A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

dry, and as the twine fell away, I realized what I felt was more than just the thrill of discovery. I was nervous—nervous that what I was about to read contained some valuable clue to a past that had forever seemed so hidden from me.
    Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the quiet little closet, I could hear my heart beating. Its rhythm grew faster as I stared down at the first page. It was filled with the same looping handwriting I’d been staring at every night, in the notebook that was now hiding underneath my pillow. My handwriting. My mother’s.
    My eyes welled with years of grief. The words sprawled across the page as if speaking directly to me.
     
The Order knows about our new faction. They’re coming to stop it.
     
    I flipped to the next page, my heart in my throat.
     
We’ve moved into the cabin, are hiding here. Mer thinks it will happen any day now, but she and Sam continue to plan the uprising. There’s no way we can know, with the Order, how it will happen. Mer has lost that gift. But she says we have to live our lives and what they see will come to pass. The two of them always knew that no place would be safe for a union of the Order and the Rebellion. They would have no real home. Neither would Skye, a mix of both worlds but truly from neither. Neither would the other Rogues. Neither would I. It’s what bonds us together. It’s what drives the uprising.
    We’re all nomads. Wandering, searching for peace. But the Order will never let us find it. They will never leave us alone, not until we’ve either been extinguished—or become one of them. They’ll come for us, but it will never stop us from trying.
     
    Mer and Sam—my mom and dad. But why would she be writing about herself in the third person? And the part about the Rogues made no sense. I flipped the page.
     
Mer and Sam gave me a home, something I’ve never had before. In return, they asked me one favor, one small favor in all of this. When the Order comes, when they crush our fledgling mission and destroy its founders, take Skye. Keep her away from them. Raise her so she’ll never know. Protect her from her lineage. And from herself.
     
    Wait. What was I reading? Whose notebook was this? I definitely hadn’t written these words. And the more I read, the more I realized, with a heavy sinking in my chest, that neither had my mom. Even as I turned the last page, my hands trembling, I had a feeling I knew whose handwriting I was staring at.
     
Because when she finds out, she’ll never stop fighting for their cause. She’ll have the powers of Light and Dark combined—her mother and her father. No one knows what her powers will be. Both sides will try to claim her, but they’ll be wrong. What the Rogues understand—what Skye will, too, one day—is that to choose one over the other is to deny the very root of who she is: a balance of both. They’re watching, waiting—they’ll come for her, too, when the terms of the pact have come to pass. And then she’ll either fight to change the course of the universe—or they’ll try to kill her. Just like they’re trying to kill her parents.
     
    My breath caught in my throat as I turned the last page.
     
We’ve left the cabin. It’s no longer safe here. I’ll spend the rest of my life protecting her from herself. I swear it.
     
    And that could only mean one thing.
    The book had never belonged to my mom. The loopy handwriting looked familiar because I’d seen it on Post-it notes on the fridge, on parental permission forms for school, on every report card and every doctor’s note I’d gotten for the past eleven years. I knew it well, because it was my handwriting, too. I’d spent my whole life copying it.
    “Oh my god,” I said out loud. “It’s Aunt Jo’s.”
    She knew. She’d known all along.
    And more important than that—she was a Rogue.

Chapter 24
    “S kye?”
    I looked up, and Aunt Jo was standing there. The sadness in her eyes made her wrinkles even more defined. Like she’d aged immeasurably over the course of just a few days.
    I had a handful of pages from her notebook and no excuse. I’d discovered her secret—and by virtue of that fact, she’d discovered mine. I was caught. We both were.
    “I guess it’s time we talked,” she said quietly. She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and sat down on the floor of the closet next to me.
    “How could you not tell me?” I asked, my voice coming out choked. “You let me go through all this