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)
“He is alive. How is this possible?” George takes a step into the room, rethinks, steps back. “Is this a wicked effort of illusion, I dare ask? But our Lord Markadian is not here. Is he aware?”
I think it best our dear Lord is kept out of the loop on this one.
“Then he does not know? This is not a wicked illusion?”
No, just the wicked truth. Tristan rises, struts up to George, yanks his handkerchief out of his breast pocket, returns to Brock and uses it to wipe up drool and blood. I am cleaning up your mess.
“That is my handkerchief you are adulterating.”
And in maybe four days’ time, optimistically, Brock may be ready to return to his life, and no one will be poking around us anymore. See? Everyone will get what they want. Even him.
George is silent, eyes on Brock like he stares into the abyss of the great unknown. He puts a hand to his face, unblinking. “I dare ask … I … I dare ask if … if …”
I advise to either dare ask, or to stop asking anything ever again, Tristan politely suggests. You are giving Brock a headache.
George steps forward. “I dare ask if this is the true mission for which I gathered those items. If it all wasn’t for some kind of … of evil act. If you weren’t foolish enough, reckless enough, arrogant enough to have … to have actually …” His face twists with fear and shame as he whispers the rest. “… consulted with the likes of a certain dark witch?”
Tristan shrugs. We have all done far worse things. Remember when Markadian wore white after Labor Day?
“How could you?” George steps into the room, aghast as he circles Brock from a distance. “Oh, but I knew you were capable of such evil, yes, I did, I always knew you were. You were the one who so coldly left our Lord Markadian decades ago, left him brokenhearted and betrayed. Of course you would be capable of such depravity … dancing with … with Death … and with dark witches … towards an end of such unimaginable perversion …”
How is the weather way up there on your high horse? Tristan continues dabbing away blood and drool from Brock’s chest and face, a mother cleaning her young. Coming from a man who risked the exposure of our society so he can expand a collection of hourglasses. Give me five minutes and an internet connection, I’ll find you a dozen. By the way, isn’t riding a high horse tricky to do with dirty hands?
“Raya knows of this, too,” it suddenly occurs to George as he stops, his eyes wild with thoughts, piecing it together. “She is the one who slipped the assignment to me. Like a disease. Of course. She’s but your minion, what else can one expect? Deceivers beget deceivers. Villains beget villains. I’m the fool …”
Don’t blame Raya. She was just as coerced into this as you were.
“Poor girl you have corrupted. She had such promise. This is why she is recovering, too? It attacked her … that thing attacked her. That is what the nurses went on about, what I heard, it was not overdramatic gossip. You’ve made the Devil’s monster!”
He hasn’t harmed a fly since. And this is all for a good cause. See how everyone benefits? Tristan pats at some blood at the corner of Brock’s lips. He’s alive again. You’re out of the doghouse. It is the end result that matters, not the path getting there.
“Brock was also a friend of Mr. Amos.” Tristan stops at the mention of his name. “You are doing all of this just as much for him. Do not deny it,” he quickly says. “Lord Markadian may not know where your heart truly lies, but I do. I know that in all you do, there is a secret investment in your love for that … Texan.”
Tristan doesn’t face him. He just clenches the handkerchief and stares at a spot on Brock’s chest. It always strikes Tristan as so strange, that despite all the hours of time devoted to packing Kyle away into a room deep within his mind, out of reach, that just a single word can rip open the vault and send pouring forth every last feeling he tried to bury. Kyle’s sweet eyes. The laughter they shared. The long, boring, beautiful days spent in that dilapidated cabin, the woods around them that rarely saw the presence of mortals, lost to time … until the morning Lord Markadian caught Tristan gathering flowers in the woods, and Tristan was forced to abandon the one he loved in order to protect him.
Kyle wasn’t meant to be abandoned. Kaleb wasn’t meant to survive. Brock wasn’t meant to die. Is there anything Tristan has tried to accomplish in life that hasn’t gone so miserably wrong?