Teach the Torches to Burn by Caleb Roehrig EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Caleb Roehrig
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The morning is cracked at the horizon as I come to the top of a rise in the
lane, warm color just beginning to bleed into dark sky—a band of coral and
gold that lifts gently humped clouds out of the deep gray like bits of
driftwood. Ahead of me, the first threads of daylight are taking the measure
of church towers, rooftops, and the crowns of cypress trees that bristle atop
San Pietro Hill.
It’s breathtaking, to see my home this way—this quiet, this beautiful.
This distant.
There is no Verona without Montague, and no Montague without
Verona, my father has said on more than one occasion, when he feels I need
reminding. For centuries, our family has been synonymous with this city,
my ancestors contributing their blood, gold, and labor to build and defend
it; and, for good or ill, Verona is the anchor to which my own legacy is tied.
From generation to generation, the Montagues have carried a destiny of
status, leadership, and public, unflinching piety. My father makes it sound
like an honor to bear the name, but more and more I find it a crushing
weight. My future is one of two paths—knighthood or sainthood—and I
must live up to both possibilities, at all times. Or else.
But if there’s no Montague without Verona, then why is it that I feel
most like myself when I’m finally able to see it from afar? What cruel
irony, that it’s only from such a remove that I can finally appreciate its
beauty—the scattered glow of lanterns, like earthbound stars; the gentle
warmth of terra-cotta tile and rosy marble; the spiking trees and looping ivy,
so rich in green they’re almost black.
Out here, there are no rules or demands. There are no expectations I
can’t live up to, no ironclad fate that I cannot escape, no future of empty
gestures, tedious company, and strategic alliances. Out here, there is no
Romeo Montague—there is only a boy and a vault of wild air filled with
expanding color and flickering, dying stars.
Only from here, my feet in the dirt and the city’s lanterns burning
against the rising sun, can I finally understand why my father always calls it
“our fair Verona” in his many public speeches.
Even though, in my own experience, it is a deeply unfair place to live.
Church bells are ringing the hour as I finally reach the city gates, my legs
weak from miles of walking on an empty stomach. I’ve no one to blame but
myself for this suffering, of course, but still I curse the earth for the distance
it forced me to travel. After all, as my father likes to say: If you can’t find
someone else to blame, you are not trying hard enough.
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