A Beautiful Dark

reflected lots of little me’s, all staring back down. Had the night before really happened? And the night before that? In the new light of morning, everything they’d told me seemed impossible. Even in the steamy bathroom, I shivered as the next logical question snaked its way into my brain. If my parents were a Guardian of the Order and a member of the Rebellion—what did that make me?
    Could I really have lived seventeen years knowing nothing about who I really was?
    It struck me that I could simply choose not to believe them. Maybe if I ignored Devin and Asher and just kept moving forward, not letting myself get tripped up over any of this, it would all just go away. I could go back to being Skye Parker, star of the Northwood High ski team and Columbia University shoo-in. Even as I pictured it, I doubted that I could live with so many questions ignored. So many left unanswered.
    I turned the hot and cold knobs at the same time, and the water shut off with a sharp squeak.
    Now that Asher and Devin had opened the floodgates—whatever they led to—I wondered if it was even possible to go back to the way things were.
    I grabbed Devin’s jacket off my desk chair once I was dressed and ready to leave. It was no longer warm, but it did smell like him: crisp, clean, like the air at the top of a mountain.
    There was a note from Aunt Jo on the kitchen table.
Hey Rock Star,
At the office late tonight. Planning a trip out at the end of the week. You’ll be okay for dinner, right? There’s lots of frozen stuff in the freezer.
Love, Aunt Jo

    A warm, unexpected surge of relief flooded me. Aunt Jo was the one person I couldn’t keep secrets from. With her out of the house, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to avoid telling her that the girl she’d known for the past seventeen years, the girl she’d raised, might not be who she seemed to be.
    My goal was to swing by Devin’s locker and drop off his jacket on my way to homeroom. But when I approached the north corridor, my heart dropped into my stomach. Devin was standing at his locker, engaged in a heated conversation with the blond girl who’d been standing in the parking lot the night before. As I stood there, an image from one of my nightmares suddenly came rushing back: a pair of scorching blue eyes boring a hole in the atmosphere, all of the oxygen seeping out of it into the blackness of outer space, the air sucked out of my lungs and swirling among the stars.
    I almost turned around—I’d give him his jacket in homeroom—but something stopped me. Instinct told me to stay out of sight. That I’d want to hear what they were talking about. Taking a breath, I ducked behind the nearest row of lockers and tried not to make a sound.
    “I can’t believe you’re here,” I heard Devin whisper fiercely. “It’s so incredibly risky, Raven. What if they find out? You’re being . . . rebellious.” He said it with the same tone someone might use if accusing a person of being a serial killer.
    “Pardon me for looking out for you ,” she spat. Then her voice got softer. “Besides, they know I’m here. They’re worried about you, too. Please, Devin, you have to come back. Tell the Gifted to give this mission to someone else. Maybe they’ll do it this time. If you really beg—”
    “Someone else?” Devin’s voice cut in, sharp. “Beg? What makes you think this time will be any different from the last? Or the time before that? I do what they tell me. I have no choice. Look, we talked about this before I left. You knew I would be gone for a while. I’ll see you soon, okay? You just have to—”
    “You can’t know how soon it will be.” Her voice dropped, and I had to hold my breath and strain my ears to hear what she said next. “You know what kind of mission this is. It’s different from the ones before.”
    “But I’ve been training for it for so long. All of my other missions were simply training for this one.”
    “What about us? We are supposed to be together—it’s fated, and so it shall be. There is something about her that gives me chills. I wish you would stay away from her.”
    I let out my breath in a small gasp. They were talking about me. How could I possibly give someone like her the chills?
    “You know I can’t do that.”
    “Then I wish you would think carefully about the legend. There are so many things we don’t yet know. About who she is. What she can do to us.”
    “You’re scared.”
    “I don’t have the