The Brightest Night

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  Mom didn’t respond.

  Another tremor coursed through Nadia’s body, and then she was scrambling back from the island, turning as if to run, but she only made it a foot before she doubled over, her knees giving out.

  Out of reflex, I moved, but Mom reacted with Luxen speed, catching Nadia before she could hit the floor. Scooping Nadia’s hair out of her face, she carefully placed her on her knees. And it was in the nick of time, too.

  Nadia’s entire body spasmed violently, and then she threw up blackish-blue bile that shimmered. I knew what that signified. She was mutating.

  I was mutating.

  “What have you—?” Nadia heaved again, tears streaming down her face. Black stained her lips. “What have you done to me?”

  “Saved your life,” Mom whispered, kneeling beside Nadia. She reached for her, but Nadia shrank away from the touch. “You will never get sick again, Nadia. You will be better, and then they will make you stronger.”

  Nadia stared down at her hands, her body trembling as the veins under her skin became inky.

  “The reason why I told you all of this?” Mom asked. “Because eventually you won’t remember any of this. You won’t remember ever being here as Nadia. You won’t even remember Luc.”

  Nadia lifted her head. “No.”

  Sylvia nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “No!” she cried. “You can’t do that. You can’t take my memories. I won’t forget him.”

  Sylvia said nothing as my heart cracked in my chest. She would forget him. I would forget all of him and all of this.

  “I won’t forget him.” Nadia’s head jerked as her back bowed, the angle unnatural. “I won’t forget him. I won’t—”

  She screamed as her arms twisted, her body bending as if all the bones had turned to liquid. Her head snapped to the side, and I gasped.

  Nadia looked straight at where I stood, black seeping across the whites of her eyes like an oil spill. “Don’t forget.”

  * * *

  The abyss came for me and held me tight in its grasp until a new voice, one I was unfamiliar with, tugged me from the recesses of sleep. Drawn into a semiconscious state, I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming or not.

  The woman spoke softly, so I heard only bits of what she said, and it didn’t make a lot of sense. “It’s the same as it was last night. Her vitals are, well, they’re perfect. Like an athlete in her prime.” Her voice faded out only to return in the same quiet, calm tone. “All I can say is that she’s sleeping.”

  “There is no way she’s just sleeping.”

  Luc.

  That was definitely Luc, and there was a heavy thread of concern along with a razor-sharp edge of anger. I wanted to tell him it was okay, because it was, but my bones felt like they were weighted with lead.

  “I know, but there’s no physical reason that I can determine that explains why she won’t…” The woman’s voice faded as I slipped back into a deeper sleep and stranger dreams.

  Flashes of images that formed with crystal clarity before fading and disappearing from my memories. Others that lingered and became shadows in my mind.

  And I found myself standing in a city of steel that held centuries of memories and millions of voices but was now quiet. Before me, a sea of yellow cabs and black cars sat unoccupied, doors closed and engines turned off. Storefronts and hotels were silent and empty of light. Tiny hairs all over my body were standing, electrified by the currents of power in the air—in the currents of power snapping over my knuckles, light outlined in shadows.

  My gaze fell to the cracked and broken asphalt. Pools of ruby liquid seeped through the fissures, humming with rage and power. Above and all around me, the city trembled. Buildings that were as tall as mountains shattered into themselves. Cement and brick crumbled into ash that glimmered like fireflies. Buildings collapsed in screams that tasted of metal. Fire the color of night blanketed a sky that could no longer hold the sun.

  Coldness seeped into world.

  The power radiating from me was icy heat.

  “Open your eyes and talk to me.”

  His voice punched through the dreams, tearing a pinprick-size hole in the rippling black flames, and brilliant diamond light appeared like a star in a far-off galaxy. Time passed, and then his voice spread that tiny hole. Light grew.

  “If you were letters on a page, you’d be fine print.” Luc’s voice clashed with the dreams of cities falling, and the white light spread.

  His voice was closer. “You’re going to love this one. My doctor says I’m lacking vitamin U.”

  The hole widened, and I felt the warm touch of his fingers against my cheek, the strong curve of his arm around my waist as, farther in the city, billboards evaporated and giant screens cracked before turning to shimmering dust. Cathedrals decayed rapidly, caving into themselves. The world fell apart around me until nothing remained but the gaping hole of crackling, stunning light and the warm, hard feel of Luc’s body pressed to mine.

  We stayed that way for a while, caught between the nothing of sleep and the life that existed beyond it.

  “It’s time.”

  Turning toward the voice, I saw myself standing there, wearing a shirt that was too big. A black shirt that featured a UFO sucking up a T. rex. It had to be a shirt straight from Luc’s closet. Wind lifted the strands of blond hair in the mirror image of me, but where I stood, the air was stagnant.

  “Time for what?” I asked once more.

  Ink bloomed under her eyes like shadows, and her eyes were the darkest night lit by lightning, and it was the same under her skin, the network of veins a kaleidoscope of darkness and moonlight.

  She was power.

  She bled death.

  “It’s time to end this.” She lifted a hand and pointed to the ground—to a grassy knoll that had not been there before, to the boy who stood there, a bronze-haired god of enormous power.

  “Luc?” I whispered.

  Slowly, he turned to me—to us. All of his body, his veins were lit from within. The light poured into the air around him, crackling and spitting with the power of the Source. His pupils were the sharpest diamonds, brilliant and cold, and he didn’t look at me but to the version of me who was not his equal—something deadlier and far more powerful.

  “Never,” he vowed.

  That one word was a punch to the chest, and I fell apart. Shattering and breaking into a million tiny pieces that scattered until I became a part of the dead city and the glimmering ashes falling to the ruined ground.

  And then I was nothing.

  No memories. No sight. No sound. No sense of being, and I slipped further away into the nothing, to where dreams that felt like memories and nightmares of destroyed cities couldn’t reach me. I stayed for an eternity.

  Then I heard Luc’s voice again, and I heard him call to me with one word.

  Nadia.

  15

  Slowly, I became conscious of the body beside me, noticing first the weight of an arm curled around my waist, then the tangle of legs and finally the thigh tucked between mine. Only a few seconds later, I became aware of the solid chest pressed to mine and the soft, steady breath against the top of my head.

  Then I felt, against my lips, warm skin.

  My heart skipped a beat and then sped up in recognition. My soul knew the feel and weight of him, the taste and scent of his skin, because it always knew even when I didn’t.

  Luc.

  He was holding me like I was the most cherished treasure in the universe.

  I focused on each breath he took until my body seemed to naturally meet his, falling into a rhythm. His were deep and steady, but he wasn’t asleep. I knew this, because his hand moved along the center of my back, tracking up and down my spine. Each pass of his hand caused the skin along my back to hum in a pleasantly distracting way.

  Drawing in a shallow breath, I took a deeper, longer one and willed my eyes to open.

  Nothing happened.

  I had no idea why, but I tried
again with the same result. Thinking I could move another part of my body, I tested out my hands. Turned out my arms were folded against a hard stomach, so that was no go.

  Should I be concerned that moving was proving to be so difficult? Probably. But other than my muscles not responding to the commands my brain was sending, I felt okay. Granted, that was a pretty big deal. Maybe I needed to start with something small.

  My toes.

  And holy hallelujah, I could wiggle them!

  Approximately five seconds later, I almost regretted my achievement.

  Pins and needles swept up my legs in a quick succession. I wanted to stop moving my toes, but I pushed through it. The rush of sensation cooled mere seconds later. Feeling confident about the progress, I flexed my foot.

  Luc’s hand stopped, bunching my shirt under his grip, and his breath stilled against the top of my head. “Evie?” The way he said my name—it was full of restrained hope but sounded like it came from the other side of the room.

  Were my ears still asleep?

  Okay, that sounded next-level idiotic.

  I managed to move my lips, mouthing his name against the skin of his throat.

  Luc shifted, drawing back until an opening formed between our chests and cool air glided into the space. “Evie?” A moment later, I felt his hand leave my back to come to rest against my cheek. “Have you come back to me?”

  Come back from where? I’d been sleeping and dreaming some weird dreams—dreams that felt like memories—but now I was worried. It wasn’t just the fact my eyes felt glued shut and my limbs useless, but now I remembered hearing his voice while I slept. He’d been concerned then, and now? He sounded desperate.

  And Luc never sounded desperate.

  I needed to wake up and figure out what the hell was going on. I hated how Luc sounded. I needed to do more than flex my stupid foot.

  Luc was incredibly still for several moments, and then he shuddered. “It’s okay.” His thumb dragged over the line of my jaw, the caress a brand on my skin. “I’m here waiting for you, but, Peaches, please don’t take too much longer. I miss you.”

  Pressure clamped down on my chest as I thought, I miss you, too.

  His hand jerked against my cheek, and I felt him move again as if he were half sitting up. “Evie?”

  Trying and failing again to respond, I was starting to drown in frustration. Why was everything so hard?

  “God,” he said in a rough exhale. “I want to hear your voice so badly that I’m imagining it in my head. I’m losing my mind.”

  I wanted him to know I was okay. Well, sort of okay. This whole not-waking-up thing probably spelled trouble, but I was fine. I’d just been sleeping—

  Wait.

  Memories were slow to form. I didn’t just fall asleep. I’d been with Grayson while waiting to hear about Kat and her—oh my God, did Kat have her baby? Was she all right? Okay. I needed to be able to wake up to find out the answer to that, so baby steps. I’d felt dizzy, and I’d seen weird rainbows around Grayson, and then I didn’t remember anything else. Obviously, I’d passed out. Since I wasn’t exactly human, I didn’t think I could get migraines or seizures.

  Something happened.

  So maybe I was a little comatose? Holy shit, did I have that locked-in disease I’d seen in a Netflix documentary? Oh my God, what if—

  “What if you wake up and you’ve forgotten yourself all over again?” His words were just a murmur, but they knocked me out of my panicky downward spiral. “What if you’ve forgotten me again? That’s all I keep thinking about. That all of this? All the crazy, all the unknown, and all the terrible things that have gone down? That it was still too damn good to be true, because we knew each other. We had each other,” he continued in a whisper, breaking my heart in ways I didn’t even know were possible. “We were finally together.”

  Emotion welled in my chest. The back of my eyes burned as he pulled my heart all over the place, twisting it into mushy knots.

  “But even if you wake up and you don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am, it’ll be okay. I’ll be here, and I’ll help you remember.” His lips brushed my forehead. “I’ve got enough love for you that I’m overflowing with it. It’ll be more than enough if you wake up and see me as a stranger.” Luc’s next breath sounded as ragged as my heart felt. “No matter how you come back to me, as Evie or as Nadia or someone else, I’ll still love you like I do now, like I did yesterday and the day before, and that’ll be enough.”

  I’ll still love you.

  Even though there wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that Luc loved me, the shock of hearing him say it was like touching a live wire. His actions from the first time I’d met him as Evie screamed those words even if he’d never spoken them, and actions carried so much more weight than pretty words.

  Within a few heartbeats, his words were tattooed on my skin, flowed through my veins, and etched into my bones. They’d forever be there, no matter what, that I was sure of.

  A tiny, nameless muscle twitched along my pointer finger. It was such a minuscule movement that it went unnoticed by Luc, but that frustration in me became a fire that forged steely determination. I pushed past the heavy fatigue.

  “It’s okay,” he repeated, his voice weary and gruff with exhaustion as he settled back beside me. “It’ll be okay.”

  But it wasn’t.

  Not when he sounded like this. I wanted to make him better. I wanted to remove the weariness and concern in his voice and his thoughts. I wanted him to stop hurting and for him to laugh and to feel the tension seep from his muscles. I wanted him to tell me more stupid pickup lines. And I wanted to see how his lips moved when he said he loved me.

  A lot had been taken from us. Memories, people we cared about, and actual years’ worth of time, and I’d be damned if we lost any more seconds or minutes. Luc would do anything for me—he’d done just about anything for me, and the least I could do was open my eyes and speak, dammit.

  The burst of anger was fuel for my determination, and when I took my next breath, it was stronger, deeper.

  I opened my eyes.

  And found that I was face-to-face with Luc.

  Everything in me seized as I stared at him, not seeing his features at first. Instead, I saw a strange display of colors, a swirling transparent whirl of white and deep violet light that seemed to dance around his face and shoulders before fading out.

  Then it was as if I were seeing him for the first time, in vivid, striking clarity. The tumble of locks against his forehead was a mix of gold, red, and brown, as if each strand had been hand-painted. His brows were a strong slash, a slightly deeper brown against skin that held a warm, golden undertone. Those lashes truly were an enviable thick fringe, like I’d remembered, but under his closed eyes were shadows that hadn’t been there before. My heart twisted once more, knowing that worry and fear had put those dark smudges there.

  He had what Heidi called a beauty mark, a faint brown speck under the center of his bottom lip. How had I not noticed that before? Nor had I noticed how defined his Cupid’s bow was until now.

  I blinked slowly, and the strange array of lights didn’t return, but his eyes remained closed. I knew he wasn’t asleep. Not when he still cradled my cheek and his thumb traced idle circles along my cheek.

  My heart started thumping heavily as I forced my lips to move again. “Luc.”

  His eyes flew open, and his thumb stilled at the hoarse, low sound of my voice. Deep, brilliant violet eyes locked with mine. “Evie?”

  Taking a deep breath as I held his gaze, I told him what I knew he needed to hear even if I didn’t fully understand it. “I’m still here.”

  He didn’t move or speak.

  Neither did I.

  And then he did move. He jerked halfway up, and then his face was right in front of mine. I thought he might kiss me, but his mouth halted mere inches from mine. His hand trembled against my cheek, and several long moments passed before he said, “Peaches, I’ve
been waiting for you.”

  Such simple words but so incredibly powerful. “I’ve…” I cleared my scratchy throat. “I’ve just been sleeping.”

  “Just been sleeping?” He let out a shaky laugh full of relief. “You’ve been just asleep for nearly four days.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. “Four days?”

  “Yeah.” His wide eyes searched mine. “Evie, you’ve been gone for four days.”

  I stared at him, unsure how to process that news. Only one thing came to mind. I hadn’t brushed my teeth in four days? “Thank God you didn’t just kiss me,” I blurted out.

  His brows climbed.

  Wait. That meant I also hadn’t showered in four days, and I did not have the kind of hair that looked or felt like anything other than a grease slick after that many days. His hands had been all up in that. “I must look like a mess. Smell like one, too.”

  Luc stared at me, and I had never seen him like that, as if he didn’t know what to say.

  “What?” I rasped.

  “You’ve been unconscious for four days and you’re worried about me kissing you?” He sounded utterly dumbfounded.

  “But that means I haven’t brushed my teeth or bathed in four days,” I pointed out.

  “God.” He laughed again, and this time it was even realer and more relieved. “Evie. I don’t know if I should yell at you or hug you.”

  “Hug me?” I suggested.

  Luc leaned in, slipping his hand from my cheek to my back, and that hand still shook as he tightened his arm around me and pressed his forehead against mine. He was rattled, and that was big. “I don’t care how you look or if you’ve brushed your teeth or showered. You’re still the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen. I would kiss you right now, but as much as I want to prove that to you, I need to get the doc in here to see you.”

  “You always say the right things,” I murmured, uncurling my fingers and pressing them against his chest.

  He shook his head as he stared down at me. “No, I don’t. There’s a lot wrong in a lot of things I say.”

  I started to argue, but Luc pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. “I’m going to get the doctor.”