A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

silver bells of the rattle I was meant to find.
    I could feel my eyes burning bright in the dark room.
    That’s how we’ll know it’s time to fight.
    “Nothing,” I replied. “Just something somebody left behind.”

Chapter 29
    B irds chirped as I opened my eyes the next morning, a sure sign that spring was on its way. I looked around, forgetting for a moment where I was. Light filtered in through a small window near the ceiling, illuminating the attic room.
    I remembered last night. The lullaby. The rattle. The clue my parents had been trying to tell me. I sat up—but a pair of warm arms wrapped themselves around me, pulling me back into the folds of the sleeping bag. A sleepy voice said, “Don’t go yet. Letting all the cold air in.”
    I let Asher pull me back down, and snuggled into his body heat. He’d held me all night—just held me, as if he was afraid of what would happen if he let go. It was the first time we’d ever woken up together.
    “Mmm,” he murmured, kissing my neck. “Much better.”
    A sharp knock on the door at the foot of the stairs nearly made me sit bolt upright again. “Skye!” Aunt Jo called. “Asher! Breakfast!”
    “I don’t think,” Asher muttered as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, “that you and I will ever have five minutes alone together as long as she’s around.”
    “She’s very good at her job,” I agreed.
    I tried to keep the memory of Asher’s warmth wrapped around me all morning, but my thoughts were still trapped in the chilly attic room from the night before. My parents had wanted me to figure it out—they knew I would when I was ready. They wanted me to fight. But how would I start? And what, exactly, was I fighting?
    I was grateful that we were going on a long hike after breakfast. I needed the time to walk and think.
     
    We stopped near a clearing for lunch. A small brook was thawing, the ice melting away into the earliest trickles of a babbling stream. I was just unpacking a bag of trail mix when the evergreen trees swirled around me into mist and the trickle of the stream became gulls cawing gently, the lapping of waves on a shore. I knew where I was. I’d been here before. The mist cleared and I was on a gray, empty beach. The hem of my diaphanous dress floated like sea foam in the shallow surf, but I kept moving forward along the shore. A figure moved toward me in the mist, growing closer, looming. But I couldn’t see who it was.
    Someone came up beside me, his sword raised high over his head. I turned and saw that I was standing next to Ian. He nodded at me, looking into the mist. I said a prayer for luck, and threw my own sword at the approaching figure.
    The mist swirled and faded, and I was suddenly back on the trail, sitting on a rock by the thawing brook. Nobody had noticed a thing. I was getting better at controlling my visions, just like the rest of my powers. Even if I still had no clue what they meant.
    I bit into my sandwich. Ian had been in this vision. He hadn’t been there before, but now he was standing next to me, fighting by my side.
    I looked up from my sandwich to find Devin staring. He saw it happen. He gave me a meaningful look and walked off into the trees. Devin would know. He’d have the answers. He knew he could help me.
    I counted to ten, and then I followed him into the woods.
    He was waiting for me. “You had a vision,” he said.
    I nodded. “Another one. On the beach. I was wearing this beautiful dress, and—I recognized it.”
    His eyes grew brighter, wider.
    “You did? From where?”
    “Aunt Jo gave it to me the night before my race. It used to be my mom’s.”
    “And the vision,” Devin said. “What happened in it?”
    “I had a sword,” I said. “And . . . this is the weird part. Ian was right there next to me.”
    “You had a sword?” Devin asked, drawing his eyebrows together. “An angelic sword?” I nodded. “Was it yours?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it was.”
    “Skye, you’re seeing visions of the future.”
    “How do you know for sure?” I asked.
    “Because you were wearing the dress that Aunt Jo gave you.”
    “I could have just been dreaming about it.”
    “And Ian was with you.”
    “It could have been for anything. We could have been hanging out. It might have been pro—”
    “You had a sword,” Devin said, his voice urgent. “Angelic swords are made from the single feather of an angel’s wing. You don’t have your wings yet, Skye. You saw a vision