A Radiant Sky

6

Gideon’s eyes haunted me all day. I knew that Ardith meant business. This was going to be war.

It also meant that I didn’t have any time to waste when it came to finding Aaron. As soon as the last bell of the day rang, I booked it out the door and to my car. The sky was so dark it was almost black—a heavy storm was brewing.

“Hey!” A girl’s voice called as I neared the car. “Where are you going?” I whipped around to find Raven rushing after me, a sheet of silky blond hair flying behind her in the wind.

I hesitated. I knew Raven was on my side now, but some small part of me still wasn’t used to trusting her. “I have to go find Aaron Ward,” I said.

“Alone? In this weather? Are you crazy?” She looked scornfully up at the sky. “Those Rebels are so obvious. No subtlety whatsoever.”

“If you’re so worried, here.” I tossed her my keys. “I’ll handle the storm.”

Raven met my gaze coolly. A two-hour drive alone in my car would be the most one-on-one time we’d spent, like, ever. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but I needed to go to Rocky Pines, tonight.

“I have a better idea,” she said. “Come with me.” She took off, back through the parking lot, winding her way between the cars toward the school.

“Hey!” I cried, following her. “Where are you going?”

Everyone was leaving school, flooding past us in the opposite direction. But for whatever reason, Raven led me back inside, through the halls and up the stairs.

At last I stumbled past her through the fire door and onto the wide, white cement of the roof.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a faster way to get to Rocky Pines.” She raised a challenging eyebrow. “I know you haven’t had them that long, but have you already forgotten?”

“Had wha—” But before I could finish my question, a tumble of glossy silver feathers spilled from her back.

“Your wings,” she said triumphantly, as hers rose above her, massive, bright against the gathering storm clouds. “We can fly there.”

The wings were a part of my body that had been added on, foreign and strange, and using them still took some getting used to. I guess that’s what Raven was trying to do—help me.

“I can trust you, Raven,” I said. “Right?”

“You don’t have to question my loyalty,” she said, her smile small and slightly shy. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. We belong together, Skye. For better or for worse.”

That would have to count as reassuring.

I closed my eyes.

You can do this. You were born to.

When I opened them, I could feel my pupils burning brightly silver. I let my powers sweep across the sky, changing the colors underneath the darkening clouds from a light pink and gold to dusty mauve, burnt orange. The feathery silver liquid took hold of me, hot, then cold, fire and ice. I grimaced and clenched my fists. It wasn’t as painful as it had been at first, but I felt the sharp feathers of my wings slice through my back nonetheless. The massive vibrations echoed in the hollows of my bones.

And as the colors in the sky shifted and sharpened, I could see the shadow of my wings on the concrete before me.

Here we go, I thought.

Raven smiled—a genuine, impressed smile.

“Ready?” she said, her hands resting on her hipbones.

Let’s do this.

I nodded.

I aligned my toes with the roof’s ledge. I bounced once, twice, on the balls of my feet. And then, I took a leap.

At first I fell, plummeting through the air like a skydiver before pulling the string on the parachute. The wind roared around me, and for a split second I waited for Asher’s arms to wrap around me, for his wings to catch the wind and glide us toward the sky. But I remembered just in time. He wasn’t here, he wasn’t coming for me. I was going to do this on my own.

I spread the massive wingspan wide behind me, catching the wind in my silver feathers, feeling the drag and then the pull. And then, as if caught by the strongest and most delicate of threads, I halted in midair. I began to soar upward.

One morning, months ago, in the darkest dead of winter, I woke up floating. And now I knew why. My body had been preparing itself for this.

Raven flew up alongside me.

“They’re beautiful,” she whispered, yet somehow I could hear her perfectly above the rushing clouds. “I hate to admit it, but they are.”

I nodded. “I could never have imagined what it would feel like to have wings.”

“Sometimes I imagine what it’s like to not.” She looked serious. “I envy the way you grew up. Your friends. People, really. They don’t have to live by the rules I was bound to. They’re free.”

“You were a Guardian,” I said. “The Order has always controlled our fate. So are my friends really as free as they think?”

She seemed to contemplate this, as thunder rumbled around us. “I guess not. But they’re freer than I was.”

“Well, you don’t have to follow commands anymore,” I said. “You’re free now.” We dipped together, then rose again, as the sky churned angrily around us.

It struck me how strongly our lives were tied to each other. We’d been through a trauma together, we shared a strange, unspoken bond. She’d saved my life. I’d saved hers.

“Look out!” she called as lightning forked across the sky. “Can’t you control that?”

The Rebellion doesn’t want to see us make it to Rocky Pines.

“You’re going to do something about this storm, right?” Raven called, panic rising in her voice. Her silver wings shone like lightning against the churning sky, as the real thing flashed behind us.

I spread my arms wide and let energy burst through my fingertips. The sky seemed to grow brighter, but not because the clouds were thinning. All of the electricity in the sky was gathering, hurtling toward me.

“Skye, look out!”

But I didn’t need to—because I was making it happen. The light zapped into my fingers, and as the storm came crashing down, I pulled it inside of me.

Almost at once, the clouds vanished, and a ray of late-afternoon light broke through the mountains. Raven stared at me, her jaw hanging open.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I flew with reckless abandon above the mountains and valleys below. Raven stayed by my side. The higher we rose, the deeper the color of the sky grew. The moon rose high above us, waiting for the sun to set. It was such a different feeling from skiing, where the speed picked up beneath my feet, pulling the very breath from my lungs, leaving me panting. Now, I embraced the wind instead of fighting against it. I embraced the feeling of letting go, and gave in to the swoop of flight.

My wings caught me. They would catch me again. I could leap, I could let myself fall. I could catch myself. The world spread out below me, the rocks and trees, houses and tiny cars. Life went on without me, the world continued to spin. And I was flying.

“Do you miss Asher?” Raven asked suddenly as we flew through a wisp of cloud.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again, a little taken aback. My instinct was to lie, to say no, to act tougher than I was. But when I opened my mouth again, what came out, simply, was “Yes.”

She looked contemplative.

“I’m beginning to think I know what it feels like,” she said softly.

“What?”

“Love.”

I stared at her, so surprised I almost stopped flying.

“You do? You do?”

“Don’t look so shocked,” she said, ruffling her feathers. “You know, I didn’t think it would be this hard. I knew Devin and I were meant to be, I knew we were fated to belong to each other.” She drew a shaky breath. “But I don’t even know what that means anymore. Now that our fate has dissolved before our very eyes, I don’t know who we are to each other.” She looked at me, and a tear slid down her cheek. “Now that I can feel, I don’t know how to.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Well, how do you think you feel?”

“I think I love him,” she said. “But I don’t have anything to compare it to. It’s like . . . I feel warm inside when I think of him, like I have this secret, even despite what he did to me. But it’s a secret that I shouldn’t have, or want to have. I had been ready to kill him, and he hurt me, too—I mean, he cut my wings right off my back, for god’s sake. And still, after all that, my heart feels all twisty, and I think that must be what love feels like, right? But it doesn’t make sense. How can you love someone who’s hurt you?”

I didn’t know what to say, and the wind rushed between us.

“I thought love was supposed to make you feel happy,” Raven said at last.

“I think it is in theory,” I said. “But the only people I know who feel that way are Cassie and Dan. Everyone else is pretty miserable. So maybe they’re the exception, not the rule.”

We flew silently for a couple of seconds, both lost in thought.

“It’s very confusing,” she said. “He’s a Rebel now—something I was born to hate. I still do. I think I may finally understand how you feel.” She sighed. “You love Asher, but to become a Rebel would mean turning your back on your destiny. I love Devin, but . . .” She trailed off, looking away. “I think he fell in love with someone else.”

A heavy silence hung in the air between us, full of unsaid things.

Finally, she spoke. “Anyway, I get it now.”

“I don’t love him back,” I said quietly.

“Please,” she smirked at me knowingly. Not in a malicious way, but more like we were confidants. “Like I’m afraid of a little competition.” The smirk turned into a full-blown smile. “I’m free now, after all. I can fight as hard as I want.”

“The question is,” I said, “with all that’s standing between you, What are you going to do if you get him?”

The ground was rushing up beneath us. We were reaching our destination.

Raven didn’t answer right away.

“You know,” she said. “Devin never looked at me the way Asher looked at you. As if the whole world was bottled up within him, and only you understood what it meant.” She paused, twisted in the air to face the sky above her. “I think the universe has a way of finding loopholes when you want something badly enough.”