A Radiant Sky

25

The wind picked up around us, whipping my hair into my face. I could feel the sun grow brighter, hotter, and the scent of pine trees grow so strong, so intense, that I felt almost faint from the overwhelming sharpness of it.

“What’s happening?” I whispered out loud.

It was blinding, sweltering, and I was dizzy, weakening, falling to my knees.

And then suddenly everything was still. The air was cool and dry. The scent of pine gave way to something earthy: rocks and dirt and sand.

I opened my eyes.

I was in the desert. The air was arid, the sky a faded violet, as if the sun had just finished setting but was still throwing off light from below. The moon rose in the distance. A coyote howled somewhere, far away or very close by. It was impossible to tell. For a second, I felt an intense pang of vertigo, and the desert pitched before me. The rocks turned to sand, and then rocks again. The plants sprouted shoots, bloomed, and withered, went through an entire life cycle all in the span of seconds.

The landscape was changing before my eyes, every second—all I had to do was blink.

Where am I? I breathed deeply, trying to catch my balance. My blood felt slow and fast at the same time, cold and hot. I put a hand to my neck. My skin was feverish but cool, slick with sweat but dry.

As I stood there, the night sky fell around me like a veil, dark and velvety. Stars scattered across the dome of space, cosmic glitter.

I took it all in. It was late afternoon just minutes ago. Time moves differently here.

As I walked, signs of the desert materialized around me. Sand dusted up beneath my feet, scattering on the wind. Fuchsia night blooms opened like secrets. Invisible insects chirped and whirred. A snake uncoiled from underneath the low, dry brush, rattling its tail at us as we passed.

I reached a spot where a syringa tree twisted up from the earth before my eyes, roots churning and rolling, and just past it, a flat, smooth rock stretched out under the night sky. I looked up at the blanket of stars.

“You made it,” Devin whispered beside me. “Welcome to the Rebellion. A pocket of time and space that’s folded in on itself. Ever-changing, ever-evolving—pure chaos. Impossible to describe, or pin down on a map.” He looked around, as if he’d been a Rebel all his life. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

The darkness in me began to stir, the chaos outside me pulled at the chaos within. I felt strange and lightheaded.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I just have to find him.”

Silver liquid thrummed through me, fast and light, then slow and thick, then quick again. The night air around us rustled, and suddenly I felt my wings burst from my back, catching the moonlight in folds of silvery feathers and throwing it onto the sand before us.

Something was changing. Tiny pinpricks of light winked across the nightscape, growing bigger as the light shifted. Despite the desert heat, a chill ran through me as I realized something. They weren’t growing bigger. They were getting closer.

I covered my head and ducked as meteors hurtled down around us, the rushing of burning rocks almost unbearable in my ears. Amid the flashes of light and dust and fire and rocks I shielded my face. I faltered.

Trust yourself.

It was so much easier said than done. But if I was going to find Asher, if I was going to keep my friends safe and my mind calm and clear, if I was going to be a leader, I had to trust myself.

And so, I looked up again at the sky, shielding my eyes from the falling debris. The silver flowed through me, pulsing, alive. It had a mind of its own, as if the energy around me was controlling my powers. I closed my eyes and tried to harness it somehow, to keep the power at bay.

I thought of Asher. The two of us in the mountains, causing the rain to fall hard, wash away the fiery trees.

Asher reaching for my hand.

Asher’s fingers on my neck.

His voice whispering to me. “You got this, Skye.”

Something shifted within me, and I opened my eyes. The fiery rocks were floating in midair. They glowed like burning coal against the backdrop of the night, as if lit from within. A fine gold dust sparkled in the air around us. Fireflies ducked and twinkled between the embers.

It was beautiful. A beautiful dark. A dangerous night.

Devin stared at me. “That was amazing,” he said. “You’re more powerful, more controlled than I’ve ever seen you.”

I grinned. “I’ve been practicing.” But even as I said it, dizziness pushed at my temples and the backs of my eyes. No matter how in control I was of my own powers, I could still feel them colliding with the chaos in the air of the Rebellion. I couldn’t stay here—I had to find Asher and leave.

Devin seemed to feel it, too. “We have to hurry,” he said gravely.

The landscape changed again even as we stood there, pitching me into another wave of dizziness. The desert sands gave way to the tall, pale grass of an alpine field, ghostly against the backdrop of night. The moon was high and bright above us.

“I feel so strange,” I said as the alpine grass morphed into a desert oasis, and then into the slick black rocks of the Mediterranean coast. The air had an energy to it; it seemed to vibrate with change. “So dizzy.” A great pressure was pushing down against my lungs. Breath came fast and shallow, almost not at all.

Amorphous shapes moved past me in a blur, nothing I could describe or define. The manifestation of pure chaos. I realized with a start that the blurred shapes were the Rebels. Something Asher had told me back when I’d first learned the truth about who I was came rushing back to me.

When we’re on earth, we take on human form, human desires, human needs.

Could it be that when he appeared to me, he appeared the way he did on purpose? Because I was a seventeen-year-old girl? But when I was gone, was he just a blurred shape like the rest of them, moving so fast that it was impossible to pick him out from the crowd? Was he near me right now, and I just couldn’t tell? I couldn’t understand how anyone could live like this—it would drive any sane person mad. But they’re not people, I reminded myself. No matter how much they seemed like it when they were around me.

Colors and shapes swished past on either side of me. I kept my eyes on the constantly moving ground. The dirt beneath me writhed with growing roots, twisting out of the earth, shooting up into plants and trees, green stems and massive trunks. Branches spindled out, wilting, dying. Struggling to keep my footing, I looked up, hoping the sky would be a constant. But the sky, too, shifted and moved.

My head was spinning. It was too much. It made me ache for home, for the clean mountain air. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Asher!” I called. My voice echoed across the unbound sky.

“What are you doing?” Devin grabbed my arm.

“He can hear me, I know he can. Asher!”

“That’s not the point! It’s dangerous to yell like that. Your powers are colliding with the chaos. You won’t make it.”

“Asher!” I yelled again. I didn’t care. I had to find him, and time was running out.

“If the Rebels hear you, they’ll come. Skye, listen to me. It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care about safe.” I ripped my arm away. “We came this far. I have to try.” I called his name just one more time.

The ground beneath us began to shake. But instead of the rumbling beginning in the ground, moving up through the bottoms of my feet and through my bones, somehow it worked in reverse. The great movement began in me. I could feel it in my heart, pumping out like blood, radiating from my fingertips and toes down into the earth itself, where it spread through the ground, traveling through roots, shaking the trees. The air itself was humming.

“Skye,” Devin yelled. “What did you do?”

A cold, wet mist moved in between us, so heavy that I couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of me. Devin had disappeared completely.

“Skye! Where are you? Are you okay?” The frantic note in his voice was clear. He was afraid my powers were combusting, consuming me in a swirl of mist. He thought I was dying.

I wish I could have called to him to tell him I wasn’t, but even I wasn’t totally sure. What was happening? And just as I was about to shout his name, the mist began to clear, and I knew exactly where I was.

I stood on a rocky path, slick with moisture. My breath came in short, uneven gasps. My heart was pounding. Water crashed in my ears. And when I looked up, I saw it. The waterfall.

It stretched before me, looming up into the clouds. I began to climb the path that curved around the side, to the top. With each step, my lungs burned, and my vision swam. But I kept myself focused.

Finally the path opened up onto the flat expanse of rock. It was higher up than I remembered. Too high for trees to grow. Too rocky for grass. The mist was so dense that I could see actual droplets of water suspended in the air. And then, as I let out the breath I’d been holding in, the tiny droplets of water pulled back like a curtain, and I saw him standing with his back to me, facing out over the waterfall.

His wild dark hair was curling up from the mist, and he was hunched over, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.

My heart leaped at the sight of him. He was in human form—maybe he wanted to be found. I took a deep breath. “Planning on jumping?”

He whipped around. His eyes grew in surprise.

Time seemed to stop, just for that one moment. The water stopped rushing. The earth stopped spinning. And all I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat. Please, I thought. Just smile.

And then, he broke into a wide, wicked grin, like all his life he had been waiting for this one moment.

I wasn’t in control anymore, didn’t stop to think about what I was doing or where I was. Something inside of me took over. And I ran to him.

He reached out his arms to catch me, and I struggled to keep my footing on the slippery rocks. But the minute my sneaker hit a wet patch, I knew it was all over. I grasped his arms and pulled him with me.

And suddenly we were falling sideways with nothing but air beneath us and rolling clouds in the sky above.

We unfurled our wings at the same time. The massive feathers caught the air, and we clung to each other as we plummeted toward the waves crashing against the rocks below. We went under, plunging through the surface of the freezing water. I felt it go up my nose and burn my lungs. Asher’s grip tightened around my arms. We burst through the surface at the same time, both of us gasping.

For what felt like a whole minute we just stood there, staring at each other. I couldn’t believe I was standing there with him, the whirlpool of our waterfall rushing in rivulets around us. I coughed and pushed my soaking hair out of my face. The water slicked his short hair in all directions, and he wiped his eyes. They were as dark, as bottomless as I remembered them, brimming over with so much emotion that I couldn’t hold myself back anymore. I burst into tears, the hot saltwater running down my cheeks and mixing with the freezing freshwater, and he was crying too, and then we were both laughing.

“I wasn’t actually going to jump, you know.” Asher grinned.

“Shhh.” I put my finger to his lips. “No jokes. Just for a second. Until I understand.” Asher opened his mouth in protest, but I stopped him. “Please.”

He nodded.

“Astaroth said you’d turned your back on me, were fighting against me. But it isn’t true, is it? I—I believe in you. In us. I’m so sorry I pushed you away. I didn’t know how much I believed until now.” I struggled to catch my breath. He just stood there, watching me. “Feel free to jump in anytime.”

“Actually, I kind of like seeing you squirm a little.” He winked.

“Asher!” I hit him in the arm—hard.

“Ow! Hey! I thought you believed in us! This doesn’t feel like believing.”

“Then just answer me this, okay? The fire? The flood? I saw you there. What were you doing?”

His eyes grew serious. “You saw me, huh?”

“You know I did.”

He sighed and raked his hair back from his face.

“Look, Skye,” he began. “I went back to the Rebellion out of duty and loyalty. And—this is hard to admit, okay?—once I was there, you were all I could think about. I had to find a way to keep you safe, to end this. I realized something. Ardith and Gideon, they’re only loyal to the Rebellion because they’re loyal to each other. They’re fighting for revenge out of love, not ideology. I don’t have anything like that tying me to the Rebels.” His dark eyes met mine. “Not since you left.”

I held his gaze, my heart beating faster. “So what are you saying, exactly?”

“I’m saying,” he said, breaking out into an adorable grin, “that . . .” He took my face in both his hands. “In a shocking turn of events, I’ve been rebelling against the Rebellion.”

I stared. “You . . . what?”

“I’ve been trying to bridge communication with the Guardians, to make peace—to help you. But neither side would listen, they only ramped up their plans to attack. So I had to work in more covert ways. The fire, the flood; all I could do was show up and try to keep the damage from growing however I could with my powers. I kept Aunt Jo from getting engulfed in flames during that fire. I gave you the extra boost of elemental power you needed to part the waters of the river and save Cassie. Only I had to do it in secret, in the shadows—if the Rebellion found out I was helping you, they’d have killed me.”

I knew I should say something, but all I could think was, You didn’t betray me. My mouth hung open. “That—that was you? You did that? For me?”

Suddenly, it all made so much sense. Of course, I realized. During the fire at Into the Woods, I’d felt the definite presence of powers at work. And I’d been on the brink of collapse in Foster’s Woods during the flood when something had given me a surge of energy. Asher hadn’t been there to attack me—he’d been there to help me. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.” I smiled. “I knew it.”

“I never could. I was trying so hard to put an end to this, so I could find a way for us to be together. It was just taking a really”—he paused, and took a breath, and grinned at me—“really long time. But there is no way, Skye. There’s no end. The only way to see this through is to fight.”

My heart fell. But when I looked up into his eyes, I didn’t feel hopeless. Instead, I felt a surge of confidence. “Asher, will you fight with me?”

He slid his arms around my waist and pulled me toward him. Our bodies pressed together, a bloom of heat in the freezing waterfall. “Skye,” he said. “My Skye. I wouldn’t fight alongside anyone else.”

And then he kissed me like I’d never been kissed in my life. As far as I was concerned, all those other kisses were just practice. This was the one that mattered. The first kiss of the rest of my life.

“I can’t believe I found you,” I shouted above the din of the crashing waterfall.

He smoothed the sopping hair out of my eyes. “I knew we’d find a way.” He pulled me to his chest, wrapping his arms around me and tucking the top of my head under his chin. “I love you,” he whispered. And even though water crashed in our ears, I heard him perfectly.

“I love you, too,” I said fiercely. “I am never letting you go again.”

“Why did you the first time?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I got scared.”

“You?”

“I was afraid that if I let myself fall for you, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

Once the words left my lips, I knew that they were true, and always had been. That was everything I’d felt since turning seventeen, wrapped up in the tiniest of nutshells. Chaos versus control. If I let myself fall, I would keep falling. And what if there was no one to catch me?

Asher cupped his hands under my face gently.

“I wouldn’t let you fall alone,” he whispered.

But as he said it, my vision swam with light and color and sound and my lungs burned bright and my hands and arms shook violently, and then my legs gave out and I fell into him. The chaos, the emotion—it was too much.

“I—I have to go,” I said.

“I’m coming with you.” His voice sounded far away. I felt myself going under the water, darkness creeping along the edges of my vision. “Skye!” Asher shook me. “Stay with me! Come on, stay awake. Without you, none of this is worth fighting for.”

Light flashed around me. For a brief second, everything went still, and we were back in the snow cave, Asher surrounding me in warmth and light as I was about to pass out from pain. “Asher,” I whispered. I knew I sounded delirious. “Will you go with me to prom tonight?”

He laughed. “That’s tonight? Hm, I think I have plans but lemme see if I can move some things around.”

“Shut up,” I mumbled. My tongue was growing heavy in my mouth.

“Shh,” he said. He lifted me up in his arms, freezing water streaming from my clothes. I could hardly feel my body anymore.

“If you move any slower, I’m not going to make it to prom, and then you’ll have to go by yourself,” I said hoarsely. He laughed. The world was spinning into chaos, and I was spinning with it.

“Come on, Skye Parker. Daughter of dark and light. Let’s get you home.”

He held me in his arms, and the sky grew brighter, too bright, blinding, and I felt myself pass into darkness as he said, “This time I really can save your life. Because you saved mine.”