A Beautiful Dark (15 page)

Asher looked up at Devin for support. Devin nodded somberly. His wings folded gracefully behind him, crisscrossing each other before melting seamlessly into his back. My chest tightened and I fought for air. The sky was caving in around me, and I lay back against the freezing concrete and closed my eyes. “I c-can’t breathe,” I said, wheezing. “Asher?”

“I’m here,” he said. “You’re okay.”

“I—I need to go home.”

Devin stepped in. “I’ll take you.” He reached a hand down to me, and I took it as he pulled me up. He glared at Asher. “I knew I shouldn’t trust you. Of course you’d find a way to mess this up.”

I wanted to say that it wasn’t Asher’s fault, but I had no idea what Devin meant
.
What was “this”? What were they trying to tell me? That the myth was true? I tried to remember what else Asher had told us that night around the campfire. Something about Paradise? I stumbled, and Devin caught me in his sturdy arms.

Asher looked like he wanted to say more—but for once, he didn’t. I was grateful. It made it easier to leave.

Devin led me toward the fire door. Just before I started down the stairs, I turned. Asher’s own black wings were folding behind him, glittering in the final moments of daylight and disappearing into some part of him I couldn’t see.

My mind was tugged in a thousand different directions as we walked through the parking lot. I barely noticed all the remaining cars that belonged to the students involved in after-school practices and meetings.

Even before these guys showed up in my life, I’d felt like I was different from everyone else I knew. How would I fit in with Cassie, Dan, and Ian? Holding this secret—a secret so big that it felt like it would consume me.

I must have shivered, because Devin took his jacket off and hung it across my shoulders lightly, almost as if he was afraid to touch me. I hoped he didn’t realize that it wasn’t just the cold I was shivering from.

“Thanks.”

He was quiet, leaving me to my own thoughts. And there were lots of them. Every now and then I would begin a sentence and leave it unfinished, trailing off into the bitter night air.

Finally Devin turned to me, his face illuminated as we passed under a streetlight. “That happened very quickly, much more suddenly than I would have liked.” Then we were back in the dark, his face hidden again. I saw him relax and realized he preferred if I couldn’t see him. “If you have questions, you can ask me.” We were almost at my car; I could see it a couple of rows away.

“What are you?” It was the question I’d asked before that they’d managed to avoid answering.

“I’m a Guardian. A messenger.”

My head spun. “Okay, you know what?
So
not ready to know any more right now.”

Devin seemed to take me seriously, because he didn’t say anything else. We reached the row my car was in and started down it.

“So was there a school in Denver that burned down?” I asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “But we weren’t students there. Our paperwork is forged. It was Asher’s idea to use that story.” Devin grimaced. “We needed an excuse to transfer in the middle of the year.”

“Why now?”

“Because you turned seventeen, and the Elders have always believed that if anything was going to happen, it would happen now. When you’re on the verge of adulthood.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘happen’? Like what?”

“That’s just it, Skye. We don’t know. So I was sent to watch you. And of course, the Rebels didn’t trust me to report honestly to them, so they sent Asher.” He took a breath. “It’s like in the story Asher told. There needed to be agents from both sides.”

So that explained their animosity toward each other. “So you’re not really cousins.”

“Only in the same way that you would be related to Cassie through Adam and Eve. Somewhere in our genealogy we share a common ancestor. But that’s about it.”

I suddenly realized just how utterly exhausted I was. The excitement of the past few days was really catching up to me. I stopped a few feet away from my car and leaned on a steel-blue Saab. “It’s all so much.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything right now. You have time to process all this. I’ve, uh—what do they say?” He turned to me and smiled awkwardly. “I’ve got your back?”

I laughed—or at least I started out laughing, but before I knew it, my laughter turned into choking, and I turned away so that Devin couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face. He must have noticed anyway, because he put his arm around me gently, as though he could infuse me with the tranquility he always seemed to emit when we were alone. When Asher wasn’t there.

“It’s all right, Skye,” he said softly. “That’s the reason I’m here. To watch over you, to protect you.”

I surprised myself. I melted into him and buried my face in his chest. I could feel his breathing hitch in his throat. Slowly his other arm wrapped around me.

“The fight . . . that night at the Bean . . . during my birthday . . . was that about me?”

I felt him stiffen, hesitate, then relax. “Yes. Asher made contact with you before we were supposed to. It upset the balance of things and has been causing chaos ever since. It’s like I’ve tried to tell you. He’s dangerous.”

There was that word again.
Dangerous.
But it meant so many different things. Dangerous because of his effect on Devin? Dangerous because I had no idea who—or what—Asher truly was? Or maybe— Could I even let myself think it? Maybe he was dangerous because of the effect he had on me.

“Are you all right?” Devin asked after several moments. He was holding me so close that I could feel him swallow.

“No.” I sobbed. “I’m the opposite of all right.” He brushed his hand over my back, and I started to feel calmer. “I didn’t really get a chance to know my parents that well. I was so young when they died. I have no idea if the memories I have of them are real or . . . if I, you know, made them up. And now you’re messing with all that. All the memories I thought were one thing. Now you’re telling me . . .” But I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know how.

I pulled away from his chest and looked into his eyes. Something flashed in them. Confusion? Something more? As though he was only just seeing me for the first time. He touched my cheek. “You’re so special. In ways . . . I wasn’t expecting.”

He tensed and abruptly released me. “I have to go,” he said with an unexpected icy demeanor, and my heart sank at the abrupt change. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He seemed to have second thoughts. “Skye,” he said almost tenderly. “Tonight you’re tired. I know. But soon you’re going to have to meet your destiny.”

“And if I don’t want to meet it?”

He didn’t smile. This was all so serious for him. He was on a mission even if I didn’t completely understand it.

“It’ll be easier if you embrace it,” he said.

“For whom?”

“Everyone. Trust me, Skye. I . . . care about you. Probably more than I should. I only want what’s best for you.”

“How can you know what’s best for me?” I asked. “You just met me.”

“The Order can see our destiny. It guides us. It allows us to exist in a place with no fear.”

Maybe that was why he always looked so calm. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place where there was no fear. Maybe, I thought, that was some kind of Paradise after all.

He nodded at my car. “Are you okay to drive home?”

I was upset, but I wasn’t dizzy anymore. I could drive.

“Barring any unforeseen disasters, I think I can manage.”

Devin reached as though to touch my cheek and then dropped his hand to his side. “I know all of this is overwhelming, scary. But think of that afternoon when we sat on the boulders. How peaceful it all was. The Order is like that, only much, much more so. It’s beautiful, Skye. You shouldn’t fear it.”

I swallowed. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”

He nodded and, with a slight smile, trudged away. I didn’t want to admit that I was sorry to see him go. I walked up to my car and unlocked the door. As I got in, I had that same prickly feeling I’d had when I felt Asher watching me on the first day of the new semester. I whipped around, wondering if Asher had followed me.

But it wasn’t Asher.

Several rows away, I caught a glimmer of blond hair. A stunning girl stood glaring at me. I’d never seen her before. But something in her shocking blue eyes was familiar and cold. Instinctively I slammed my door, locking it behind me. But when I looked out the window, the girl was gone.

Chapter 18

I
fought my way out of bed the next morning and, legs shaky, somehow managed to get in the shower. I turned the water up as hot as possible without scalding myself, letting the steam billow in clouds. I tilted my head back and opened my eyes; the beads of water clinging to the ceiling reflected lots of little me’s, all staring back down. Had the night before really happened? And the night before that? In the new light of morning, everything they’d told me seemed impossible. Even in the steamy bathroom, I shivered as the next logical question snaked its way into my brain. If my parents were a Guardian of the Order and a member of the Rebellion—what did that make me?

Could I really have lived seventeen years knowing nothing about who I really was?

It struck me that I could simply choose not to believe them. Maybe if I ignored Devin and Asher and just kept moving forward, not letting myself get tripped up over any of this, it would all just go away. I could go back to being Skye Parker, star of the Northwood High ski team and Columbia University shoo-in. Even as I pictured it, I doubted that I could live with so many questions ignored. So many left unanswered.

I turned the hot and cold knobs at the same time, and the water shut off with a sharp squeak.

Now that Asher and Devin had opened the floodgates—whatever they led to—I wondered if it was even possible to go back to the way things were.

I grabbed Devin’s jacket off my desk chair once I was dressed and ready to leave. It was no longer warm, but it did smell like him: crisp, clean, like the air at the top of a mountain.

There was a note from Aunt Jo on the kitchen table.

Hey Rock Star,

At the office late tonight. Planning a trip out at the end of the week. You’ll be okay for dinner, right? There’s lots of frozen stuff in the freezer.

Love, Aunt Jo

A warm, unexpected surge of relief flooded me. Aunt Jo was the one person I couldn’t keep secrets from. With her out of the house, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to avoid telling her that the girl she’d known for the past seventeen years, the girl she’d raised, might not be who she seemed to be.

My goal was to swing by Devin’s locker and drop off his jacket on my way to homeroom. But when I approached the north corridor, my heart dropped into my stomach. Devin was standing at his locker, engaged in a heated conversation with the blond girl who’d been standing in the parking lot the night before. As I stood there, an image from one of my nightmares suddenly came rushing back: a pair of scorching blue eyes boring a hole in the atmosphere, all of the oxygen seeping out of it into the blackness of outer space, the air sucked out of my lungs and swirling among the stars.

I almost turned around—I’d give him his jacket in homeroom—but something stopped me. Instinct told me to stay out of sight. That I’d want to hear what they were talking about. Taking a breath, I ducked behind the nearest row of lockers and tried not to make a sound.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I heard Devin whisper fiercely. “It’s so incredibly risky, Raven. What if they find out? You’re being . . . rebellious.” He said it with the same tone someone might use if accusing a person of being a serial killer.

“Pardon me for
looking out for you
,” she spat. Then her voice got softer. “Besides, they know I’m here. They’re worried about you, too. Please, Devin, you have to come back. Tell the Gifted to give this mission to someone else. Maybe they’ll do it this time. If you really beg—”

“Someone else?” Devin’s voice cut in, sharp. “Beg? What makes you think this time will be any different from the last? Or the time before that? I do what they tell me. I have no choice. Look, we talked about this before I left. You knew I would be gone for a while. I’ll see you soon, okay? You just have to—”

“You can’t know how soon it will be.” Her voice dropped, and I had to hold my breath and strain my ears to hear what she said next. “You know what kind of mission this is. It’s different from the ones before.”

“But I’ve been training for it for so long. All of my other missions were simply training for this one.”

“What about us? We are supposed to be together—it’s fated, and so it shall be. There is something about her that gives me chills. I wish you would stay away from her.”

I let out my breath in a small gasp. They were talking about
me.
How could I possibly give someone like
her
the chills?

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Then I wish you would think carefully about the legend. There are so many things we don’t yet know. About who she is. What she can do to us.”

“You’re scared.”

“I don’t have the capacity for fear.” Her tone was simple, matter-of-fact. Like she was saying she wasn’t very good at math.

“Because you’ve been sheltered by the Order. You don’t understand how dangerous it is out here.”

“I can understand the danger without being afraid of it. It’s you I’m worried about. That’s why I’m here.”

“And you shouldn’t be. You have no choice except to let me see this through to the end,” he said flatly. “Neither of us does.”

“But—”

“I was picked for this. It’s an honor that I will not turn away from.”

My heart was pounding, and I could hear Raven’s voice shake as she spoke.