Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
“I told you not to drink that lionberry juice this morning. But do you ever listen to me? Noooo.”
I smile, then giggle a little. She’s still the same Pia.
“Now your head is all foggy and I told you we should’ve turned left back there at the smithy.”
“The smithy?” This reminds me of Pell. And suddenly, I remember that we were in the forest together and someone shot me with a fuckin’ arrow. I’m just about to blurt out all kinds of dumb plans to get back to him when Pia says, “So. Flying, right? We’ve agreed?”
And now a set of wings unfurls from my back. And they are not just any set of wings, either. I can barely see them, but it’s pretty fuckin’ obvious that these wings are something spectacular. For one, they are gold. And I’m not talking gold-colored. I’m talking gold leaf or something. Because they are shiny, and metallic, and when they flutter in the wind, they make tinfoil sounds.
One thing does worry me though, just a passing thought in my hallucination—that’s what this is, right? It has to be. But the worry thought is—do these things actually work? Because they look… ceremonial. And if I’m gonna jump off a cliff—
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who says you’re jumping off a cliff?
I close my eyes, confused about pretty much everything and a little bit scared. Because some things are coming back to me now. Not just the memories of my childhood, either. But Pell, and the tombs, and the monsters, and the devil.
Who is my father, but thankfully not my father.
Oh, God, what if he is my real father?
No. I shake my head. I don’t think he is. He stole me, that’s what he did.
But I am an eros, aren’t I? Isn’t that how I got into Saint Mark’s in the first place?
I feel like I’m coming full circle here. Like two ends are about to meet up and make something solid. But I’m not quite there yet, so really, it’s just a feeling of absolute confusion. And a dash of feeling intrigued. Because I have no clue what’s happening right now.
Pia, apparently tired of waiting for me to make a decision, jumps off my shoulder and soars out over the valley between mountaintops. “Race you!” she calls.
Before I even second-guess myself, I’m running. And then I jump—no. Really, it’s more of a dive. I dive headfirst into the air. Soaring, but not really.
There is this moment when I know for sure that this was a mistake. That these stupid gold-tinfoil-covered wings absolutely do not work and were only meant to be part of a costume. And now I am going to fall millions of feet and splat on the rocks below and… well, that’s the end of me.
But thankfully, in the next moment, the wings lift, taking my whole body with them, and we catch a wind. And then I’m soaring after Pia.
She is a little dot in front of me and I do not take my eyes off her. I just stare at her tiny body and press my arms against my body like I’m diving through the wind after her.
What happens next is a mystery. It feels like a skip. Like a skip in time, or place, or whatever. Because one second, I’m marveling at how the wind feels under my wings and the next, the ground is coming up to meet me.
I’m a hundred percent sure I’m about to splat myself on the smooth, gray cobblestones, but I don’t. My legs are moving—running, actually. And when my feet hit the ground, I’m upright and on the move.
Pia flies back to my shoulder and lands with little patters of her feet.
I turn my head to look at her and I sigh as I come to a stop. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve missed you so much, Pia. You have no idea how sad my heart has been since you died.”
She actually shoots me a birdy look of confusion. “You need sleep. That party was too much.”
“What party?”
“This is not going to go well. I can already tell. Maybe we should skip it? Do you think they would hunt us down if we skip it?”
“Hunt us down? What the fuck does that mean? And what are we skipping?”
Pia is staring off to my right, so I turn to see what she’s looking at. And then she just takes off and flies away in that direction.
I’m about to call her back, but that’s when I realize that we’ve landed in some kind of courtyard that is walled in on three sides and filled with horses and carriages. Not like the dusty horses and carriages you see in Western movies with cowboys and shit. I’m talking royal wedding kind of horses and carriages.
And this is when I realize that my head is kinda foggy. And I only realize this fact because it suddenly clears up and I am one hundred percent in the moment.