But I have a choice, Skye. And there is nothing that I’ve ever wanted more.
And then, I’d kissed him.
But everything after that was a blur. There had been sirens. Someone I loved had gotten hurt. Aunt Jo was off in the woods, far from home. And something had come between Asher and me. Something that had landed me here.
I knew it had to do with the Order. They had been trying to control my fate for seventeen years. Why stop now?
But I’m safe here, I thought as my heart began to beat faster. At least from any bodily harm. And I’m with Asher.
His hand was still warm as he cupped my cheek, and I put my hand over his again. A tiny buzz of electricity thrummed and grew stronger where our skin touched. My powers always seemed to generate heat whenever I felt emotional; it was the angelic Rebel blood running through me. I moved his hand down to my neck, as I reached up with my other hand to pull him toward me onto the faded quilt.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he murmured as he let me pull him close, his fingers winding themselves through my hair. His lips were dry from the sun and wind but were warm against mine. They tasted salty, from my tears and maybe his, and I wanted more. I wanted as much of him as I could have.
And then a memory coursed through me.
He’d been carrying me. Cold feathers brushing my cheek and hair. My eyes were closed, but I could feel the wind rushing past me and smell the winter sky.
His hands were fire on my neck, trailing down my body, finding their way over my jeans and under my sweater. I pulled him even closer to me, tangling him up in the quilt. My limbs were still stiff from my being asleep for so long, but I wasn’t in pain anymore. I was alive.
“Stay with me, Skye.” As we flew higher, he grasped me tightly in one arm and pressed a hand over my wound with the other. “Don’t die. You can’t die. Not yet.”
Asher’s fingers were searing hot against my skin, and the soft fabric of his thermal shirt grazed my stomach as he drew my body closer to his. He rolled on top of me and the weight of him felt comforting, like gravity was pulling me back down to Earth.
I couldn’t break my lips from his. My fingers trailed against his neck and over the rough edges of his jawline. He’d saved my life; he must have. The heat running through my veins threatened to consume me until I combusted in a pop of spark and ash. We were together now. There was nothing standing in our way anymore.
The air brushing past us had smelled like pine needles and clouds, and something else. Something black and acrid.
Smoke.
“Skye!” Asher cried suddenly, pulling away from me sharply and batting at my legs with the quilt. I looked down and drew in a breath. The hems of my jeans were smoking, bursting into tiny flames.
Flames.
Asher whipped the blanket out from the tangle at my feet and smothered the fire. But I couldn’t feel anything. I could only sit there, bolt upright, numb, staring at him as he made sure the last of the flames were out. Ardith had been right—my powers were unstable. I was dangerous.
My heart was pounding furiously. And not because of what had just happened.
But because of what I suddenly remembered.
In the clearing far below me, a wall of fire rose from where I’d fallen. A black spiral of smoke curled into the air.
“Skye, are you okay?” Asher was right next to me, but his voice came from a million miles away as my heart lurched. “The fire’s out,” he said. “It’s okay. Are you hurt?”
“Skye!” a voice called. “I have to warn you!”
“Hurt?” I asked, as if searching for the meaning of the word.
Warn me? I stood there, immobile, rooted to the ground like a tree. “About what?”
“From the fire,” said Asher, still trying to catch his breath. “Your powers are still as out of control as ever, it looks like.” He paused to grin devilishly. “Was it because of me?”
A cold blade, icy and sharp, plunged through my stomach.
My dream. The flash of metal on the nightstand. The blood blooming out across my shirt like a watercolor rose.
“Asher,” I gasped, reaching for my stomach. He looked alarmed.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
I was surprised at how sudden the pain was when it came on.
“I remember. I remember it all.”
“Skye, calm down,” Asher urged. His eyes searched mine. “You don’t want to get too agitated. We have no idea what could happen. What you could do.”
But I ignored him. I remembered now. And the truth was even more terrifying than I could imagine.
“It was Devin,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”
Chapter 3
The little room in the cabin in the woods was suddenly much too warm, and I could feel a faint rumbling beneath us as I struggled to steady my breathing. Asher noticed, too. “Shh,” he said, like I was some wild animal who needed to be soothed. “Stay calm. You’re okay, remember? You’re safe. You don’t want to cause anything else to happen.”
Eyeing him, I felt around my midsection for a wound where Devin had stabbed me. But there was none. No bandages or tenderness. I lifted my sweater a few inches and looked down. The skin on my stomach was smooth. It looked the same way it always had. There was no evidence that I’d been stabbed at all.
“He did—didn’t he? I remember . . .” I winced and brought my sweater back down. “He stabbed me.” I whispered the words, afraid, however irrationally, that saying them out loud could somehow make it happen again. “He stared me right in the eye while he did it.”
Asher’s face clouded over.
“Why?” I asked, panic and confusion and a deep, aching sadness welling in me. “Why would he do that? I thought—he said—he loved me.”
“As if I needed a reason to hate him more,” Asher muttered, avoiding my gaze. I immediately regretted saying anything. The Order and the Rebellion would hate each other until the end of time, and Asher and Devin were just pawns in the great rivalry. They couldn’t look at each other without the air between them turning at least ten degrees colder.
“I didn’t say I loved him back,” I said quietly.
“I know.” He continued to be fascinated by a knot in the wooden planks of the floor, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
I took his hands in mine and slowly uncurled his fingers. He looked up at me, something in his eyes softening. “Did you save my life?” I asked.
Asher’s face turned a brilliant shade of red, and I could feel his fingers trembling slightly. “I don’t know, I mean . . .” I grinned, and he suddenly seemed to snap out of his embarrassment. “You bet I did,” he said, some of his old cockiness returning. “And I’m taking full credit. I was able to get you here just in time, too. The fact that you didn’t die immediately from that sword is a credit to your human blood. If you were a full angel, you’d have died in a heartbeat.” He frowned. “I’m sure the Order is real thrilled about all this. They thought they’d eliminated you as a threat.”
“Well, they were wrong,” I said.
“Glad to see the coma didn’t knock out the fighter in you.” Asher smiled and leaned back in his chair.
“What happened to Devin? After we left?”
“Don’t know.” He crossed his arms over his chest, watching me. “Maybe he burned up in the fire? That would be a happy ending to all this.”
I thought about the golden-haired angel who’d been my friend. He’d been more than that—the only one I could turn to when I was feeling alone and scared and had no one to trust. And he’d been prepared to betray me all along. Rage simmered just below the surface of my skin. But still, I couldn’t quite wish him dead.
I leaned back on the pillows, suddenly exhausted.
“So how long was I out? Aunt Jo, my friends—will they be worried?”
“It’s been a couple of days.”
I stared at him blankly, trying to suppress the panic.
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re pro
bably pretty worried.”
“Does Aunt Jo know I’m all right? Have you heard from Cassie?” Asher’s face twisted uncomfortably. He looked almost guilty. “What?” I said, the panic building. The last time I’d seen Cassie, she was in a coma, in the hospital. “What about her? Have you talked to her?” Suddenly the thought of life without my best friend caved in on me. I could do a lot of things. I could create fire and cause a flood and had angel blood running through me. But I couldn’t live without Cassie. “Asher, is she okay?”
He looked down and shook his head. “I couldn’t . . . I didn’t know how without revealing myself. I couldn’t just call your aunt on the phone and say, ‘Hey, Skye is in a coma! But I can’t tell you how it happened or where she is, so don’t ask!’ Imagine if all I could say was ‘Trust me’? Come on, Skye. Look at me. Even I don’t trust myself.” He looked up and spread his arms wide, showing off. The rumpled shirt. The faded jeans. The scuffed-up boots and the devilish grin. If I was Aunt Jo, I wouldn’t have trusted him with my life, either. It had taken forever for me to trust him myself.
“I guess.”
“That and . . .”
“And what?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t let me. The elders. They forbade me from contacting your family and friends until we knew what would happen to you.”
“How could they do that?”
“The truce is over. All bets are off. Just because the Rebellion doesn’t control your fate doesn’t mean they don’t want things to go their way.”
An uneasy anger took over me. “They need me, don’t they? They need my powers.”
Asher stood up and gripped my hand.
“You’re so important to this fight, Skye. I wish you knew just how important you are.” His eyes glittered, serious. Suddenly I wondered if we were talking about the Rebellion anymore.
Asher put a tentative arm around me. “Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.” I leaned into his chest and felt another rush of emotions at the familiar scent of cinnamon and cloves. Spicy and sweet. It reminded me of so many things: the time we got stuck in the ice cave on the ski trip and he showed me how to create fire in the palms of my hands; the magical night on the snowmobile with the tiny balls of fire that floated around us like lanterns; and the night I realized how badly I wanted to be with Asher, that I couldn’t do it alone. That I needed someone. I needed him.
I snuck a glance at his dark eyes. He needed me, too.
It struck me that as long as I was with Asher, maybe I was home. I was safe here. The Order couldn’t hurt me. And my powers of the dark were way stronger than those of the light. Ever since the two angels had descended on my life, I’d been so against making a decision. Everyone had a plan for me, something that they wanted from me. But maybe I knew what I wanted.
Maybe I’d already made a decision.
We had to be quiet. The cabin had no electricity, and when we lit a fire, Asher closed the dusty curtains to make sure no one could see us from the woods—in case anyone from the Order was watching. They couldn’t just rely on the Sight anymore. As Asher reminded me, my powers were blurring the destiny of everyone around me. They’d have to resort to other methods.
It took a few days before I really started to feel better. I was exhausted constantly, and Asher and Ardith took turns watching me from the chair as I drifted in and out of sleep. Jealous as I had been when I first saw her, I couldn’t help but like Ardith. When Asher was asleep and she watched over me, I’d try to get her to talk.
“How long have you known Asher?” I asked one night. The moon hung high in the black sky, shining light across the floor of the small bedroom. I was curled on my side, the quilt pulled up under my chin, and Ardith sat in the rocking chair across the dark room. Every time she rocked forward, her face would emerge from the shadows.
“A long time,” she said. “Since we were very young. We used to beg to be sent to Earth on missions like our parents. And each time they told us, ‘Not until you’re older.’” She smiled at me. “Then when we were older, we wanted to be young again. The things we’ve both seen.” She shook her head. “We wished we’d never asked.”
I hesitated. A shadow passed in front of the moon, and I couldn’t see her face anymore.
“Why?” I asked.
“Being a Rebel, it’s not easy,” she said. “The constant chaos. Reacting to the Order’s plans. It’s not easy being a Guardian either, but that I do not know firsthand.”
“It must be hard having only those two options. Dark and Light and nothing in between.”
A wry smile cracked her face.
“You of all people should know how that feels, Skye.”
It was true, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem right. There had to be a middle place. Otherwise, how did someone not lose her mind? How would I not lose my mind?
I lay awake for a long time, thinking and watching the pattern of moonlight shift on the wood floor. When I looked up, I realized Ardith was asleep. It seemed strange to me that an angel would need sleep, but then I remembered what Asher had told me. When we’re on Earth, we take on human form, human desires, human needs. I wondered what they were like when they weren’t on Earth. What were angel needs?
I was feeling restless. Quietly, so as not to wake Ardith, I pulled back the blankets and crept out of the room. I shifted my weight slowly on the old wood floor, careful not to step on any creaky planks as I tiptoed down the hall and crept gingerly down the stairs. I kept close to the wall and peered into the large main room of the cabin. Asher sat hunched forward on the couch near the fireplace.
But there was no fire burning within it.
Instead, it had risen from the hearth into the air itself. Orange and red and yellow and blue flames crackled above him in the dark room, casting shadows that danced on the walls. As I watched, the flames fanned out in a circle, and he sat below it, his head in his hands. What was he doing?
Asher’s back rose and fell rhythmically, with each breath. He looked so controlled, like he was doing everything in his power to breathe steadily. Given to following his every mood and whim, Asher wasn’t exactly good at self-control. Watching him now filled me with a strange sense of awe. I wondered what he was controlling.
As I stood there, his breath hitched and his chest spasmed slightly. As if he couldn’t hold it in anymore, a strangled noise escaped him. Oh, no, I thought, realizing too late that I was watching something I shouldn’t. I went to move, but my foot hit a loose floorboard that squeaked beneath me. Asher’s head shot up, and we locked eyes. I gasped.
The storm that swirled in them threatened to overpower me. It was a look that I’d seen only once before, the night we’d gotten into a fight on my roof. What he’d said to me that night came rushing back as if he’d said the words yesterday.
“Do you know why I joke all the time?” He stood up as if he’d been wound up and sprung. His eyes glinted in the moonlight. “Do you know why I’ve been keeping things all light and devil-may-care? Because if you knew—if you really knew what was happening—inside of you, within the Order, within the Rebellion, if you knew what the angels are saying, what’s waiting for you, you would be sobbing, Skye. You would be paralyzed with fear. That’s why I tease you. I’m doing it for you. Because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t make it. You wouldn’t last another week.”
Asher tore his eyes away from mine. The fire fell to the ground abruptly, turning to smoldering ash as it hit the floor. I took an involuntary step backward into the shadows, pressing myself flat against the wall.
He never showed me when he was worried or upset. That’s what he’d been trying to tell me that night on the roof. What I was seeing now was something I wasn’t supposed to. Some private moment that Asher hadn’t wanted me to see. Something he tried, every day, to hide from me by covering it up with wisecracks and banter.
It was fear. Asher was afraid.
Before he could say anything, I turned and ran back up to my room, snuggling deep
under the quilt until morning. He didn’t come after me.
Chapter 4
When I woke in the morning, sunlight was streaming through my window. Birds chirped outside, and if I closed my eyes and just listened to the music of the woods, I could almost imagine being back in my bed at home. My homesickness was an ache growing inside me.
I turned to see if Asher had come up to my room in the night, but the rocking chair was empty. In fact, everything was strangely silent and still.
In the hall, the quiet was deafening. No hushed conversations came from downstairs. No low tones. I was alone in the house for the first time.
So I explored. In my little bedroom, in addition to the bed and the rocking chair, there was a low wooden chest of drawers. The drawers stuck a little from disuse, but I managed to get them open one by one. Inside were bits of evidence that the cabin had been inhabited once. An old cable-knit fisherman’s sweater was folded up in the bottom drawer. I pulled it over my head, and the heavy wool fell in baggy folds around me. It was a man’s sweater. But even though I was swimming in it, and even though it had belonged to a stranger, something about it felt comforting. I rolled up the sleeves and kept pawing through the remaining drawers, but they yielded nothing more.
Next to the bedroom was a rusty bathroom with a warped mirror hanging over a chipped, white enamel sink and a toilet with an old-fashioned hanging chain. I stared at myself in the mirror, like I had done a few times since I’d been here. There was a bruise under my left eye and a giant scratch across my cheek. I ran my finger over it, remembering that my anger had caused the earth to rumble in the clearing and a tree to fall. Asher had swooped in to save me just in time. I’d been mad at him for keeping the Rebellion’s plans from me. He’d lied to me, but as I thought about the night before, I realized he had done it to protect me. To keep me sane when everything in my life was changing. He was doing it because he loved me. That was a crime I could never hold against him. It was nothing like what Devin had done.