.
“Oh well,” he sighs as the flames rage on all around him, as the audience screams and fights and throws glass. “Maybe he is here to carry me to the other side. That’s why I saw him, here, for my final performance … I never woke from the dream. This is the angel come to deliver me. It’s my time. I must … let go.”
Yet still, Kaleb clings. He’s not ready to die.
He had hoped his time with Markadian would have led to something greater. His patience with Ashara. His love for Raya.
Perhaps it was foolish to wish for anything more than this.
It’s time to let go.
Kaleb squeezes the bars one last time, like a hug goodbye, and closes his eyes. “See you soon, Kyle … Mom … Dad.”
He begins to let go.
Until he hears: “Over here, Mister Lion!”
Kaleb flinches, turns his head one way, then the other, then veers his head back, seeing the stage below upside-down.
At the other end of the cage stands a short woman in a black dress and stockings, though with Kaleb’s perspective, she seems to be glued to the ceiling herself.
Raya.
Kaleb nearly lets go on accident from the shock of seeing her. “R-Raya! Be careful! The lion—!”
“The lion isn’t the enemy,” she calls back. “He is innocent, a toy in Markadian’s game. He’s just malnourished and doesn’t deserve to be here either. Here, kitty-kitty! Eat!” She dangles a thick slab of raw meat from her hand, her other arm not visible, perhaps buried in the folds of her dress. The lion approaches her, roars, licking his lips. Then to Kaleb, she shouts: “You had better get down here quickly! The banquet hall is on actual fire, if you haven’t noticed, and no, that’s not an illusion!”
Kaleb doesn’t hesitate, scrambling to wiggle his way back down the bars. But his muscles are weak, shaking, burning from having expended all his energy. His hand slips once, then goes his leg, and suddenly he’s freefalling toward the stage.
Until the violin he’s holding gets caught between the bars, sticking, keeping him in the air by one arm.
Kaleb cries out in distress, staring up at the violin, the only item keeping him aloft.
Somehow, holding on to it feels significant.
Like he’s holding on to many things.
But he can’t hold on much longer, even if he wants to. His hand, aching and sweaty, slips from the neck of the violin. While he goes falling toward the stage, the violin slides down the outside of the cage, vanishing into the fire.
His back crashes onto the ground.
When he blinks, only one eye shows the roof of the cage far above him, glowing and flickering in the flames, the other eye dark, likely blanketed in blood, a bloody eyepatch.
“Are we taking a nap??” comes Raya’s voice. “Up, up, up!”
Kaleb tries to wipe blood out of his vision, hisses as his fingers discover claw marks, stinging, throbbing with every beat of his heart. “Oh god …” he moans, in agony.
Raya appears over him suddenly. “Sorry, I don’t have time to be graceful, everything is sort of burning.” She takes hold of his hand, yanks him right off the ground with ease. “God, you look awful,” she says, then grimaces, likely not meaning to say it so bluntly. “Let’s go. Follow me. There’s a door.”
His wrist caught by her hand, Kaleb has no choice but to follow her to the back of the cage, where there appears a large door he did not see earlier. Just outside the cage, cradling a slab of meat within his paws, the lion sits, entirely ignoring them, now and then glancing over with concern at the pillars of fire dancing across the other side of the room.
In a flash, Kaleb and Raya are running through the great corridor that leads to the Midnight Garden. Every time Kaleb blinks, the hallway seems to change. A blink, it’s fully furnished. The next, it’s empty. Then it’s missing any color on the walls. Then there aren’t any doors.
“What’s happening?” asks Kaleb. “The hallway keeps—”
“It’s Lord Markadian. His illusions are breaking apart.”
“Why?”
“That Mance bastard set him on fire. All of these flickering illusions you’re seeing, that’s our Lord Markadian getting what he deserves—that’s Markadian dying.”
Kaleb slows, feeling gutted, comes to a stop. “Dying …?”
Raya stops, too. “Kaleb, we’re still in danger, we can’t—”
“We should help him.”
Raya stares back at him in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?” She lets go of his wrist and touches his shoulder, leaning into his face, his one available eye. Her voice is soft. “Do you really not understand what happened in there? The lion? The cage? That was all Markadian. You … You were literally being fed to the lion for sport, for a damned show, to entertain his stupid guests because he found out you’re—” She chokes, sighs, does not finish that sentence.