“The Fems have the Barricade now,” I’m quick to point out. “An army far more vast than Celestra has—even if you include those that side with us.” I can’t bring myself to say it out loud, but the Barricade seems to be ready to slap our hand down to the table. In this long, muscle busting arm wrestling match, it appears that Wes and his minions have garnered the upper hand.
“Celestra is dwindling.” Ezrina dots her finger over a page in the text before her and spins the book my way. “This.”
I glance over. Splayed out before me is a picture of a dragon—a charcoal sketch of a scaly, demonic looking creature who appears to hold two rag dolls in its talons. There’s a beautiful woman riding his back, her face pressed loving toward his, but those flames shooting out of its nostrils, its mouth, they burst to life right off the page with or without color.
“She chooses the beast.” Ezrina digs her thumb over the page as if squashing a bug. “Love,” she says it as if it were a vile expletive leaving her lips.
My stomach sinks at the thought. Yes, Skyla loves Gage. She wants him back. We both do. Hell, even I’m rooting for them.
“She chooses the beast.” I swallow hard while inspecting the picture, but Ezrina twists the book back to herself as if denying me the right to shed a river of tears. I’ll save those for later.
“She does.” Emily slides another picture my way—an exact representation of the one Ezrina just showed me but in red, an alarming hue when paired with those flames. “But it’s all up in the air. See this?” She points to a few lines around the beast that give it the feel as if it’s flying through the air. “That’s the wind. The winds of change. Something about this scenario can be altered. That’s where you come in.”
“Are you drawing me next?” I’m only half-kidding. I’m terrified she’ll draw a gnat. That’s about how significant I feel in this scenario.
“Maybe.” Emily gets right back to work.
“Logan”—Nev shakes his head at me, and it feels as if Gage’s primal apex is doing the very same thing—“I know both you and Gage love Skyla, but we must do what’s best for our people. If Demetri does indeed place his son as the overseer of his wicked kingdom—if he is indeed compelled to do what is intended…”
The room stills around us.
I look to Ezrina, and my features harden to stone. “How can they topple Skyla?”
“Battle.” She shakes her head in a quick frenetic movement. Ezrina has always reminded me a bit of a mouse, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. “They don’t have a leader. Wesley is not the chosen one. Only the leader can declare a proper war.”
“And that leader would be Gage.” The words come out lower than a whisper. “My God.” I pull the books before me, spinning the pages as fast as they’ll turn, reading at dizzying speeds, just trying to devour the information before me. It’s all here in black and white, Skyla bowing to wickedness, evil knocking good right off its pedestal. This was a war mapped out long ago, already declaring the victory to the enemy according to these pages.
A low-lying growl works its way up my throat.
Emily shoves another picture at me—a dragon, that unearthly beast seated on an outlandishly large throne, a tiny beautiful girl on his lap—throngs around them looking up in adoration. Every single one of the pictures Emily has given me glow in one color—red. Red equals blood. We learned that the hard way the last time. Skyla chooses Gage. Gage topples Celestra. The Fems declare victory over mankind. Mankind goes to hell in a handbasket because that’s what the Fems do—they destroy.
“Shit!” I slam my hands down over the glass table so hard the room explodes with the boom. Poor Alice lets out a viral cry, and I roar right along with her. I pick up a stack of those old paper relics and fling them across the room. It was there all along. The dark answers to the questions we were too afraid to ask.
Gage spins toward me, darting those bright blue eyes my way an unnaturally long while, and my heart breaks because this was not supposed to happen to him. Gage was and will always be my brother. Not my enemy. Never that.
Emily stands and hands me the final portrait, red once again.
“This is you and him.” She holds it out where I can get a better look at the two figures who look to be shaking hands. Shards of jagged lines expand around the two of us. Gage is completely colored in with the crimson hue, and I’m nothing but an outline. Something about this feels right.
“What does this mean?”
“This is the beginning of the end,” she says devoid of all emotion. “The moment this happens you’ll know.”
The beginning of the end.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Dudley. I have a gift for you.
I contemplate this a moment. I don’t need anything from Dudley, nothing materially speaking. But I do need something. Clarity.
I pluck my keys out of my pocket. “Em, see if Nev can give you a ride back home. I have somewhere to be.”
I take off running like a man with a purpose. It’s laughable. I’m the furthest thing from it.
My tires eat miles of Paragon asphalt until I find myself in Dudley’s driveway. It’s the last place I wanted to be and yet, like some supernatural magnet, I couldn’t fight it. The rain has done a disappearing act, and that beastly fiery orb in the sky struggles to break free from the membrane of clouds shielding us from its glory.
“What the hell now?” I jog up to the house and use my shoulder to break my way in. “Dudley?” I shout before heading to the rear of the home and out to the back patio. Sitting over a stone table is a quiver full of arrows, an enormous bow next to it, and I don’t hesitate in arming myself.
That corral full of llamas and horses startles to life as I stride past them. “Dudley?” I thunder across the great expanse that details his property, but my voice comes back to me as an echo. No sneaky Sector to accompany it. I run down to the stream as the sky begins to pepper me. I can feel a buildup of tears just below the surface that have been percolating in me since the day I asked Gage to watch Skyla for me—pretend she was his. And now she is. Even in death, Gage has held onto Skyla. But those pictures—those haunted drawings that I forced Emily to vomit out on my foolish behalf all scream Skyla will choose him. As much as I want her to, deep down, I’m broken.
“What the hell am I here for?” I stagger toward the water like a drunk. “Marshall Fucking Dudley!” I thunder across the expansive field. “You are my supervising spirit, and I command you to get your slimy ass down here!”
A gentle breeze stirs the aspen trees, and it feels as if they’re mocking me. Nothing. I am nothing to no one. An obstacle even to myself.
“Crap,” I whisper as I stumble out farther down the property. I have never felt so melancholy. Never so down. Not even Gage Oliver’s death brought me such a heaviness of spirit. It’s as if I can see the world—our world unraveling before my very eyes. Everything Gage and I fought for—that Skyla, who fought harder than both of us combined, has been reduced to dust and ashes. At what point do you throw in the towel and cry uncle? At what point does the word defeat start to pepper your lexicon? I lean against the base of an evergreen, knocking my head back against the trunk, hard like I mean it. Everything that’s happened—everything that’s still happening rotates through my mind, cryptic, frighteningly esoteric.
Time waits for no one. Death comes in like a thief and binds your wrists. It fetters your feet, blinds and whips you before whisking off with your soul to the paradise of God. Death is ruthless in its endeavor as it rips you away from the planet—unremorseful as it gives all of your loved ones the finger. I cheated death, mostly. Rumor has it, I’ll come back one day. But, in the end, Candace was right. This halfway life that my soul lingers in, this delicate state of limbo between this realm and the next, has proven a special brand of torment.
They say every living soul has one true love—the trick is finding them, and then holding on. You can miss love by a mile if you’re not careful. It can sneak up on you in th
e least likely places, a parking lot, a chance meeting at a party, a bowling alley.
My true love’s heart lingers for me, although our paths have split for a time. They’ll converge again, but for now, she belongs to another, and it hurts like all bloody hell. I didn’t think it would. I didn’t think it could. Then again, I never think too deeply when Skyla is in the balance.
An arrow whips by, biting my left ear in the process.
“Shit.” I jump back, touching my fingers to my head, only to show the bright red impression of blood. I’m far more amused than I am anything else. This simply means two things. One, Dudley is back. And two, I can bleed?
“Oliver!” Dudley cries out from the clearing near his property and points a good fifty feet away to the arrow he’s just lodged in the eye of an oak. “Top that. I doubt you can.”
That’s Dudley for you, always quick with the dig, at least where I’m concerned.
He’s lured me out here, claiming he has a gift for me. I happen to know for a fact that Dudley’s idea of a gift doesn’t quite match up to the English definition.
I pull an arrow from the quiver strapped to my back and take a few steps forward.
“I’ll land it in the heart of the trunk, on top of yours,” I shout over to him. “Try not to get your riding pants in a bunch, sweetheart.” I fire one off, and it slips just past the tree, digging into the bushes.
Dudley barks out a laugh.
“You’re a fool to even suggest that arrow would obey your nonsensical whims.” He loads up and stretches his bow taut, but he’s not aiming for the oak. He’s aiming straight for me. “I’ll get it over your head and give you a little trim off the top at the same time.” He launches it like a missile, and, before I can duck, the wind whistles over my skull. That damn arrow nearly scalped me in the process.
“You’re a piece of shit, Dudley.” I pat my head for signs of blood before glancing at the glorified stick neatly planted in the trunk of a pine just shy of where I’m standing.
“The sentiment is mutual.” He fires another shot back toward the oak. “You think about my offer?”
“No can do.” Hell, yes, I thought about his offer, and there isn’t a chance I’m going to let him utilize me as his lackey, especially not when it consists of me sidestepping Skyla. I’ll leave the trickery to my nephew.
Skyla. A cloud of dread seeps over me just thinking about her. I never knew it would pain me to hold her in my heart, and, yet, that day has come—it’s been here all along. All these months on the island—all the shit that’s gone down with Gage, with the Steel Barricade, with Chloe and her constant scheming—it’s all more than I can take. But I’d do it again and again for Skyla.
I wonder if she cares. I wonder if I should have left the planet entirely and never stuck around where I didn’t truly belong. At the time, staying seemed like the right decision, but now, in the light of day, under the inspection of the circumstances, I question the very thing I swore to cherish, my time here on Paragon—my time with Skyla.
“Have you fallen asleep on your feet?” Dudley belches it out across the expanse, and his voice drones on in an echo, unstable as water.
“Yes, I’m asleep.” I yank an arrow from my quiver. “That’s because you bore me to fucking tears.” I stretch back my bow, with an arrow ready and willing to eat air, and turn slightly to my left, aiming straight for Dudley. I let go and watch as it glides across the field, right past his left shoulder. Figures. I shake my head in mock disappointment. “Missed.”
“You’re a bigger moron than you think.” A fire churns in his eyes. His hands move quick as lightning.
A blur of a line travels my way, slicing through the air at an alarming, low trajectory. I try to jump out of the way, but it nails me right in the heart.
Dudley straightens with pride. “I, on the other hand, never miss.”
My body lurches. I stagger back as a crimson stain blooms across my chest.
“You shot me,” I say, disbelieving. God. He’s going to fuck up my body.
I try extracting the arrow, and a spear of pain shoots through my skull.
Dudley strides toward me a few feet before reloading. “The important thing to note about a Treble is your flesh doesn’t quite have the ability to heal itself like it used to.” He fires another one off in my direction and lodges it into my chest right next to the last. “Pity.” He flexes a brief smile.
A jolt of pain rockets through me.
“Fuck.” Now it’s my voice echoing across the field.
Maybe this is it—his big gift. Maybe the Decision Council sensed I was bitching about my imperfect half-life and decided to renege on the offer. And now Dudley gets to maim me at his leisure, bury me in his backyard so he can piss on my grave every now and again just for kicks. Hell, maybe Gage will join him.
“I’m not going down without a fight.” I pluck arrow after arrow out of my quiver and land six in the field, two in his gut. His crisp, white dress shirt darkens as a deep red liquid oozes out. “Looks to me, you bleed like the rest of us.”
He glances down at his newfound wounds, slightly amused.
“I don’t take lightly to what you’ve done,” he says it stern as a reprimand.
“Nor do I.” My bow shakes as I stretch it taut with all my effort. I shoot another one off in his direction, aiming for that pompous mug of his, and son of a bitch—
Dudley lets out a strangled cry and staggers with an arrow through his eye.
The faint voice of a girl comes from the direction of the house, and Dudley holds up a hand as if to still me.
“Marshall?” she cries. Her voice carries high and light like a flute.
Skyla.
I take a step back and try to pluck the arrows from my chest, but they’re lodged behind my ribs, and it hurts like shit. My chest tightens. It’s getting hard to breathe as the world starts to fade. What the hell is happening?
“Marshall, where are you?” she shouts from just a couple feet away, and now the inevitable will happen. Skyla is about to see both Dudley and me in a serious state of disrepair.
“I’m in the clearing, love,” he calls back with his voice smooth as silk.
I glance over.
He’s already extracted the arrow from his eye, and is working the two out of his stomach. I reach down to do the same, and another hits me, creating an unholy trinity of overgrown darts—pinning my heart, caging it in with pain.
“Let this be a lesson.” Dudley tips his chin up. His eyes are still intact—his dress shirt, crisp and clean, no worse for wear. “Don’t ever think about turning on me.”
Footsteps quicken in this direction, and Skyla illuminates the dark woods with her porcelain skin. Her eyes glow like quicksilver.
“Logan!” She stops at the foot of the forest, examining me, but she doesn’t scream or run or flip Dudley the bird for inflicting such damage in the first place. Instead, Skyla smiles. She walks over slow with her eyes locked over mine as if the arrows, the blood dripping from my body at an accelerated rate—Dudley himself—were inconsequential in general. “It’s me.” She tilts her head as she steps up her gait.
“I can explain.” I give a tug at my shirt, and she holds a finger to her lips, never once taking those luminous eyes off mine. I shoot a look to Dudley because something, for sure, is the hell up.
Maybe this is Chloe in disguise. Maybe Dudley’s big gift is for me to shack up in the Transfer with good old Bishop wearing Skyla’s body like a bad Halloween costume.
“You’re really here.” She touches her hand to my face and looks at me in wonder. “And now, so am I.”
“I think I need help.” My breathing grows erratic. My chest is on fire. I’m pretty sure I need to start hitting the panic button and getting Candace Messenger on the Red Line because something akin to a celestial ambulance is going to be needed in just a few seconds.
“God, I love you,” she whispers. Her eyes narrow in on me as if she were in pain. She places her cool hands ov
er my cheeks and pulls me in.
Skyla hikes up on the balls of her feet and crashes her lips to mine. I don’t fight it. I twist my arrow-riddled chest to the left and pull her in close as we indulge in a deep, meaningful kiss with our tongues slipping over one another for what feels like hours—weeks.
My knees start to buckle, can’t breathe. The world feels as if it’s spinning out of control, and I sink to the ground.
The last thing I see is Skyla’s beautiful face—then Marshall’s ugly mug as he stands over her shoulder.
“Your gift is here.” He smirks down at me. “And should you have shown me an ounce of gratitude for all I’ve ever done for you, we wouldn’t be witness to your demise.” He kicks me in the thigh before heading toward the house.
Skyla drops to my side and gently slaps my cheek, begging me to stay awake. Her voice dances around me, elusive and hard to grasp, like a butterfly.
The world fades in and out.
Get your mother, I try to tell her.
“Logan, wait!” she screams. “Logan, come back. Something big has happened, and it affects you and me.”
Skyla stepped out of the forest with zero regard for the arrows lodged in my chest and kissed me. Something big had happened, and she wanted to share the news.
Tell me, Skyla. I want to know.
My eyes won’t open. All sound fades from the world.
Skyla was my gift, and now I lose her twice.
Dudley is right. I’m a bigger moron than I thought.
Her lips sink over mine, soft as a summer breeze. Skyla’s kisses are resuscitating my love-thirsty soul—her lingual affection is the exact brand of medicine I’ve needed all along.
Skyla is the cure for everything.
I’ve always known that.
And so has she.
A horrific groan expels from me as one reality is traded for the next. I give a few lazy blinks, only to find myself lying along the shore of Ahava as the icy waves slap over me. Its peaceful beaches, its serene hillsides that glitter like an emerald put me under a spell that I never want out of.
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