A Beautiful Dark

each other before melting seamlessly into his back. My chest tightened and I fought for air. The sky was caving in around me, and I lay back against the freezing concrete and closed my eyes. “I c-can’t breathe,” I said, wheezing. “Asher?”
    “I’m here,” he said. “You’re okay.”
    “I—I need to go home.”
    Devin stepped in. “I’ll take you.” He reached a hand down to me, and I took it as he pulled me up. He glared at Asher. “I knew I shouldn’t trust you. Of course you’d find a way to mess this up.”
    I wanted to say that it wasn’t Asher’s fault, but I had no idea what Devin meant . What was “this”? What were they trying to tell me? That the myth was true? I tried to remember what else Asher had told us that night around the campfire. Something about Paradise? I stumbled, and Devin caught me in his sturdy arms.
    Asher looked like he wanted to say more—but for once, he didn’t. I was grateful. It made it easier to leave.
    Devin led me toward the fire door. Just before I started down the stairs, I turned. Asher’s own black wings were folding behind him, glittering in the final moments of daylight and disappearing into some part of him I couldn’t see.
    My mind was tugged in a thousand different directions as we walked through the parking lot. I barely noticed all the remaining cars that belonged to the students involved in after-school practices and meetings.
    Even before these guys showed up in my life, I’d felt like I was different from everyone else I knew. How would I fit in with Cassie, Dan, and Ian? Holding this secret—a secret so big that it felt like it would consume me.
    I must have shivered, because Devin took his jacket off and hung it across my shoulders lightly, almost as if he was afraid to touch me. I hoped he didn’t realize that it wasn’t just the cold I was shivering from.
    “Thanks.”
    He was quiet, leaving me to my own thoughts. And there were lots of them. Every now and then I would begin a sentence and leave it unfinished, trailing off into the bitter night air.
    Finally Devin turned to me, his face illuminated as we passed under a streetlight. “That happened very quickly, much more suddenly than I would have liked.” Then we were back in the dark, his face hidden again. I saw him relax and realized he preferred if I couldn’t see him. “If you have questions, you can ask me.” We were almost at my car; I could see it a couple of rows away.
    “What are you?” It was the question I’d asked before that they’d managed to avoid answering.
    “I’m a Guardian. A messenger.”
    My head spun. “Okay, you know what? So not ready to know any more right now.”
    Devin seemed to take me seriously, because he didn’t say anything else. We reached the row my car was in and started down it.
    “So was there a school in Denver that burned down?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he confirmed. “But we weren’t students there. Our paperwork is forged. It was Asher’s idea to use that story.” Devin grimaced. “We needed an excuse to transfer in the middle of the year.”
    “Why now?”
    “Because you turned seventeen, and the Elders have always believed that if anything was going to happen, it would happen now. When you’re on the verge of adulthood.
    “Wait, what do you mean, ‘happen’? Like what?”
    “That’s just it, Skye. We don’t know. So I was sent to watch you. And of course, the Rebels didn’t trust me to report honestly to them, so they sent Asher.” He took a breath. “It’s like in the story Asher told. There needed to be agents from both sides.”
    So that explained their animosity toward each other. “So you’re not really cousins.”
    “Only in the same way that you would be related to Cassie through Adam and Eve. Somewhere in our genealogy we share a common ancestor. But that’s about it.”
    I suddenly realized just how utterly exhausted I was. The excitement of the past few days was really catching up to me. I stopped a few feet away from my car and leaned on a steel-blue Saab. “It’s all so much.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything right now. You have time to process all this. I’ve, uh—what do they say?” He turned to me and smiled awkwardly. “I’ve got your back?”
    I laughed—or at least I started out laughing, but before I knew it, my laughter turned into choking, and I turned away so that Devin couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face. He must have noticed