Page 202 of Envious Of Fire
Nico burns Kyle with his eyes, then Raya again, and finally backs away, heading off once more.
Raya steps forward. “I took half that sword, too, you know.” Nico slows, stops again. She comes back onto the sidewalk, boots crunching in the snow as she approaches him. “I can still feel it inside me. I told the doctors I didn’t care what happened to me, just keep this guy alive, keep Kaleb’s friend alive. Is it really such a big deal what you are now? Who says you have to like us? I don’t like half our kind either. They betrayed me. Used me. Hey.” She stops in front of him, brings her face close to his. “Remember what I said the night you were changed? … When it was just you, me, and Drake in that operating room? Do you remember?”
Nico meets her eyes.
Says nothing.
Kyle feels the warmth between them. It swells as the two lock eyes, something special and personal that no one else knows.
Raya peers back at Kyle and Kaleb. “You boys go inside. I’ll have my beer another night. I think … Nico can use a midnight stroll through the snow.”
Kaleb comes forward, pats Nico’s shoulder. Nico peers at him with hardened eyes. Quickly they become soft again, and without a word, he gives Kaleb a hug, like a silent apology, then lets go just as fast. He and Raya walk away, leaving a trail of off-white footprints down the road until they disappear around the corner.
Staring after them, feeling contemplative, Kaleb quietly asks, “Do you think our parents … are proud of us?”
Kyle smiles. “Are we playing the what-if game again?”
“No, no. Not a game. I’m … I’m not wanting to imagine it. I want to be literal. Them, watching us from the place where dead people go … Mom … Dad.” He turns back to Kyle. “I’d like to think they’re happy we’re together again.”
Kyle nods, brushes snow off his brother’s head. “Me, too.”
“No parent can predict what will become of their kids. What challenges they’ll face. Even unfathomable ones. Like magic spells and secret societies of vampires. A pandemic. War. It’s why we see the future as the great unknown. No one can possibly know it.” Kyle nods thoughtfully. Kaleb kicks gently at the snow, twisting his boot into it. “Raya asked me earlier tonight if my definition of sadness has changed. It was a question she asked me when we first met in the House of Vegasyn cells … Tristan was there, too.”
Kyle’s smile fades. He listens, studying the subtle changes in his brother’s face, which tells a story parallel to the words coming out of his mouth.
“I told her sadness is like a brother of happiness. You have too much of one, you always feel like the other’s about to appear.”
Kyle’s thoughts are on Tristan now, imagining his demeanor when he visited Kaleb in his cell, accompanied by Raya. All of this time. Tristan’s deep, dark secret … “And which one am I?” asks Kyle. “Happiness? Or sadness?”
“I was thinking again about Tristan,” Kaleb goes on, “how he saved me so long ago, and how you and Raya aren’t convinced of the goodness inside him.” He peers at his brother. “Drake told me the story of howyoutwo met, how you insisted on saving Mikey’s life even at the cost of your own. And now Mikey is trapped here, unable to get home, but at least he’s safe. A part of me believes, had I not been caught as a teen, maybe in time, Tristan would’ve reunited us. Don’t you think? Isn’t saving Mikey from the cave and Tristan saving me from the fire … sort of the same thing?”
Kyle’s first instinct is to say no. To cling to his anger. To hate Tristan because it’s so much easier than the conflicted, tortured love he bore for him for so many years.
Instead, Kyle says something entirely different: “There’s this spot that’s just outside of town … a special rock in the desert,” he describes. “It holds a lot of meaning to me. Elias, too. It’s actually where we met, funny enough, moments before the sunrise.”
“That’s a story you haven’t told me yet,” says Kaleb, amazed.
“I buried something there.” Kyle glances at his brother. “It’s a ring … my silver pinky ring.”
Kaleb’s mouth parts. It’s an astonishing experience, to both see andfeelthe memory rush back into his brother’s heart as if it was just yesterday. “I … I gave you that ring,” he says, wide-eyed. “You kept it? All this time?”
“Yep. And I buried it by that rock. The moment they figureout how to lift the shroud … I’m gonna go to that rock and dig it up. I want you to have it back.”
Kaleb touches his own finger, as if remembering its texture. Then he smiles at his brother. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“And we’re both happiness,” says Kyle, deciding. “Who needs sadness when we’ve got each other?”
Kaleb snorts. “Corny answer, but I’ll take it.” With a laugh, the brothers hug once again. “Now can we go inside and eat some cookies already? I feel like my nuts are getting frostbite.”
The two of them head towards the door, with Kyle stunned at his brother’s words. “You … are spendingwaytoo much time around Drake,” he decides, as the pair become swallowed in the merry noises of the bar, and not a single one of their worries are thought of for a merciful matter of countless happy hours.
By the time the party breaks up and everyone starts making their ways home, dawn is on their heels—which is expected for a night out when they’re concerned, as so many in the demipires’ social vicinity have adjusted to the late-night schedule. Among the last to leave are Kyle, Elias, Drake, and Kaleb. Cade is caught up in conversation with Elias, so she tags along with them on their way home, not minding the long detour. Layna, who is caught up telling Jer an embarrassing story about Silas and Carlos (which is actually just an excuse to be around him longer, worried about how he’s truly feeling), follows the others, making it a party of seven wandering the snowy town toward Kyle’s street.
It isn’t until they reach the end of the street that Layna stops in her tracks with a gasp. Cade turns to her. “What’s wrong?” Kyle and the others turn as well, their banter interrupted.
It’s Jeremy who seems to notice what Layna sees, pointing a finger silently ahead, surprising them all. When the others follow where he points, they discover a lone bird perched upon the snow, several paces ahead. A lone black bird, all by itself.
Kyle looks ahead.
