Page 167 of Envious Of Fire
“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.
Kaleb frowns. “Found out I’m what?” She doesn’t answer. “Raya …?”
The noises of flames and screaming still reach their ears, as does a sudden roar of a lion rippling through.
Raya sighs. “We don’t have time for this right now.”
Kaleb can’t stop his stomach from spinning. He might be sick. “Okay,” he says, deciding to trust her judgment, and no sooner than the word leaves his mouth, they’re running again.
They pass through an archway into the Midnight Garden. All around, the trees pop in and out of existence, but only some. Others remain when the illusionary ones twist away, the real trees and flowers mixed with the lavish embellishments of Markadian’s talent. Pretty cobblestone roads flickering away to plain cement and brick. Kaleb’s lone eye gazes upward at the glass dome that should show a beautiful array of stars, but all he sees is old rafters and beams stretched over a barren roof of a warehouse.
Like a dream fading away, showing its bare bones, showing its unremarkable truth.
Kaleb, waking up.
“Your life is about to start,” says Raya as they take a corner, hurrying down another path, passing the flickering trees and the real ones, the colorful flowers, the dull ones. “I’m going to find a new life, too, outside of this evil place. I’m never coming back.”
The words seem to chill Kaleb’s bones. “Really?”
“There’s nothing here for me. Not anymore. Perhaps there never was in the first place.”
Suddenly, it’s the escape plan all over again. His fellow Bloods. The night they crept down twisting, changing hallways. The night they trusted their lives to a nurse they’d never met, with dreams of a better life outside of this place.
But this is no test in disguise. This is the real thing.
Kaleb stops again. “We need to get the rest of them.”
Raya stops. “The rest of what now? Kaleb …”
“The Bloods.”
Those words cause Raya’s face to change. For a moment, she shakes her head, surely preparing to tell him no, to say it’s too dangerous, to say there’s no use—but she doesn’t seem able to let the words out.
“All of them,” says Kaleb. “They don’t deserve to die. My friends I made over the years. The ones who tried to escape with me. If they’re still alive … if Ashara didn’t actually kill them … I can’t leave them behind.”
She closes her eyes. “What you’re asking … I don’t know if we can, if it’s even possible, if—”
“You know the way,” he says. “You visited me those times, down in my cell, to hear my music. You can take us there. Let’s free everyone, every last one of them.”
Raya averts her eyes, appearing to regret seeing the truth of it. “Alright,” she at last concedes. “Yes, that seems like the right thing to do. It’s close by, just that way through the infirmary.” She eyes him. “That’s a lot of people, I hope you realize.”
“Every last one of them. We have—” Kaleb fights a sudden lightheadedness. He staggers, squints, grips his head.
Raya touches him. “Kaleb?”
“We have to get—god, it hurts—all of them out of here.”
