A Radiant Sky

16

“So.” Cassie’s eyes were sparkling. “I think I found a dress.”

“Huh?” I said, blinking to focus. I had hardly slept the night before. Once I’d gotten what I needed from Astaroth and pushed him out of my head, I had tossed and turned for hours. I had tried all morning to forget the sound of Astaroth’s voice, but his words wormed their way into the cracks of my brain, the empty spaces where before there had been only quiet. Could he be right? Would I always have to choose between love—and my life?

“For prom,” Cassie said. “Are you even paying attention?”

“Stop the presses!” Dan cried.

“You might want to take note, Daniel,” came the even reply, “as you’ll be wearing a matching boutonniere.”

“A booty what?”

“What does it look like?” I asked.

“Light pink. Short. Body-hugging. I kept telling the salesgirls, short and tight doesn’t have to be slutty, you know?”

“I know!” I agreed.

“I never know,” said Dan. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s all about proportions,” I told him.

“And footwear,” Cassie added. She whipped out her cell phone and produced a photograph of her modeling the dress in the store’s three-way mirror.

It was beautiful—and couldn’t be more perfect for Cassie if it had been made for her. A silky, satiny bandage dress in a pale pink, almost nude color that hit midthigh. It looked impossibly glamorous paired with her red shampoo-commercial waves.

“You look a little naked.” Ian leaned over my shoulder, wide eyed.

“Thank you!” Cassie beamed.

“Let me see that,” said Dan. He took the phone out of her hands and studied it. We were all silent while we waited for his response.

“Dan?” She prodded.

“Dan?” I nudged him in the shoulder. “The world? It still exists.”

Dan looked up, dazed. “Can you send me this?”

Cassie blushed. “Let’s talk later,” she said under her breath.

“You’re right, though. Your booty does look hot—”

“Boutonniere!” She smacked him on the arm. “It’s a flower! You wear it in your lapel! Will you please take this seriously? Prom is in a few weeks and it might be our last dance ever and I want it to be perfect!” She sulked for a few seconds. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go finish painting the cows in the papier-mâché tornado before chem.”

Ian and Dan burst out laughing.

As Cassie walked away, I felt my stomach sink. They were so excited for prom. How could I tell them that the big battle we’d all been preparing for—that we’d been fearing—was going to happen on prom night? How could I do that to Cassie? I knew I’d have to tell her eventually, but for now, I decided to keep what I’d discovered in Astaroth’s mind to myself. It looked like I was back to keeping secrets.

“I have to go, too,” I said. “I have a scholastic reputation to maintain. Gotta go meet with Ms. Manning before next period.” I’d gotten a notice about it that morning. I almost wished I could go with Cassie to paint cows.

“Wuh-whoa,” Dan said.

“If it’s about those fireballs you threw in phys ed. . . .” Ian smirked.

“Can it, you guys. It’s about something normal, for once.”

“Let’s talk about your GPA, Skye,” Ms. Manning said, studying me over the top of her sleek wire-rimmed glasses. “Finals are coming up. I know you have your heart set on Columbia. So as your adviser, I just wanted to check in.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think I’m doing okay.”

Okay was a huge overstatement. What with visions of the future, connecting with my parents in the past, trying to find a missing Rogue, and plotting to save the world, studying hadn’t exactly ranked high on my agenda.

What had happened to me? Were my priorities totally screwed up?

“Well . . .” Ms. Manning took out a calculator and did some number crunching. “You need to get at least a 98 on three of your exams if you want to keep your GPA where it needs to be,” she said.

“Piece of cake.” I laughed nervously to show I wasn’t daunted by the task.

But I was, and now I had one more item I could add to the growing list I was worried that I’d really mess up.

I thought about it at length as I hurried down the hall to my next class. Grades, friends, prom—it was almost like the past six months had never happened. Except for the memory of Astaroth’s cold steel voice whispering in my ear. Threatening me.

Devin was as good a way to make that happen as any. I could have made him do much worse to you than he did.

I wasn’t sure it could really get any worse than stabbing me. But a lot had happened since then, while he was technically still under the Order’s control. He had warned me, helped me, taught me about my powers of the light. There was the time at the party in the woods after Cassie’s latest gig when I’d lost myself for just a moment and let him kiss me. Not just any kiss—the memory of it still made me shiver. Coming from Devin, someone who was normally so reserved, well—it had swept me up in its frenzy, and I’d been powerless.

Your dogged need to always see the best in everyone.

I did always want to think the best of the people in my life. I wanted to believe that Devin was good inside. That it was the Order that made him do and say all the things that made me not trust him.

I could have made him do much worse.

He had still been under the Order’s control when he’d done all those things. Warning me. Kissing me. Telling me he loved me. I thought he’d been acting out, but now it occurred to me for the first time how impossible that would have been.

The Order made him do those things. They preyed on my weakness.

The Rebels thought he had been controlling the way I felt. They believed that was the reason why I felt so calm around him.

Why I trusted him.

We were interrupted before we’d had the chance to find out.

But now I had a way to know for sure. And it was all thanks to my mom.

I was determined to find out the truth and put that chapter of my life to rest, once and for all. It was what I needed, to fight.

It was hard to get Devin alone. He didn’t go many places without Gideon and Ardith these days. I could feel the three of them watching me as they swept down the halls.

They had to be planning something new. Some attack of the elements on Aunt Jo or my friends. Or—I shuddered to think it—Earth and Aaron. They had come back to River Springs to help me. If I was the reason they got hurt, or worse, I would never be able to forgive myself.

The last vision I’d seen of the elements was the flash flood that trapped Cassie and Dan in Foster’s Woods. But the weather had been beautiful—balmy and warm, not a cloud in the sky. How would I know when the flood was coming? I was determined to keep myself open to my powers of the dark, in addition to the light visions that had been helping me so much lately. I was a balance of both, if nothing else. I had to allow myself to be balanced, if I was going to succeed.

So I kept an eye out, and Ardith knew, and Gideon hid behind his dark sunglasses, and Devin—well, Devin was the only one who I couldn’t quite get a handle on.

But that was about to change.

If he could lull me into a false sense of trust, I could do the same right back at him.

After school, I found him in a rare moment alone by his locker.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the locker next to his.

Devin looked at me, then glanced around to make sure he was really the one I was talking to. His face lit up when he realized he was.

“Hi.”

“Where’s the rest of your crew?”

“Why . . . ?” He looked wary, like it might be a trap.

I put my hand on his arm and smiled up at him. I could feel the warmth under his skin. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I just want to talk.”

The locker door shut before I’d finished blinking, and soon we were sitting on the purple velvet couch in the back of Love the Bean—the one where I’d taught him how to make small talk all those months ago.

I sipped on my favorite—a chai latte—iced, now, for the warm weather.

“I’m confused,” he said. “I thought we weren’t speaking.” He took a sip of his ginseng green tea. “That you were mad.”

At the hurt and hesitation in his voice, I looked up—and suddenly, my script and everything I’d planned to say evaporated.

“We’ve been through a lot together,” I said, letting the side of my knee touch his. “I guess I’m not ready to just say good-bye and never speak again.” He let his knee linger near mine. “Even if we’re fighting against each other now.”

His voice dropped, low in my ear. “Skye, I meant what I said. About doing what I can to make it up to you.”

I glanced at him, and my heart shuddered. I couldn’t help it—my body still reacted to being this close to him, whether my heart and mind wanted to or not. I had always felt a magnetic pull toward Devin. It made it hard for me to stay away, even when he was yelling at me to do better, even when he was frustratingly impassive and hard to read. A montage of our stolen moments together flashed before me:

The snowball fight this winter that had ended in me falling on top of him, my hands on either side of his head, the steam of his breath against my cheek and his rare laughter in my ears—

Waking up next to him in his bed, the pull toward him strong even then, as he lay on his side, watching me, a shy smile playing on his lips—

That moment in the woods—

And then it was like the force of the world was at his wings, pulling him toward me. And his lips touched mine, and his hands were running through my hair, and his body was pushing me up against a tree that was hidden in shadows. And he kissed me.

“Skye?”

“Huh?” I blinked. Devin took a sip of his tea, and watched me.

I steeled myself. I had to put all that behind me now. Because if I understood Astaroth correctly, none of it—not a single moment—was real.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I put my hands on his shoulders and stared deep into his eyes. Devin cocked his head, just slightly, and that look of hope I’d seen in the woods returned.

“For what?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s just that I have to know.”

The blue pools of his irises suddenly opened up, expanding until the inky centers edged out everything else, and I was swallowed by them.

I was back in the tiny, cramped hallway outside the bathroom at Love the Bean.

And I was staring directly into Asher’s fiery gaze.

My heart leaped. I knew I missed him, but I didn’t realize how desperately until I found myself face-to-face with him again. I wanted to reach out to him, to wrap my arms around his neck, but I was trapped within the confines of Devin’s memory.

This is the night of my birthday, I realized.

“You want to play by the rules? Fine. Be a good little Guardian. But I’m going to talk to her.”

“Don’t!” Devin said helplessly, grabbing his arm. “It’s not time. She only just turned seventeen today. We have to wait.”

Asher’s eyebrow shot up, his eyes glinting. “Nothing interesting ever happened by waiting, Dev,” he said. “I can’t wait anymore. This girl is special. We’ve been waiting for too long, and I don’t want to miss another minute of the fun.”

He brushed past Devin, toward the door, and into the night, where I was about to meet Asher for the first time.

Devin turned to watch him go. In the memory, he clenched his fists at his side. She’s going to fall in love with him, he thought. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t compete with that. I didn’t feel calm radiating from him—what I felt was frustration. That he couldn’t be as bold as Asher. That he couldn’t fight for what he wanted, too.

What I always took for shyness and cool reserve was his oath. He always wanted to talk to me. But he was bound by honor, too. I realized, strangely, that Devin and I had more in common than I’d ever realized.

The memory wrinkled and refolded, straightened itself out.

He was in a parking lot at dusk. I recognized it—it was the parking lot outside of school. And I was there, walking beside him, his jacket pulled tightly around my shoulders. Through Devin’s eyes, I could feel him pulling back, his face a mask, allowing nothing in and nothing out.

I was crying. I felt something stir within him as he reached out and put his arm around me gently, pulling me in to his chest.

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

I remember this memory. It was right after he and Asher first told me the truth about my parents. That I was half Guardian, half Rebel, a human girl with powers of light and dark in her veins.

“The fight . . .” I heard myself say into his chest. “That night at the Bean . . . during my birthday . . . was that about me?”

“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.”

I felt myself flinch in his arms. I remembered exactly what I’d thought when he said those words. Was Asher dangerous because he made Devin so angry? Or because I didn’t yet know who, or what, he really was? Or was he dangerous because he made me feel things I’d never felt before—not about anyone else?

In Devin’s memory, I was sobbing quietly in his arms. I felt something spasm in his chest. And then I heard his thought.

If only I was allowed to break the rules—everything might be different now.

He touched my cheek. “You’re so special. In ways . . . I wasn’t expecting.”

He told me I was going to have to meet my destiny. That it would be easier if I embraced it.

“For whom?” I asked.

“For everyone.”

Through the memory, I could feel his frustration, and then, as we stood and faced each other, a curl of despair—a cold emptiness—entered his body like a sharp intake of breath.

What was that?

The memory faded, and I found myself sitting on the faded purple velvet couch at Love the Bean again, still looking into Devin’s pool-blue eyes. I blinked.

The way he was looking at me, it was clear that he knew exactly what I’d seen. It was almost like he’d been transported back to the memory with me. But there was also something else in his eyes: regret.

My plan had worked. There was a connection between our minds—a rift, through which I’d found a portal to his memories. It wouldn’t have been possible if Devin hadn’t been influencing my mind and my emotions for as long as I’d known him.

And now, I knew for sure.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, his voice low.

“Not you, too,” I whispered.

“If I hadn’t been bound to the rules of the Order, things would have turned out differently.” He squeezed my hand tighter. “Your heart might belong to me now, of its own free will. Instead of him.” I looked down at my hands.

“No,” I said quietly. “No. I don’t think it would.”

“Skye—”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? We can’t change the past.”

“Listen to me, I can explain! It’s not what you think.”

“Isn’t it?”

He didn’t have an answer. He just sat there on the couch, his mouth slightly open, as if I’d just taken away the last precious thing he had. But I didn’t feel bad. He had done it to me.

Now he knew how it felt.

On the drive home, I tried to see the road through the tears that had sprung to my eyes, blurring my world until I finally had to pull over. I leaned my head against the steering wheel and cried. And it wasn’t just for Devin—though I felt torn up inside about it. It was for Asher too, still so far away, who loved me, and who I loved, but who I questioned, because that was the way my heart worked.

And I cried for me. Because I had committed to this path, and I would stick with it, but every day that passed it got harder, and I didn’t know if it was the right one anymore.