Blaze by Kaitlyn Davis Page B

middle ages. They
could have been battered by cannons, pierced with arrows, sliced
with swords or bombarded with bullets. But none of those things
brought these walls down. Time brought them down as it did with
everything. Some mortar got loosened by the root of an ivy vine and
soon enough an entire wall came crumbling apart. No one bothered
with repairs because by that time castles were old and out of
fashion. So the world continued turning, nature continued battering
this old castle, bringing it down stone by stone. Heavy storms
broke through the windows, winds toppled a column, and soon enough
this glorious castle was nothing but a pile of rubble on the
ground.
    Looking at those ruins was like looking into
her own heart. Time would never stop. The world would never
disappear. And in the sobering morning light, Kira finally saw last
night for what it had really been. Not her impossible dreams coming
true. Not the beginning of perfect happiness. But an end—a
desperate attempt to hold on to something that had already slipped
through her fingers.
    Time had already taken its toll. Time had
already ruined what she and Tristan had, but it wouldn’t ruin her.
Kira looked down on that castle with determination, not sadness.
She was content. She loved Tristan, and part of her would always
love him, but she had always known goodbye was inevitable. Even if
she never wanted to admit it, the thought had always been there in
the back of her mind.
    Because she did love Tristan, but she loved
herself more. And she couldn’t do what he wanted. The cost of being
together was too great. Standing there in the morning sunlight,
Kira finally understood. She was the sun. She was the fire. And she
couldn’t give up her power or her soul just to be with him.
     
     
     
    Chapter Seven

    Kira had thought that the lie she had told
Luke would be the biggest in her life—that pretending to go to
Sonnyville all the while planning a trip to a foreign country would
be the hardest trick she would ever play.
    But Kira was wrong. This was far worse.
Because until she uncovered what Aldrich was really up to, Kira
would have to fool Tristan with the dream of forever. And that was
truly unforgivable.
    So as Kira walked down the grand staircase,
in jeans and a t-shirt rather than the frilly dress Aldrich had
left hanging in the closet, all she felt was guilt. It was a heavy,
wet blanket cloaking her, weighing her down. And it took everything
she had to shrug it off of her shoulders and put a smile on her
face before turning the corner to the dining room.
    If you want a show, Kira thought at Aldrich,
I’ll give you a show.
    “Good morning, everyone,” Kira chirped
happily as she entered the room. She looked at the woman sitting at
the table and deepened her smile. “Mom,” Kira said warmly before
taking her seat next to Tristan. Aldrich and her fake mother both
sat with full glasses of blood, but Tristan wasn’t sipping
anything. Two cooked eggs, bacon and toast were artfully laid out
on the table in front of Kira’s seat. Still hot, she thought
gratefully and decided she may as well gather her strength with
some food.
    “Tristan seemed to think you were
indisposed,” Aldrich droned, “glad to see he was wrong.”
    “I was just a little sleepy,” Kira said and
took a huge bite of food, wondering what sort of kitchen this house
had. Surely the servants needed to be fed and it seemed pretty
stocked, but what sort of vampire kept such a nice kitchen in his
house? Unless there were more humans here than she realized, Kira
thought darkly. “So what were you all talking about before I came
in?”
    “You,” Aldrich replied. Tristan gave him a
stern look.
    “About how the talk with your mom went last
night,” he said and rested his hand on her thigh reassuringly.
    “How did it go?” Kira asked, trying to keep
the ice from her voice.
    “I thought quite well,” the woman said, “But
there is so much more that I want to tell you.”
    “Well that