A Broken Paradise (The Windows of Heaven Book 3) by K.G. Powderly Jr. Read Free Book Online Page A

plenty else to vent for her friends’ benefit.
    “I can’t do anything right! It hurts all the time! Ugly is pretty, and beauty is ugly! Celebration is wretched and emptiness is joy! It’s all so hard! I can’t—I can’t do this no more! Why is this happening to me?”
    “What hurts? Can’t do what?” Weri cried, trying again to hug Tiva into a halt from her violent pacing.
    Tiva broke free, hurling her friend into the bushes. “I can’t be pretty! No je-jewelry or f-face paints, because it’s vain! No instrumental mu-music, cuz that ‘licentious piper of Lumekkor’ invented it! Your fathers at least let you learn music and wear some pretty stuff! I get nothing but pressure!” She turned on her listeners and shrieked, “I can’t go back there!”
    If either of them had tried to touch her just then, Tiva was quite sure she would have broken their arms off and killed them with her bare hands.
    After an uncomfortable silence, Tsulia said, “Tiva, you’ve gotta go home some time. It’s okay. In less than twenty years you’ll get married…”
    “What—to some boring Lit Dragon-slayer or an acolyte like my brother? Don’t make me laugh at my own funeral!”
    Tsulia stepped back.
    Tiva’s thoughts sharpened to a razor edge. “Is that what you want, Tsuli—to spend nine hundred years of dripping Under-world on Earth with a man trained to crush your dreams in the name of a god just as impossible to please as he is? Do you want to live and die that way?”
    Both girls ’ jaws trembled, their eyes filling with tears. They seemed unable to reply.
    “Why don’t you both join the real world!”
    Tsulia clutched her hands together in front as if ready to wet herself. “Oh Holy Watchers—now you’re talking blasphemy, Tiva! Your pahpo’s really gonna kill you now!”
    “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” mimicked a strange girlish voice from behind some large ferns.
    Weri shrieked.
    Tiva let out her breath when Farsa stepped into the open. They had barely spoken to each other since their last encounter, except for an occasional nod or a desultory wave.
    Farsa walked slowly toward them until she stood just a finger’s width from Tsuli’s face. “So her pahp’s gonna kill her, huh? Tell me something, Rag, who’s gonna tell him, you?”
    “No Farsa, honest!”
    Farsa glanced at the soiled veil in the dirt near Tiva. “What’s wrong, you get kicked out of Lit paradise? Or did World-end just come a few years early for you?”
    “No,” Tiva said, but then quickly changed her mind, “I mean, yes! That’s exactly what happened! The kick part!”
    Farsa shook her head. “Go to! You ain’t the first, an’ Under-world’ll puke up its dead before you’ll be the last.”
    Tsuli and Weri huddled together like war refugees.
    Farsa exhaled sharply . “You need help. I think I can put you up for a few days. My folks are merchants. They travel a lot, so I get the homestead pretty much to myself since they threw my brother out—‘cept for my pahp’s concubines, but most-a them’re as young as me, one even younger. Pahp’s a real fig, he is.”
    Insane hope swept Tiva up in a spinning wild dance with her internal organs. “Thanks!”
    Her two friends looked at each other, but kept silent. A lioness gaze from Farsa made it clear that she would strictly enforce their implied promise of continued silence.
    The Upperclassman turned and grinned at Tiva. “Go to! First thing we gotta do is get you outa them Lit ‘fits and into some real clothes.”
     

T
    iva could not believe the image that stared at her from the mirror.
    She knew she was a little over-developed for her age—her father constantly fretted about it—but nothing had prepared her for this!
    Farsa said, “Not bad, girl. ”
    Tiva looked like a woman—or at least a ‘tween-ager—ready for nightlife in any of the great cities. Black curls flowed around her neck onto her bare shoulders to meet the ultra-low cut of one of Farsa’s Khavilak