It’s the dead of winter, and snow covers the slopes like it is trying to bury us. I can hear the sound of my classmates’ voices echoing off the mountains as they laugh and horse around. I can see my best friend, Cassie, down on the bunny slope, shrieking as she falls for the thousandth time, and our friend Dan laughing as he helps her up. A few feet away from me, on the top of the mountain, Ian pulls his goggles down over his eyes. I feel drawn to the ledge, tempted by the chasm below.

I am always torn. Between control and chaos; passion and tranquility. Between what’s fated and what I want. Part of me longs to take the plunge, to dive off headfirst and let the feeling of control evaporate on the wind. And part of me wants to be in a place where I’d never have to worry about that choice—or any choice. Where peace and calm are the only things I’d feel. After a lifetime of trying to erase the hurt of my parents dying, of Aunt Jo and my devoted friends helping me put the pieces back together again—maybe that is where I belong. Maybe I deserve some peace, after all.

But when I take a step back from the ledge, the adrenaline fades away, and all that’s left inside me is an empty coldness. I don’t feel the hurt anymore. But I don’t feel happiness, either. There is a voice in my ear, whispering: Make a choice, Skye. You can’t stare off the edge of this cliff forever.

In the dream I have every night, I
have
made up my mind. Every time, I am about to jump. To let the pain rush back in but also every other feeling that comes with it—love and grief and joy. I want to fly down that slope and never look back. I want so many things. The desire is what prevents me from being able to exist in a perpetual state of calm.

And so I align my skis. I get ready to push off down the mountain.

But someone always stops me. An icy blond angel, his face calmingly familiar and yet terrifying all at once. His wings are so blindingly white I have to close my eyes. And while they’re closed, the cold steel of a blade plummets straight through me. The pain rushes in as the sword comes out. I can’t make a choice between chaos and control, because it’s already been made for me.

I am taken away into the clouds.

I have the dream every night. And I never wake up to the relief that it’s only a dream. Because for days, I don’t wake up at all.

Chapter 1

T
he first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the gray light surrounding me like a film of gauze. I winced and squinted, trying to focus my vision, but the light was so bright that my head began to throb. I closed my eyes again, and I took a deep breath.

That was good. I was breathing now, at least. It meant I wasn’t dead.

When I opened my eyes again, I tried harder to focus, struggling to make sense of where I was. The cold seeped in around me, and I tried pulling my cream-colored jersey-knit comforter up around my chin. A threadbare fabric brushed my skin instead.

This isn’t my blanket. Panicked, I looked for something familiar, some touchstone to show me that I was in my bedroom. But everything around me was strange and unknown.

I’m not at home.

Slowly things began to crystalize. Images and shapes snapped into place; lines sharpened and space defined itself. The light was falling softly through an open window. I could just make out a couple of brushstrokes of color, brown and green smudged against a white sky. Treetops. Colorado in winter.

A stray slant of light fell across the faded quilt that covered me. I wiggled my toes and watched the movement cause ripples in the light thrown across the bed. So I wasn’t paralyzed. I tried my fingers, too, and then my neck. I blinked several times and then opened my mouth, stretched it wide, and closed it. I could move, but my muscles and joints felt stiff and unused. How long had I been lying here?

As I turned my head, I caught a glimpse of something metal on a wooden nightstand next to my bed, and my body tensed. Instantly my mind flashed to the woods in the darkening gloam of evening, to the glint of metal hurtling toward me. My heart was pounding, and my throat was suddenly dry. I didn’t know if my reaction was caused by my memory or my imagination.

What happened to me?

“Wake up,” a female voice whispered, using the hushed tone meant for hospitals and libraries. “Come on. Go sleep downstairs on the couch. You must be exhausted.”

Straining to see where the voice was coming from, I honed in on a young woman standing in the far corner of the room. Long chestnut hair hung in a thick, glossy braid down her back.
She isn’t talking to me,
I realized.

Then a second voice yawned in response. A guy’s voice. “Mm-hmm. How long was I asleep?” I tried to see around the woman without moving the muscles below my neck, but that was harder than I’d thought it would be, and I gave up. I could just make out a battered snow boot splayed out behind her. Whoever she was talking to was sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. Something about his rough, scratchy voice was familiar. I felt a spasm in my chest.

“Has anything changed?” His voice was hollow, like he already knew the answer.

“No,” she said. “And if you want her to get better, you have to let her rest.”

“I’m not bothering her if I just sit here, am I?”

“It’s not just her I’m worried about. You need rest, too. How are we supposed to protect her if we’re exhausted? Come on, I just slept. It’s your turn.”

“But I . . .”

“You’re not doing her any favors if you fall asleep again. With all that’s coming . . .”

“I don’t care about what’s coming, Ardith. I care about what happened. If I could just go back to that night—”

“Asher, listen to me—”

Asher.
At the sound of his name, something silvery and light coursed through my veins. My face felt hot and cold at the same time.

“You can’t,” the woman said.

I wished I could sit up and call to him across the room. But my body wasn’t cooperating.

“I just want her back,” he said quietly, and I was struck by how different he sounded. So serious and somber. I couldn’t detect the smallest hint of the usual sly wink in his voice.

Thousands of tiny stars pricked across my vision.
Something terrible must have happened to me to make Asher this worried. But what?

“We all do,” the woman said. “We can’t win this without her.”

“Not because of the
fight
, Ardith.”

“I know.” The woman’s shoulders tensed. “Once upon a time someone said that about me. He risked his life to get me
back. And look what happened.” Even from my bed in the corner, I could tell these words were full of meaning. I wondered what the story was. They’d clearly known each other for a long time.

“That was different,” said Asher darkly.

“It was the same. Passion is our way, but love can drive an angel mad, Asher. It can disrupt the heavens, change the outcome of a war.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Asher exhaled loudly and kicked his boot out in frustration. He was hundreds of thousands of years old, but he looked and acted just like a seventeen-year-old guy. “I thought we’re all about falling in love and changing the world. Isn’t that what makes us Rebels?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” she said. “But these are strange and dangerous times. The truce between the Order and the Rebellion ended the minute Astaroth destroyed Oriax. Now we have to look out for ourselves first.”

“A little hypocritical, isn’t it?” He snorted.

Ardith stared at him. “Maybe,” she said. “But there are repercussions now that we couldn’t have known. We’re not the Gifted. We can’t divine fate.”

“I won’t let go of her,” Asher said, his voice hard. “When she wakes up, she’ll join the Rebellion. You’ll see. She’ll help us.”

“Yes,” she said. “In the meantime, go to bed. I started a fire down in the fireplace.”

Asher sighed, dropped his head into his hands. “I hope this works.”

Ardith placed a hand on his back. “Me too,” she said.

She moved out of the way then, and I could see him perfectly. I was reminded instantly of the first time I saw him, leaning up against the wall outside of Love the Bean on the night of my birthday. His hair was so dark, his eyes such a magnetic black that he didn’t just look at ease at night—it seemed as if he was a part of it. The moonlight shone on his high cheekbones, and he had a playful, arrogant glint in his eye.

Now his eyes were sad, serious. There was no hint of moonlight, no cocky challenge. His long-sleeved thermal shirt and jeans looked wrinkled and slept-in, like he’d been wearing them for days. His dark hair had grown a little longer and looked wild, like the worry was causing it to stand on end. Something had changed him.

Wind rattled the window frame, and I swallowed back a lump of jealousy when Ardith turned around. She was stunning, with dark brown eyes and flawless olive skin. I closed my eyes before she could see me awake.

“I want to stay here tonight,” Asher said. “In this chair. You take the bed.”

Ardith sighed. “Okay. But if she wakes up, remember what they said. Don’t talk about what happened. She’s going to be in a precarious state, and it could be dangerous if the memories come rushing back too quickly.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He let out a long breath. “What are we going to do? Even if this works, we can’t take her back to the Rebel camp.”

“No,” Ardith agreed. “If she does wake up, her powers will be much too unstable. They’ll collide with so much chaos. It could destroy us. Or her,” she added.

“They were right. She’s a ticking time bomb. A weapon waiting to happen.”

“But eventually”—Ardith paused—“
soon
, I hope, she’ll be more controlled. Asher, the memory will trigger powerful emotions in her. You know what she’s capable of in that kind of state. You were there. You have to stave off those memories for a while. If they come rushing back suddenly, it may be too much.”

“She can handle it.”

“I mean for us.”

There was another pause. I was dying to open my eyes, but held back. My heart was in my throat, and I was so afraid that in the silence they would be able to hear it beating faster, hear my breath coming in short, uneven gasps.

“I remember when I felt the way you do now,” Ardith said quietly. I pictured her putting a gentle hand on Asher’s back.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Asher said. “What happened to Gideon. It was mine.” He took a breath, and everything in the room seemed to breathe in with him. “I love her.”

“I know,” she said. “And there’s nothing I can say to stop it from happening.” I heard the swish of material, and a door squeak on rusty, ancient hinges. The sound of footsteps going down the stairs. And then, suddenly, it was quiet in the room. So quiet I really could hear the beat of my own heart. Not Asher’s, though. That didn’t exist.

I opened my eyes.

Asher was still sitting with his head in his hands. His back rose and fell softly with each breath.

I couldn’t get his words out of my head.
I love her.

I couldn’t pretend to sleep anymore. I couldn’t just lie there and not say anything.
I love her, I love her, I love her,
coaxed my heartbeat. I struggled to sit up.

The rickety bed creaked under me.

Asher’s head snapped up at the noise.

And our eyes met, a flash of darkest lightning, blinding me to everything but the only two things in the world that mattered:

I was alive.

And Asher loved me.

BOOK: A Fractured Light

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