A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

you leave me . . . a flower?”
    He looked at me questioningly.
    “Look, I have a lot of questions,” I said. “And I think I deserve some answers.”
    He looked away. “What makes you think I have the answers?”
    “Because you’re the one who tried to kill me.”
    His attention snapped back to me. His eyes were hard.
    “Go ahead, then.”
    But suddenly confronted with the idea of finding out the truth, my heart shrank. If he didn’t love me, it would hurt. Even though I was devoted to Asher, had chosen him completely, there was something about the Guardian that I felt so sad about giving up. If he didn’t love me—or if he did love me and had agreed to kill me anyway—well, then, the pain would be like the sword he’d stabbed me with, twisting sharply in my gut.
    Suddenly I didn’t want to be hurt again by him. By anyone, really. The Skye who had waffled back and forth for so long between the Order and the Rebellion—between Devin and Asher—seemed like a person in a book who I had read about once. Someone remote and fictional. She wasn’t me. She never would be again.
    “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to know.” I started to turn, to walk away back down the empty hall.
    “I dreamed about you,” he blurted out. His voice broke into the silent hallway, catching me off-guard. “Every night . . . after it happened. I still do.”
    I turned around in shock. “What?”
    He looked just as shocked as I did at the words that had flown out of his mouth. But he kept talking. “I thought you were dead. When I drew the sword out and you fell, and . . . he . . . pulled you away, I thought you were dead. But then when none of the Gifted would tell me the status of the mission, I knew they didn’t know. And I had to hope that if they didn’t know, it meant you were still alive, blurring out your own destiny and that of the people whose lives you touch. Hiding from the Order. I had to hope that I had failed. And you were still alive.”
    “Why are you telling me this?” I felt shaky, my resolve cracking.
    “If you’re still able to do that—blur destiny—then soon there will be no such thing as destiny at all. And the Order will be pointless. They know that, Skye. It’s not safe for you here.” He paused, his voice level and even, as if he wasn’t affected by what he was saying, as if he had no fear at all. How could someone seem to be so full of so many different emotions and yet be incapable of feeling any of them? “You’re going to destroy us all,” he said. The calm in his voice was maddening.
    “Now you’re warning me?”
    “No,” he said softly. “I’m just telling you the facts.”
    “Skye, Skye, Skye,” a voice chimed like a crystal bell behind me.
    Devin’s head snapped up and his eyes focused over my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Raven was standing there, preventing me from asking what I had been about to.
    “Raven,” Devin said warningly under his breath.
    “I’m so glad you’re both here.”
    “What do you want?” My voice was cold, hard.
    “Who, me? I was just looking for my fated one.” She sauntered over and offered Devin a hand. He glanced at me before reaching out—and taking it. “We’re bonded now, Skye, didn’t he tell you?”
    What? I looked at him, my eyes wide, but he stared at the ground.
    “We underwent the ceremony just a couple of days ago,” Raven continued, her fingers tightening around his bicep possessively. As if I might still want him. As if I might still trust that the angel in front of me wanted me to succeed. The idea was so horrible, it made my blood seethe. I could never want Devin. I hated him. Hated him. I heard the locker doors that lined the hallway begin to rattle as the floor beneath us shook. Raven raised an eyebrow. “Don’t be mad, Skye. He thought he’d killed you, after all.”

Chapter 14
    I nvoluntarily I found myself backing away.
    Raven was soulless, dangerous, the perfect, obedient Guardian. I knew what she was capable of, and if she and Devin were now bonded, it meant the Gifted had another way to make sure Devin stayed in line.
    It also meant that even though it had been crazy to think it, even for a second, there was no way I could ever trust him.
    I was so upset that I had to jam my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep from shaking. What was wrong with me? How could I be disappointed that an angel whose job had been to kill me was celestially bonded to