Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
The laughter in that memory fades, leaving two men and the music singing out of that birdcage, radiating from the stage like poetry. How music builds and shatters simultaneously. The violin, how the man so expertly inspires it to weep.
Kyle doesn’t even notice the tears forming in his eyes. Now drawing glassy trails down his cheeks.
That violinist …
“No …” Kyle murmurs to himself, barely heard under the rich, swelling song. It isn’t him. It isn’t Kaleb. This is a trick of the eye, a trick of the heart. Wishful thinking. This is just … “An illusion,” he decides out loud. “Just another illusion.”
“What’s that?” comes Markadian, who has followed Kyle, standing at his side. “An illusion? This …? How flattering, that you think my power to be so capable as to produce such music. No,” he then says, a note of humor in his words, “I am humble enough to confess that this … is no illusion at all.”
The resemblance is uncanny. “He … He looks just like …”
“You?”
Kyle can’t take his eyes off the violinist. The tears run. “It can’t be real. It can’t be, because … because he’s—”
“Exactly as old as he’s supposed to be?” suggests Markadian kindly. “Appearing exactly as you may have expected him to … had he survived a certain … fateful … night …?”
Kyle brings a hand to his mouth.
The tears keep flowing.
A river made from a single drop of water.
Kaleb is dead. This man can’t possibly be him. This man is a trick to torment Kyle, the reason for the darkness behind each and every word Markadian has uttered since Kyle arrived—a cruel, unforgivable joke.
“Kaleb?” calls Kyle.
“He’s much too far away,” insists Markadian, “too into the music, amplified in his ears. He can’t hear a word.”
“Kaleb??” Kyle calls out again anyway.
“By the way, if you wish to thank anyone, I must confess it is not me to whom you owe your gratitude. Thank your dear friend Tristan … who saved your little brother’s life, then hid him here, in this very House, all of those years ago.”
“You’re lying,” says Kyle, but he knows it isn’t a lie. Even his Reach can confirm it, feeling the familiar presence right there on that stage, his brother, his real brother, alive …
This is no illusion.
“Kaleb here is playing you a song of sweet endings,” says Markadian. “I only hope he can make it to the end of the song.”
Kyle can’t peel his eyes from the violinist. “Why wouldn’t he make it to the end?” The song is so beautiful, so captivating. “He’s … playing strong. With confidence. Not a single note falters …”
Kaleb, the pride and joy of their family.
Kaleb, now a man of thirty-nine.
Kaleb, still playing the violin.
Still alive.
Markadian’s lips draw close to Kyle’s ear. “Tristan told me what your favorite animal is, yet noted you had never once seen one in the flesh. How sad. So I wish to present you with a gift.”
A second curtain, unseen, sweeps open behind the violinist.
It reveals a lion.
33.
The Talent of Blood 1025.
—∙—
Kaleb is lost to the music.
Cradling his violin.
The song drifts in the air, carrying the nuance he puts into each and every note.
It used to be more of an accident, when he played down in the cells and his music grew so beautiful, almost on its own.
He has lately discovered an intentionality.
Using his music like a tool.
Wielding the melody like a weapon.
Kaleb drives the song with purpose, like an instrument that doesn’t inspire mere music, but bends hearts toward him.
These are the thoughts that push the doubt away. Doubt in that last look in Lord Markadian’s eyes before he left his room. In the warnings Raya shared about the cruelty of siblings.
Whatever ill feelings that might have lived in Markadian’s heart, Kaleb will eliminate them with the music.
He believes this to his very core.
Until: “KALEB!”
The shout pierces the music like a needle.
Then comes something else. Like a slow and steady drum. Thumping beneath Kaleb’s feet, as if the stage itself discovered a heartbeat.
Kaleb opens his eyes.
The room is so dimly lit, he sees no one, only hears them. Gasps and whispers, scattering through the dark. Someone lets out a wail. Another whimpers. Kaleb can make no sense of it as he clings to his melody, striving to win back the attention of the audience. Everything depends on this. Markadian’s happiness in him. His own ability. His safety here.
Then comes a rippling, rattling growl from behind.
Kaleb turns.
The face of a lion, wreathed in a wild, hairy mane, big eyes pouring intensely into Kaleb like black lava, enormous mouth spreading a sea of needle-sharp whiskers.
A lion’s face is nothing in a photograph.
In the flesh, it is positively overwhelming in size.
The music cuts off. Kaleb staggers back to the noise of the audience gasping, nearly falls over, rights himself quickly, then finds his back pressed to the bars that enclose the stage.