Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
The voice is always there, ready to feed me the truth.
And it’s right. It’s true. I guess they were all right about me. I thought it was kinda cool that I had so much power. That everyone was so afraid of me that I needed to stopped at all costs.
But what if that wasn’t it?
What if they wanted to stop me because I’m just truly the Devil?
I can see it, actually.
I can believe it.
So I walk through the fog. Just keep walking. These brand-new wings becoming heavier and heavier with each new step. A reminder of how low I will stoop to get what I want. How far I am willing to sink to get my way.
I stop walking. What’s the point? I’m not going anywhere.
This is it. This is really it.
This is my end.
Even if I’m stuck here for all eternity, wandering around in the nothingness, it all ends here.
I sit down and think about this. Really let it sink in. Kinda roll it all back in my head starting from the day on the roof of Science and Glory Building One when they pushed me over the edge and the wings came bursting out.
I flew away that day. I was terrified, of course. Because there were nine hundred and ninety-nine other boys there in line before me and not a single one of them grew wings. They were pushed over the edge and they splatted on the ground below.
That sound, bodies hitting the courtyard—it was a thud. Dull and short. Over so quick. But it was such a specific sound that it lingers in my head. Undeniable and real.
But I didn’t go splat. I fell for a while. I wasn’t able to clock the seconds, or anything. I was screaming, I know that. Of course, this wasn’t my first trip over the edge. Because we are gods and we cannot die, so they did all manner of things to us as we grew.
We were all ten years old the first time.
No one grew wings at ten. We all went splat.
But we’re gods. Right? Aren’t we? So we don’t die.
I don’t know the process for godmaking. I don’t know. I have no clue. All I know is that I will not die. Not jumping off a roof, not wandering in a fog. Somehow, some way I am here forever.
But there did come a day, obviously, when the wings did save me from that indeterminate end. They just flew out of my back. Spreading wide. Glorious golden feathers, like the ones I’m wearing now. And I caught the wind.
I flew forever and ever and ever.
In my head, at least. In reality, I crashed a little way off in the hills just outside Glory Rome. Someone came and collected me and when I got back to Building One, the whole floor—that used to be filled with a thousand boys just like me—was empty.
However they brought us back after we went splat, well, this time they didn’t do that.
Because I was the god they were waiting for.
I don’t know which one of us came first, but I was one of the Gods of Glory. The initial first group. The Olympians, as they would call us later.
The war started shortly after that with Parting Day. The day we all escaped.
Then came the Forgetting Times. When Glory Rome was torn down to nothing but blocks.
Just like Vinca will be.
It’s a cycle. I’ve seen it turn twice, myself.
But Vinca hasn’t been destroyed yet. I don’t think anyone understands that. Callistina doesn’t, for sure. Didn’t, I correct myself. Didn’t understand that.
And she never will, Eros. Because you killed her.
Everyone who saw the destruction of Vinca was seeing what is to come.
It’s still there. It’s all still there. I don’t know the details of how Pell was going back and forth, but it was a magic door, obviously. They almost never take you to the same point in time.
Vinca is still there, but it won’t be for long.
It’s not my problem anymore.
It’s not my time, it’s not even my world.
I don’t have a world.
I am part of the nothing.
Anyway, the point is—it’s once again time to destroy and forget.
A brand-new Forgetting Time.
I’ll wake up at some point. Because I can’t die. But I’ll wake up all confused, and innocent, and clean. And I’ll spend my days bewildered and searching for the truth.
And then, one day, I’ll find myself much like I am now. With an understanding that I am a greedy piece of shit. An evil narcissist. A liar. A cheat. A thief. The definition of awful. Mean, and shallow, and worthless.
And then I’ll start all over.
That’s all I have left.
The never-ending end.
I’d like to think that this was the plan all along. That the other me—who killed Callistina to steal her bloodhorn and who cut off Ire’s wings—he did all that because in order to forget you have to give up your power.