A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

Devin said, holding my gaze. “They’re silver.”
    I could feel it. I looked down. Something silvery, light, and quick was flowing from the wounds on Raven’s back. The mercurial liquid streamed from her wounds, taking shape into something huge and fluttery. New wings were emerging where her old ones had been. But they weren’t white, and they weren’t black.
    They were a glistening silver.
    “You did it,” Raven whispered, standing slowly and letting the feathers unfold behind her. “You really did it. I should—” She stopped herself just short of saying something snarky. She met my eyes and nodded, slightly. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
    I had done it. I had gone from failing at restoring life to a tiny alpine flower to healing great, gaping angelic wounds. As if thinking the same thing, Devin caught my eyes. He looked so proud—happy, for the first time since we’d met.
    Suddenly I felt something begin to push through my own back. I cried out and doubled over, reaching my hands behind me to feel what was happening. When I pulled them away, they were dripping—not with blood, as I’d feared, but with the same liquid silver. Devin’s eyes grew wide.
    “Skye,” Asher said with wonder.
    I saw the shadow my wings cast onto the little clearing in the woods before I realized what was happening. My own wings, the same color silver as Raven’s. As the rattle. As my eyes.
    Asher stepped forward, with Ardith and Gideon close behind him, forming a V. “Raven, we can welcome you into the Rebellion, too. Skye, you’ll officially join us now? We’ll all fight against the Order together.”
    I looked around the woods. My friends surrounded me, watching to see what I would do.
    “Come on, Skye,” Asher said, offering a hand for me to take. He looked so hopeful, so sure that I would reach out and place my hand in his. The first breeze of spring ruffled his black hair, and he grinned. “Let’s go.”
    Which is why my heart was breaking at what I was about to do.
    I took a step back. “I can’t,” I said.
    For a second, it looked like he hadn’t heard me. He continued to hold his hand out to me, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. His dark eyes stirred, as if trying to process what I’d just said.
    “What?” His voice was no more than a whisper.
    “No,” I said, louder this time. My heart was breaking into millions of shards of glass. My insides felt cut up from them. “My wings are silver, like my eyes—”
    “Don’t do this, Skye—” he pleaded, his voice cracking at my name.
    “Asher, you know I have to. You’ve known this for a while now. I’m not a Rebel, and I’m not a Guardian. I don’t think I was ever meant to be either. I need the balance of both in order to live without buckling under this power. I’m both and I’m neither. The dark and the light. I can’t exist without the other.”
    “You can,” he said. His voice sounded strange and sad and desperate. Were those tears in his eyes? I looked down, biting my lip and trying hard not to let my own tears spill over.
    “I can’t.” I forced myself to keep saying the words I knew I had to say. “I have to finish what my parents started. I was born to do this—to start a new faction. I’m—I’m grateful to you. To both of you.” Devin looked up and met my eyes. It felt so wrong to be facing both of them like this, almost like we were back on the roof of the school during my first lesson. Only this time, I wasn’t going to learn what I needed to know from them. I was going to have to find it in myself. “We’ll make our own rules,” I said. “Maybe there is such a thing as fate, and all this is supposed to happen. But if that’s true, my fate has always been to make my own decisions. My parents died trying to find a way for us all to live. I can’t let them down.”
    Raven stepped up beside me.
    “You and I have never quite . . . seen eye to eye.” She paused, and I could tell it was an effort for her to be nice to me. “But our lives are connected now. I healed you; you healed me. Our powers run through each other. I think our wings have made that clear.” She took another step toward me. “If I belong anywhere in this universe now, it’s with you, Skye.”
    “I’ll join you, too.” I looked to see who was speaking and saw Ian step into the clearing. He looked so serious, so determined, and I knew instantly that we would be friends forever, our entire lifetime. He would fight beside