Jocelyn Davies - A Radiant Sky

There are certain things they never tell you about love.

Fairy tales and campfire legends make it sound easy.

A Guardian falls in love with a Rebel, and their love tears the heavens apart. Their daughter isn’t light and isn’t dark, but both. Undeniably, painfully both. And no transformation from mermaid to girl, no glass slipper, no prince charming or enchanted beast can help her figure out where she truly belongs.

They’ll tell you what it’s like to fall in love. All the wonderful, terrible things. That it hurts when you’re together, and when you’re not. It hurts when you know, and the not-knowing hurts even more. They’ll tell you that no matter how strong you are, no matter how much you fight or steel yourself against it, it hurts to have your heart broken.

But what no one ever tells you is that to break your own heart—that feels even worse.

I always believed that love could only shatter you. Make you believe the impossible until the impossible is all you know. And then when the impossible is real, when you’ve forgotten who you are, forgotten everything that makes you you, only when the world is different and you are different and things are shining the way you never knew they could—that’s when love rips you open from the inside out.

I always thought I could live without it.

“ Love,” Asher had once said. “The great destroyer of worlds. ”

But I was wrong.

“Ican’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.