Page 157 of Envious Of Fire
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Kyle hisses through his teeth.
“Honestly,” Markadian goes on, “I’m more astonished you don’t seem to know these fascinating facts about lions yourself. I was given the impression they are the animal you most love.”
Kyle shakes all over, teeth clenched hard enough to break.
“Though … you don’t seem to have a great track record for knowing much about the ones you allege to love,” he goes on. “Take Tristan for example, who saved your brother’s life, then hid him from you all of these years … Did you know Tristan at all? This person you threw your mortal life away for?”
“S-S-Stop.” Kyle is steadily losing sanity. Tears are flowing and out of control. How much longer can Kaleb hold on? How much longer until he falls to his death? “P-P-Please,” he begs, barely perceptible. “My b-brother …”
“It was a good deal you struck,” insists Markadian. “You’re now guaranteed safety. Tristan, too, the former love of your life you know nothing about. Elias Asad Trujillo. Your irrelevantfriends in Nowhere. Wasn’t it exhausting? To worry about so many people? Now all you’ve got to worry about is yourself.”
Ashara’s lips purse tightly, still studying Kyle, eyes never leaving his face.
“Did I mention I’ve tasted him, too?”
Kyle’s sobs choke away. He turns his eyes onto Markadian.
“Every night since I discovered him,” he goes on, relishing Kyle’s reaction. “I have savored his delicious blood. He offered it. Willingly. He is so … generous. An innocent heart. I tasted it … literally sucked all of his innocence out of him. It was a delicacy unmatched by any other. The look in his eyes as he played his violin naked for me … while I tasted him as I pleased.” Markadian moans, reliving it. “In more ways than one.”
“Y-You—f-fucking—” Kyle can’t speak.
The lion roars, leaps into the air off its hind legs. Claws catch the back of Kaleb’s tuxedo jacket, tearing it open as it rips through. Kaleb screams out. Is it in fear? Or did the claws cut into his back? He can barely see.
Kyle shoves his way back to the stage, leaving Markadian. “Kaleb!” he cries out. “Don’t let go! Hang on! I’m gonna get you out of there!”
Kaleb blinks through the blood on his face, squinting with his one good eye, the other shut and sliced through. His heart is in his throat. He is full of confusion and fear.
The sight of Kaleb in so much pain and terror is breaking Kyle’s heart. “It’s me! Your big brother! I’m here!”
Kaleb doesn’t even seem capable of seeing Kyle, squinting in his general direction, disoriented, his muscles shaking. He is growing weaker. It’s exhausting, clinging to those bars. He says nothing at all back, perhaps questioning what he heard.
“Now wait a dang sec,” comes another voice—Cindy, from a few tables behind Kyle. “That’s your brother in there? Your real life brother? The violin guy?”
“Oh, that’s so sweet!” cries out someone else nearby who Kyle doesn’t know. “A dramatic plot twist!” “Is this another trial?” someone else asks in the crowd. “Punishments get more creative by the year,” yet another states, sounding astonished.
Kyle hurries around the stage, grabbing each of the bars, inspecting them, looking for the illusion. “Stay strong!” he yells out to his brother, who keeps straining to see him, squinting with one eye through a veil of blood, tracking the voice. “Keep holding on!” No matter which bars he shakes, nothing appears unusual to him, nothing feels like a hidden hinge or lock, the whole cage uniform. Where’s the door? “Don’t let go!”
Kaleb continues to squint, continues to say nothing, lips parted, blood dripping, face twisted with exhaustion and pain.
Stay strong.
Kyle stops, for a moment completely thrown by the voice.
By Tristan’s voice.
This is not the ideal way I wished for you to learn about him…
“You … have the nerve …” Kyle spins around, eyes cast into the crowd, “to speak a single word to me right now …?”
I don’t deserve your trust, not now, not ever again, I know…
“Get out of my fucking head.”
But I beg you to trust me one last time…just now, just in this moment, trust that I have a plan…a plan for us all…
“Every plan you made has failed. Since the day you turned me into what I am. The day you ripped me from my family.”
You do not deserve the pain you are feeling…
