A Radiant Sky

1

“I can’t go with you.”

The minute I said those words, there was no going back. There was no changing my mind.

A few months ago, I might not have been so sure. Ever since that icy night in January when I turned seventeen, life as I knew it had boiled down to this: I had to choose.

Between light and dark.

Between the Order and the Rebellion.

Between Devin and Asher.

Tonight, in these woods, everything changed.

Because I chose neither.

I could no longer pretend that I belonged on one side or the other. I wasn’t a Guardian, and I wasn’t a Rebel. I knew that now, with more clarity than I’d known anything in my life.

“Skye,” Asher said. His eyes were pleading. “Don’t do this.” He looked between me and the group standing behind me, and then to Ardith, as if for help. “We need you.” He paused. “I—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. I knew what he was going to say.

The unsaid words twisted around my heart and squeezed tightly.

I need you.

And maybe he did. Maybe he needed me for my powers, so the Rebellion could win—or maybe to fight beside him, as we’d been planning.

But did I need Asher? My powers had surpassed his, as Raven had predicted they would. I didn’t need his help anymore.

And did I need love? It was a new choice, a different choice. Between following my heart and starting on the path I finally knew I was supposed to take. It wasn’t easy, but I knew the answer. I had always known.

The silence twisting around my heart snapped, and the pain flooded through me as I realized it.

I had to let him go.

Dusk was settling in the woods around us. To my left, Aunt Jo stood with her arms crossed next to my two oldest friends, Cassie and Dan. On my right, my friend Ian looked defiant next to fallen angel Raven, my former enemy, now linked to me in a way I didn’t yet fully understand. And standing in front of me, facing me down, were the Rebels: Ardith and Gideon, Asher—and now Devin. All of them on the same side, for the first time. I couldn’t see any Guardians, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking in the shadows.

Guardians stalk these woods.

“Skye, you don’t have to do this.” Asher’s hands hung at his sides, where they’d fallen when I told him I was leaving the Rebellion. “Let’s talk. We can figure this out.”

“She made up her mind,” Ian said, stepping forward. He had never trusted Asher, and disdain radiated off him. A light shone in his eyes. He had won. “We’re starting a new group.”

“Ian,” I hissed. I put my hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

Next to Asher, Devin looked up sharply. His blue eyes pierced mine, but he said nothing.

“I’m sorry if I made you think something else,” I said. “But this is who I am. And this is what I have to do.”

“You’re just as cold-blooded as the Order,” Ardith spat, anger and betrayal clouding her eyes. “I knew we couldn’t trust you.”

“She’s not. You know that,” Devin said. “She’s doing what’s right. Doesn’t the Rebellion believe in that? Even if they disagree with her cause?” It was the first time he had spoken since jumping from the Order. Ardith whirled on him, the starlight catching her long chestnut hair.

“Oh, look who feels right at home speaking up,” she growled. “A Rebel for a whole minute and you’ve already found some rules to follow. You can take the Guardian out of the Order, I suppose—”

“Don’t make me cut you, Ardith,” Raven said icily. She ruffled her silver feathers, which glinted sharply in the fading light.

“It’s no use arguing.” Gideon had been silent, too. Even though his voice was low, we all heard him perfectly. “Whether it’s now or on the battlefield. We’re enemies now.” His eyes grew cold and distant—the look of someone retreating into his horrible memories—memories he spent every day trying to forget. “We’re going to war. Against each other.”

Silence echoed across the woods as his words sunk in.

“Then that is how it has to be.” Everyone turned to look at me, and I felt my hands balling into fists at my sides. All I could think was that I had to get home. To start figuring out what all this meant. What my future held now.

I swept past the group and toward the cabin, where the last remaining pieces of my childhood sat in a box in the attic, waiting for me to bring them home. I knew the Rebels were questioning my decision, but I didn’t care. My friends would support me, even if the Rebels didn’t. The reality was that I knew I never had a choice to begin with. This was always how it had to be—it’s just that I hadn’t realized it until now.

I tore through the woods to the place where my parents had set up camp once upon a time. The house was exactly as we’d left it that morning, but I saw everything differently now. It was like looking at a jigsaw puzzle that’s been taunting you for months, watching the image suddenly snap into place and wondering how you never saw it there before.

I climbed the stairs to the attic, and would have taken them two at a time if I thought the rickety wood could handle it. There, in the corner, was the rumpled sleeping bag that Asher and I had shared the night before. He had been so patient with me while I figured out my powers, given me so much strength. His confidence in me alone made me feel like I could become as powerful as everyone said. Like I really could be the key to saving the universe.

But I couldn’t give that same confidence back to him. I couldn’t fight by his side if it meant denying who I really was, my mother’s daughter, with my mother’s powers—a part of me that was just as much alive as my powers of the dark. He had to understand. He had to have known this day would come.

On the other side of the room, by the stairs, was the stack of boxes that I’d knocked into the night before, spilling their contents everywhere. In the darkness, I hadn’t had a chance to go through them. But I knew who they belonged to.

My parents.

Last night, a small metal object had gone rolling across the floor. When I’d bent to pick it up, the ball of fire Asher held in his hands showed that I was holding a baby’s rattle. The silver was dented and old, tarnished from disuse. But in the dim glow of the fire, I could just make out that it had once been engraved with something significant.

The letters Sk.

And beneath them, a string of numbers. My birthday.

As the rattle jangled softly in my hands, I realized that it wasn’t just a childhood toy. It was a message. A sign.

Little silver bells, my parents used to sing me to sleep at night, as light from the moon cast shadows of branches and leaves on the walls. When they ring, we’ll know.

I used to think it was just an old folk song, its gentle rhythm lulling me to sleep. But as I listened to the faint silver jangle in the dead of night, something clicked.

Silver, for my eyes. For the strange mix of powers that surged within me, stronger by the day. For the flashing wings that had finally grown in fits of stabbing pain from beneath my shoulder blades.

I always wondered what, exactly, the lyrics meant. When they ring, we’ll know.

But last night I figured it out, as sharp and clear as the rattle’s bell. When all the silver forces in my life converged, we’ll know it’s time. To fight.

It was the final sign I needed to have the courage to reject both the Order and the Rebellion. To start off on my own. Since turning seventeen, everyone in my life had tried to control me. But now it was time to take matters into my own hands.

I wrapped the rattle carefully in a T-shirt and packed it in my backpack. I opened the flaps of the box that had fallen on its side and began to sift through what was left. There had to be more clues. Something to tell me what I was supposed to do now.

The sun was beginning to set. As it aligned with the window, it cast an orange beam of light in my eyes. I stood and raised an arm to shield them from the glare. Motes of dust swirled around me as I struggled to slide the window open, letting the fresh mountain air gust into the tiny room.

The sky was a pale, crisp blue, fading to a pinkish glow as the sun hovered above the jagged outline of the mountains on the horizon. I closed my eyes and the light swept across my nose and eyelids, touched the tops of the trees below. The world glowed on the other side. The light shone brightest at the center, seeping into darkness as I squeezed my eyes tighter. Dark and light. I was neither. I was both. I was all of it.

The sun was setting on one chapter of my life. But it was rising on the next. The world was waking up, and I felt like I was waking up with it.