Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Messy, short blond hair. Misty blue eyes. I think I would like to lay my immortal life against his, announces Tristan.
26.
I Still Kiss With Teeth.
—∙—
Kyle sits on a bench, alone, in a grey stone corridor that looks like the hall of a 12th century medieval citadel, complete with artificial sunlight at his back. He has been seated on this bench for some time, gazing out at the illusion of sunlight, his heart a complete mess, uncertain of everything, everyone.
How did things become this messed up?
How did Kyle go from feeling in control of everything to becoming so small and powerless?
Perhaps he was always this small and powerless. Just like he was as a slouched teenager in a varsity letterman jacket, ignored by his teammates and parents, overlooked and alone. Becoming what he is now, it was just an illusion of power. An illusion of freedom. He knows now that he will never have power, now that he has seen what it can do to his kind.
Footsteps, soft and sensitive. A shadow falls over Kyle.
I brought you tea.
Kyle can’t even bring himself to look up at him. “Is the tea even real? Is any of this real?”
It’s mostly Lord Markadian. He is very powerful with his mind. More powerful than I ever was or will be. Do you mind if I call him just Lord Mark around you? It can be our thing, if you … still want to have things with me.
“You still speak the same,” notes Kyle. “You move your lips most of the time, for the benefit of others, I guess, but … your words, they invade my mind, like I’m hearing them inside my brain, like they’re my own thoughts.”
It’s how I’ve always talked ever since I became this way. It is nice that they let you clean up. You were quite bloody earlier.
“It wasn’t my blood.”
I know. I’m so sorry. Brock … dear Brock … he didn’t deserve to die. George is in hot water, as far as I was told, and Lord Mark’s not happy. Heads will roll. Maybe literally. He shouldn’t have killed him.
Kyle doesn’t give a shit about George, nor whether or not Markadian is happy, pissed, or dead. Nothing can fix this.
“My whole view of the world is broken now. Vegasyn … These people who hide between the cracks of society. Secretly running things. Doing whatever horrors they please. Has this hidden underworld always existed? Even when I was a teenager, with no care in the world but football and meaningless bullshit? All of this, right under my clueless nose?”
And for much longer than that, even. Centuries. Millennia. No one truly knows how long we’ve been around.
“This palace of illusions? House of Vegasyn? What does this place even look like without Markadian’s power?”
I’m not sure, admits Tristan. I doubt anyone can accurately say how big it even is, how far these halls stretch, where they lead to. I wonder if Lord Mark himself even knows. Those of us with gifts of the mind, sometimes we don’t understand the full scope of our own powers. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I can’t think of it. A friend downstairs told it to me. Something to do with why we’re the quickest to lose our way, to lose our minds … our sanity. I would hate to see how this place looks if Lord Mark someday loses his.
“And here I am. Right in the middle of the world’s darkest most sinister of secrets. With nothing to show for it. Nothing to offer. Nothing to do about it except sit here … and wonder.” Kyle gazes down at his hands. “Wonder, forever and ever …”
It helps if you think about it less. Really, if you don’t think about it at all. Hmm, maybe this cup of tea can distract you … provided it isn’t also an illusion. Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like a sip?
“I don’t know if I can do this, Tristan.” Kyle closes his eyes to shut away everything—the view of the sunrise, the view of the citadel around him, rendering all of it unable to deceive him a second longer. He pretends he’s in his childhood home, long before Tristan burned it down, sitting on his bed drawing little monster lions in a sketchpad. “I can’t have the big conversation with you right now.”
That’s okay, the tea is cold anyway.
“That’s how I take my tea. Ice cold sweet tea. I’m Texan.”
There’s nothing sweet about this tea. Can I start with a sorry?
Kyle can’t even deceive himself anymore, whether he keeps his eyes closed or wide open. He looks up at Tristan standing over him still, clutching a cup of tea. He looks exactly the same, not an inch of him changed, not his hair, not his eyes, not his proud and princely posture, nothing. Kyle hates that, even still, his heart betrays him when he looks upon Tristan with joy.