Page 193 of Envious Of Fire
“Yes. Kyle, your … your brother. Have you …?” She appears to have difficulty with the question. “Have you spoken with him? At all? Are you aware what’s happened? Where you are?”
“A little.” He can’t stop looking at her, afraid if he blinks, she might disappear, along with everything else. “Am I awake?”
She frowns. “Of course you are. What a silly question.”
Her curt response makes him crack a smile. At once, he loses all doubt. “We made it out of there.”
Then it’s Raya smiling. “We did.”
“And we got all the Bloods out, too? Every last one? I think I saw some of them earlier. Praying or something.”
Raya’s smile tightens into a grimace. She tilts her head either way, shrugs. “We got a lot of them out. It was chaotic. Only ten came with us back to this town. The rest, well, we’ll just hope for the best.”
“And I didn’t imagine it,” Kaleb carries on in his excitement. The questions pour out of him quicker and quicker. “My brother, my real, actual brother … He was there, too.”
“He’shere,” she corrects him. “He’s been sitting by your side for many, many hours over the past few days, in fact.”
“Days?” Kaleb is nearly sprung from the bed, sitting up toofast again. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days, I believe. Perhaps three.” She glances back at the window. “Time feels so odd in a place of no illusions. I spent far too long in Markadian’s House. My sense of time … cannot be trusted.”
Kaleb hesitates. “Is it … Is it true that Markadian … is dead?”
Raya looks at him, struck by the question. Her eyes detach, mind wandering to another world. “I’m … I’m not sure.”
“I heard something. Maybe earlier tonight. My brother. I … I thought I heard someone say that Markadian … is …”
After a moment’s hesitation, Raya leans forward. “It shouldn’t matter. You should feel nothing for that man. He tried to kill you. Don’t you remember? The lion.” She suddenly can’t look at him. “That’s the reason your face is … how it is. And … your eye.”
“My eye?”
“Sorry.” Raya bows her head, as if literally growing heavier. “I feel like the doctor should be here, telling you all of this. I should summon one of them. Or both. I’m not equipped to—”
“I lost an eye, didn’t I.”
It doesn’t quite come out as a question. It’s a statement. To confirm what he already suspects, what he’s gathered in his foggy, deteriorated moments of consciousness over the past few days.
When Raya lifts her face to his, there are tears in her eyes. “It is so much more that you’ve lost. Because of one person. Because of someone I mistakenly called my best friend.” Her voice breaks upon saying the name. “T-Tristan.”
The name hits Kaleb at once. “Tristan? But he …” The misty blue eyes that pierced through the hungry flames. Gentle eyes of an angel. Hair as bright as heavenly light. “He’s the one who—”
“He’s the reason you lost your life to that prison,” she states. “He’s the reason you lost yourself to Markadian’s lust. Tristan isnot your angel, Kaleb. He never was. He’s a selfish person who—”
“Raya.”
The two turn. Kyle has appeared at the door, silhouetting the light that pours in from the brighter hallway.
“And he’s back,” says Raya. “Do you disagree? With my little assessment of thediseasethat is Tristan?”
Kyle approaches the bed, comes to Kaleb’s other side. “I just think there’s a better time for this, and my brother—”
“He betrayed you, too,” she goes on. “His ambition in trying to bring back your friend from the dead, that cost me half my arm. You didn’t know that part, did you?” she asks Kaleb suddenly, her voice turning sad again. “I hid my arm from you all this time. In baggy sleeves and dresses. I was ashamed. Not for my missing limb, but for the fact that it reminds me of how so naïve I was to believe Tristan was a good person. Tell him.” She turns her sharp eyes onto Kyle. “Tell him the story. You and Tristan. How this whole twisted affair began. Tell him what he did to you.”
“Not now.”
“Tell him how he ended your family, ended your life, and hid your brother from you for all of those years.”
Kyle bows his head, eyes shut. Raya, too, clutching the edge of the bed, holding back a whole tirade of anger.
