A Fractured Light (23 page)

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just something somebody left behind.”

Chapter 29

B
irds chirped as I opened my eyes the next morning, a sure sign that spring was on its way. I looked around, forgetting for a moment where I was. Light filtered in through a small window near the ceiling, illuminating the attic room.

I remembered last night. The lullaby. The rattle. The clue my parents had been trying to tell me. I sat up—but a pair of warm arms wrapped themselves around me, pulling me back into the folds of the sleeping bag. A sleepy voice said, “Don’t go yet. Letting all the cold air in.”

I let Asher pull me back down, and snuggled into his body heat. He’d held me all night—just held me, as if he was afraid of what would happen if he let go. It was the first time we’d ever woken up together.

“Mmm,” he murmured, kissing my neck. “Much better.”

A sharp knock on the door at the foot of the stairs nearly made me sit bolt upright again. “Skye!” Aunt Jo called. “Asher! Breakfast!”

“I don’t think,” Asher muttered as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, “that you and I will ever have five minutes alone together as long as she’s around.”

“She’s very good at her job,” I agreed.

I tried to keep the memory of Asher’s warmth wrapped around me all morning, but my thoughts were still trapped in the chilly attic room from the night before. My parents had wanted me to figure it out—they knew I would when I was ready. They wanted me to fight. But how would I start? And what, exactly, was I fighting?

I was grateful that we were going on a long hike after breakfast. I needed the time to walk and think.

We stopped near a clearing for lunch. A small brook was thawing, the ice melting away into the earliest trickles of a babbling stream. I was just unpacking a bag of trail mix when the evergreen trees swirled around me into mist and the trickle of the stream became gulls cawing gently, the lapping of waves on a shore. I knew where I was. I’d been here before.
The mist cleared and I was on a gray, empty beach. The hem of my diaphanous dress floated like sea foam in the shallow surf, but I kept moving forward along the shore. A figure moved toward me in the mist, growing closer, looming. But I couldn’t see who it was.

Someone came up beside me, his sword raised high over his head. I turned and saw that I was standing next to Ian. He nodded at me, looking into the mist. I said a prayer for luck, and threw my own sword at the approaching figure.

The mist swirled and faded, and I was suddenly back on the trail, sitting on a rock by the thawing brook. Nobody had noticed a thing. I was getting better at controlling my visions, just like the rest of my powers. Even if I still had no clue what they meant.

I bit into my sandwich. Ian had been in this vision. He hadn’t been there before, but now he was standing next to me, fighting by my side.

I looked up from my sandwich to find Devin staring.
He saw it happen.
He gave me a meaningful look and walked off into the trees. Devin would know. He’d have the answers. He knew he could help me.

I counted to ten, and then I followed him into the woods.

He was waiting for me. “You had a vision,” he said.

I nodded. “Another one. On the beach. I was wearing this beautiful dress, and—I recognized it.”

His eyes grew brighter, wider.

“You did? From where?”

“Aunt Jo gave it to me the night before my race. It used to be my mom’s.”

“And the vision,” Devin said. “What happened in it?”

“I had a sword,” I said. “And . . . this is the weird part. Ian was right there next to me.”

“You had a sword?” Devin asked, drawing his eyebrows together. “An angelic sword?” I nodded. “Was it yours?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Skye, you’re seeing visions of the future.”

“How do you know for sure?” I asked.

“Because you were wearing the dress that Aunt Jo gave you.”

“I could have just been dreaming about it.”

“And Ian was with you.”

“It could have been for anything. We could have been hanging out. It might have been pro—”

“You had a sword,” Devin said, his voice urgent. “Angelic swords are made from the single feather of an angel’s wing. You don’t have your wings yet, Skye. You saw a vision of the future—
after your wings have grown in.
”

“But how?” I asked. “How is that even possible?”

“There’s only one explanation,” Devin said, awe filling his eyes. “Only one way you could possess the sight. Your mother wasn’t a Guardian. She had to have been a Gifted One.”

“But,” I stammered, “that—that doesn’t seem right. That would mean my blood is so much stronger in favor of the light. And my powers—”

“Your powers are a blend of both. But visions of the future—that’s the strongest power of the light that there is. It may outweigh any other power you have.” His face softened. Suddenly he looked so much like the Devin from before. “Skye,” he murmured.

“What?”

“It’s amazing.”

Something—a sixth sense—was prickling up the back of my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it. Why don’t you see it? Why can’t you see what I see?”

“What do you see?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer, but positive I needed to.

“You belong with the Order. We can teach you how to refine your visions. We can show you how to see what will happen to you—to everyone you know! You can hold the future in the palm of your hand.”

“The Order tried to kill me,” I said. “I could never join them.”

“Then do it for me,” he begged.

“Why?”

“Because I love you! Do I really have to say it? Don’t you believe me by now?”

My heart almost stopped beating—because the last time he’d said something like that was only seconds before I felt the cold steel of his blade spear through me. I tensed, getting ready to fight if I had to.

“You don’t love me,” I said. “You couldn’t possibly. It’s not real love. You’ve never made it possible for me to love you back. You push me away every chance you get.” His eyes were so sad, helpless, but I had to keep going. “You hold yourself at arm’s length, bottle everything up inside. You think it’s love, Devin, but it’s not. Not really. You admire my strength. You want to help me. But you’re not even my friend.”

“How do you know?” he asked, his voice perfectly controlled. “How could you know what I’m feeling? I wear a mask to keep it from you. From everyone. I would do anything for you. All I’ve ever wanted is to get you to the Order, where you’d be safe from any more Guardians trying to kill you.”

He moved toward me, and I saw that Raven had been standing behind him the whole time. My heart pounded wildly. Had she followed us to the woods? Was she alone—or were there others?

“Well, that was sweet,” said Raven. Devin spun around. “We all knew it, of course, but I didn’t think you were stupid enough to say it out loud. You broke the biggest rule. Do you know what the Order is going to do to you? Do you understand what has to happen now?” For maybe the first time, I could detect real anger, real emotion in Raven’s voice. What had happened to make her so close to losing it?

“No,” Devin said. “There’s still a chance—if she comes over, if she joins the Order, then nothing has to change.”

“What about us?”

“There
is
no us.” Devin was shaking, his hands balled into fists by his sides. “It’s all just a big lie. The Order can’t see my destiny, thanks to Skye. She changed everything, blurred our fate so much that it doesn’t matter anymore. She changed the course of time! She’s one of us, Raven. Don’t you see it? She was supposed to die, and she
healed herself
.”

I had? That would explain how quickly I’d gotten better, the lack of scar anywhere on my body. But it would also be—

“You poor, sad fool,” Raven sang, her voice fierce. “You really believe she healed herself? She could barely control her own dark powers. What makes you think she was so skilled with her light ones?”

“Then who did?” Devin yelled. The intensity of his voice surprised me, echoing through the trees. “It wasn’t me! It couldn’t have been any Guardian!”

“I did!” Raven’s eyes brimmed with tears. It was shocking to see someone so strong, so terrible, on the verge of breaking down. “I did, for you! Because I couldn’t stand the thought of you having to live the rest of your days knowing that you killed the one person in this world you love.”

Devin stopped cold. He tilted his head and stared at her.

My jaw dropped as I realized she looked almost human. She did have a heart. She had a soul. All of the Guardians did. No wonder their eyes always looked so full of emotion but their faces remained stoic. They couldn’t—weren’t allowed to—express any of it. It made so much sense.

“You did?” he said quietly.

“Yes, Devin, I did. I would keep my archnemesis from dying, just to keep you from pain. I would defy every order I’ve ever been given just so you wouldn’t have to live the rest of your life with the guilt of killing someone you love. But it’s too bad,” she said, her voice taking on a terrifying edge, “that I won’t be so lucky.”

“What?” Devin said.

“No!” I yelled. “Stop!”

But it was too late. Raven’s wings had unfurled in the blink of an eye, and before anyone could stop her, she’d plucked a single white feather from them. As she held it in her hands, I watched in awe as it grew longer, shinier, sleeker, and before I knew it she was holding a sword.
An angelic sword.

She rushed at him as Devin produced his own sword.

“Raven, don’t do it!” I screamed. “Don’t kill him!”

But she swung violently. I heard the sickening slice of metal against skin, and suddenly all I could see was blood. I fell to my knees, sobbing. “No,” I choked. “No!”

“Oh, stop it,” Raven said, her voice heaving in ragged gasps. “Don’t waste your tears.”

I looked up. And that’s when I knew something had changed; something strange had shifted around us. It had only just been early afternoon, but now, under the darkening evening, the first stars were beginning to blink on through the canopy of trees, casting menacing shadows over everything. I noticed Raven first, crumpled on the ground. The twilight and shadows were playing tricks on my eyes, and at first I thought they had cast an awkward angle on her wings, making them look broken, oddly twisted. Then, with horror, it dawned on me. Raven’s gorgeous white wings were no longer attached to her body. They’d been cut from her back. Now they lay next to her, ragged, mangled, and streaked with red.

As my eyes adjusted to the image, Devin’s hulking figure came into focus. He stood above her, looking down, breathing hard. His sword was raised above his head, where it glinted in the starlight. Blood ran down the blade, dripping onto the ground.

Raven shuddered. “Well, who could have predicted that?” She smirked ruefully, wincing a little and holding her hand to her side. “You’ve cast me out! Cut off my wings, banished me to Earth forever. Don’t you see what you did? The Order won’t take me back like this.”

“He sees,” Ardith said from the edge of the clearing. “He’s never going to stop, Skye. It’s how he was programmed. He’s a machine. He’s just a pawn.”

Ardith marched over to me and picked me up off the ground. I shook my head, sobbing. “He’ll never change,” she said. “He’ll always do their bidding.
Always.
He’ll keep feeling bad about it and keep the pain hidden away deep inside where no one can see it. But he’ll keep doing it all the same.”

“I don’t believe you!” I cried. “We can save him!”

“No, we can’t,” Asher said. His voice was colder, sharper than I’d ever heard it before. I hadn’t even seen him approach.

He extended his blade, the edge of it dangerously close to Devin’s throat. “But we can stop it from happening again.”

Chapter 30

“A
sher!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

“It’s better this way,” he said. “Trust me. I swore I would protect you. I made a promise to them that I would. With Devin gone, you’ll be happier. Safer. You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“You made a promise to them?” I repeated, and it took a full second for the meaning of his words to sink in. “To the Rebellion? This was just another mission to you? Protect me—and kill Devin? And you kept it from me?”

“You know it’s always been more than that for me.” I remembered what he and Ardith had said that day in the cabin, when I’d first woken up.
Passion is our way, but love can drive an angel mad, Asher. It can disrupt the heavens, change the outcome of a war.
Ardith had been warning him not to let love interfere with his mission. This mission.

“How can you ever separate duty and love?” Asher asked now. “How can you ever make that distinction? How can you choose? I protect you for both of those reasons and more.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he said, “Don’t call me a traitor. Don’t say that I betrayed you. Everything I do is for you. Killing Devin will be, too.”

I noticed Cassie, Dan, and Ian standing just behind him. Their mouths were hanging open in shock, and they looked terrified.

“Stop,” I said, faltering. “You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t, Skye. You’d never have let it happen.”

“Of course not!” I yelled. “But I deserved to know!”

“If you’d stopped it, it would have been fighting against us—against yourself. He was trying to win you over to his side! He didn’t care about you! He never did. You think if he loved you, he would have stabbed you in cold blood? I’m trying to
protect you
. It’s all for you!”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Devin spoke suddenly, and I whipped around. “It’s so much more complicated than that. I never had a choice. Not about any of this—but especially not when it came to you.”

I no longer knew what to think or who to believe. But instead of the confusion I’d felt all winter, I was suddenly seeing things with an aching clarity. The time had come for me to stop listening to all the noise around me and focus on what my own blood was telling me to do.

Devin turned to me. “Skye,” he said quietly, simply, “I’m sorry for everything. They made me do it. They keep making me hurt the people I—” He stopped abruptly. Then he turned to Asher and fell to his knees. “Forgive me,” he whispered. He lowered his head. “Just do it. Get it over with.”

“What?” I gasped. “No, stop!”

Asher didn’t look at me as he stepped back. Then, he took two running steps forward and brought his sword down in a swooping arc. “
No!
” I yelled. “He just needs to be free of the Order! If he can make his own choices, you’ll see he isn’t bad.” But I couldn’t watch. I looked away, covering my face in my hands.

I didn’t hear anything. I opened my eyes.

Asher’s sword was just inches from Devin’s neck. He was looking right at me. “Okay,” he said, his voice low and even. “Jump.”

Devin looked up. “What?”

“Jump,” Asher said again. “Become a Rebel. Or I’ll kill you.”

Slowly Devin stood. Asher backed up a step, but he kept his blade level with Devin the whole time.

“If I join the Rebellion,” Devin said, “you’ll let me live?”

“If you join and fight with us, if you pledge to help us destroy the Order and restore freedom to the world, then yes, I’ll let you live.”

“Jump, Devin,” I pleaded.

His massive white wings folded in on themselves, withdrawing into his back. He closed his eyes and placed a hand on the flat blade of Asher’s sword. “I pledge myself to chaos,” he said. “To passion, disorder, and renewal. I pledge myself to love. To the freedom to love.” As he said his last words, he raised his eyes and met mine.

And when his wings unfurled again, they were a deep, rolling black. Feathers like the night.

I released the breath I’d been holding. Asher stepped up to Devin until their noses were almost touching.
Please don’t
, I thought desperately.
Don’t kill him anyway.
Slowly Asher extended his hand.

“Welcome to the Rebellion,” he said. Devin brought his own hand up and shook Asher’s. He looked like he was in shock.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’ll devote myself to your cause.”

Raven cried out in pain behind him, and Devin turned and ran to where she was still crumpled on the ground.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, kneeling beside her. “Raven, I never meant for this to happen.” He looked around helplessly. “I can’t heal you,” he said. “I’ll find somebody who can. I promise.”

The last time I’d heard those words, I’d been attacked by a Guardian and a Rebel was trying to find me help. This time, the Rebel was Devin.

“I’ll do it.” I stood up. Everyone turned to look at me. It was the last thing I’d ever thought I’d volunteer for—and yet, it felt right. “Raven saved my life. I owe her.” I had a feeling our lives were inextricably linked from here on out. Devin looked so grateful—and for the first time, his eyes softened.

“Thank you,” he said, taking my hands. “Here. Like this.”

He placed my hands on her. We closed our eyes, and for a moment, everything was still. Raven sat perfectly rigid while I summoned all of my powers of dark and light, everything I had been working to control. I felt something stir beneath my hands.

“Your eyes,” Devin said, holding my gaze. “They’re silver.”

I could feel it. I looked down. Something silvery, light, and quick was flowing from the wounds on Raven’s back. The mercurial liquid streamed from her wounds, taking shape into something huge and fluttery. New wings were emerging where her old ones had been. But they weren’t white, and they weren’t black.

They were a glistening silver.

“You did it,” Raven whispered, standing slowly and letting the feathers unfold behind her. “You really did it. I should—” She stopped herself just short of saying something snarky. She met my eyes and nodded, slightly. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”

I had done it. I had gone from failing at restoring life to a tiny alpine flower to healing great, gaping angelic wounds. As if thinking the same thing, Devin caught my eyes. He looked so proud—happy, for the first time since we’d met.

Suddenly I felt something begin to push through my own back. I cried out and doubled over, reaching my hands behind me to feel what was happening. When I pulled them away, they were dripping—not with blood, as I’d feared, but with the same liquid silver. Devin’s eyes grew wide.

“Skye,” Asher said with wonder.

I saw the shadow my wings cast onto the little clearing in the woods before I realized what was happening. My own wings, the same color silver as Raven’s. As the rattle. As my eyes.

Asher stepped forward, with Ardith and Gideon close behind him, forming a V. “Raven, we can welcome you into the Rebellion, too. Skye, you’ll officially join us now? We’ll all fight against the Order together.”

I looked around the woods. My friends surrounded me, watching to see what I would do.

“Come on, Skye,” Asher said, offering a hand for me to take. He looked so hopeful, so sure that I would reach out and place my hand in his. The first breeze of spring ruffled his black hair, and he grinned. “Let’s go.”

Which is why my heart was breaking at what I was about to do.

I took a step back. “I can’t,” I said.

For a second, it looked like he hadn’t heard me. He continued to hold his hand out to me, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. His dark eyes stirred, as if trying to process what I’d just said.

“What?” His voice was no more than a whisper.

“No,” I said, louder this time. My heart was breaking into millions of shards of glass. My insides felt cut up from them. “My wings are silver, like my eyes—”

“Don’t do this, Skye—” he pleaded, his voice cracking at my name.

“Asher, you know I have to. You’ve known this for a while now. I’m not a Rebel, and I’m not a Guardian. I don’t think I was ever meant to be either. I need the balance of both in order to live without buckling under this power. I’m both and I’m neither. The dark and the light. I can’t exist without the other.”

“You can,” he said. His voice sounded strange and sad and desperate. Were those tears in his eyes? I looked down, biting my lip and trying hard not to let my own tears spill over.

“I can’t.” I forced myself to keep saying the words I knew I had to say. “I have to finish what my parents started. I was born to do this—to start a new faction. I’m—I’m grateful to you. To both of you.” Devin looked up and met my eyes. It felt so wrong to be facing both of them like this, almost like we were back on the roof of the school during my first lesson. Only this time, I wasn’t going to learn what I needed to know from them. I was going to have to find it in myself. “We’ll make our own rules,” I said. “Maybe there is such a thing as fate, and all this is supposed to happen. But if that’s true, my fate has always been to make my own decisions. My parents died trying to find a way for us all to live. I can’t let them down.”

Raven stepped up beside me.

“You and I have never quite . . . seen eye to eye.” She paused, and I could tell it was an effort for her to be nice to me. “But our lives are connected now. I healed you; you healed me. Our powers run through each other. I think our wings have made that clear.” She took another step toward me. “If I belong anywhere in this universe now, it’s with you, Skye.”

“I’ll join you, too.” I looked to see who was speaking and saw Ian step into the clearing. He looked so serious, so determined, and I knew instantly that we would be friends forever, our entire lifetime. He would fight beside me, I’d seen it with my own eyes. And if it would be anyone there beside me, it would be Ian. Loyal, observant Ian, always watching, noticing when something was wrong, just a step or two behind. A strange and sudden thought occurred to me, then. Could Ian be a Rogue, like Aunt Jo? A little bit alone, a little bit out of sync, and quick to notice angelic powers like my eyes—even if he didn’t know what he was seeing? They both shared a particular hatred for Asher, that’s for sure. A Rogue’s hatred.

“I’m behind you one hundred percent, Skye,” he said, moving beside me and Raven. “And I always have been. I’ll die fighting alongside you.” He put his arm around me and grinned.

“So will I,” said Aunt Jo. “I always said you should follow your own star. And I don’t belong to either faction—the Rebellion or the Order. I’ve always been somewhere in between.”

“Skye?” Asher said, and I turned to face him finally. He looked like he was fighting back something massive within him. My heart ached. In a perfect world, there would be no Order and no Rebellion. There would be no division of sides, nothing standing between us. But I knew I was making the right choice. “I love you,” he said. His voice shook with effort. “I love you so much, it’s like my whole life was just leading up to the moment I met you. And then as soon as I did, I lived in fear, every day, that you would be taken away from me.” He looked down. “I just never thought you’d be the one to do it.”

“I love you, too, Asher,” I whispered. Somewhere, by the edges of the clearing, I could hear Cassie sigh, and the shards of my heart were breaking into smaller, sharper pieces. I felt like my whole body was breaking. But I had to stay strong. “I have to do this.”

Asher’s hand fell, finally, to his side, and hung there without purpose, as if its entire reason for being had suddenly been taken away. Beside him, Devin put a hand on his back. I was finally able to see all of the emotions in his eyes, everything he could now let himself feel. And beneath the concern, I saw something else. Hope. But was it hope for me? For the Rebellion? For the fate of the universe? Was he hoping I could save it—or hoping that there was still a chance for us now that he was free to love?

I couldn’t think about those things just yet. They would have to wait. I had a mission now, of my own.

I looked at Ian and Raven and Aunt Jo. They stood on either side of me, hands poised at their sides, and for the first time, I felt purpose. I finally had a clear direction. I knew who we were and the journey we were about to embark on.

We weren’t light, and we weren’t dark. We were the in-between. We were something fractured and put back together again, better, stronger, illuminating the night.