Light

by Adrienne Woods

  “Can you get up? You still need to transform back. You can’t fight at this ridiculous size.”

  I tried but the minute I put weight on my ankle, my entire body gave in and I landed flat on my butt again.

  “Here.” She held out her hand and pulled me up with one pull. I thought about getting big again. It was hard not knowing how big all the objects should have been but it did the trick. Three shifts and I was back to my original size. The pain was ten times worse but Margot didn’t waste any time. She’d already started to punch in some numbers to open Selene’s safe.

  I looked toward the passage that Shades had taken. I hoped he was safe and for some idiotic reason, I didn’t want to imagine what this life would be like without my talking cat.

  A whooshing sound emerged from the vault and the door opened slightly.

  Margot had to put her back into it, to open the door and then she flew backwards as a bright light hit her straight in the chest.

  Her body hit the wall and she landed on her stomach.

  I had no choice but to hop on one foot and hide behind the door.

  I didn’t know who was inside that safe. But I knew it was someone that had knowledge about the Orb, just like Leigh had discovered. Someone that was close to Selene. Dingle’s face still entered my mind and sure as hell as we stood there he came strutting out of the vault.

  Quickly I conjured my sand and it glowed a bright gold, just like my father’s.

  He saw Margot against the wall and turned around just as I released the sand.

  I watched him fly through the air and hit the same wall Margot had a couple of minutes ago.

  As I stood over him, I heard a cough from behind the vault door and found Fox locked in a fetal position on the floor.

  She was hurt, had blood on her lips and was coughing up more.

  “Chastity, wait.” Dingle had gotten up and Fox let her sand flow freely. Dingle’s mouth locked up and he began mumbling frantically.

  I was beyond mad. Mad at Leigh for not seeing what I had, mad at what he had done to Margot, mad that he’d found a way to stay here in Revera, when my mother would never be able to. I was furious at everything and that I’d almost turned Shadow Caster myself in order to save Revera.

  Fox crouched down next to Margot.

  “Is she okay?”

  Fox nodded. “She’ll be fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “I saw how they took Selene, and found the scumbag inside her room. Pushing buttons on the wall.”

  Dingle grunted again.

  “Oh give it a rest,” Fox said. “There’s no way Selene is going to believe you this time.” She hit him with her golden sand and his body collapsed again next to Margot’s.

  “Was it him that stole Margot’s pendant?”

  Fox nodded.

  “He also let the Shadow Casters in to Revera.”

  I jumped up and looked back at the cathedral. The light was still fading.

  “I don’t understand.” If the twin Orb was safe from Shadow Casters then why was the light still growing dimmer by the second?

  “Chas, we have to find the twin Orb now or we can forget about saving Revera.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said and took Fox’s arm, hopping toward the vault.

  Then it hit me. She just said what Leigh had said.

  I stopped and Fox stared at me. “Chas, are you okay, are you hurt?”

  I looked over at Dingle’s form, lying lifeless close to Margot. It wasn’t Dingle, it was someone else.

  Other images filled my mind. The old man’s death. The way he looked at me when he said the light has shadows. The way he looked at Fox a second before. Then he’d died.

  “He was warning me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You killed him, because he knew.”

  “What are you talking about, Chastity?”

  “He said the light has shadows. He was talking about you and you knew that. You killed that old man.” I looked at Dingle again. “He was here to stop you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nobody knew about the twin Orb except Lord Crane.”

  Fox looked at me, let out a breath and closed her eyes. Realization that she had been caught red-handed washed over her body.

  “Is it too late to make a deal with you?” She spoke in a voice that made my skin crawl.

  “How could you? I trusted you. It was you that took Margot’s pendant, wasn’t it? And you let me take the blame for it.”

  “Think Chastity. I told her it wasn’t you. I had no choice, that pendant would’ve shown her that a Shadow Caster was near.”

  “You are not a Shadow Caster, Fox.”

  “I know. I didn’t want it to end this way.”

  “Yet, here you are.”

  She started to laugh and sucked her lips, looking at me again.

  I just shook my head. How could she do this?

  “The question is, how did you know about the twin Orb, Chas?”

  “Leigh told me.”

  “Leigh….that idiot. Well I’m sure he won’t be a thorn in our boots anymore.”

  “Tom and John are with you on this?” I had to know.

  “No, they are all for the greater good. Tried to explain why I’d done it, but they didn’t want to listen.”

  I gasped. “What did you do, Fox?”

  “I silenced them. Forever.”

  “They were a part of your team!”

  “No Chastity, they left me to the dogs. If I didn’t make a deal with them, they would’ve killed me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The last mission, the one where I lost my rank. We were overpowered by Shadow Casters and I did what I thought anyone in my position would do. But they just left me. Nobody even tried to send out a search party, Chas. Nobody. It was as if I was replaceable. Not worth saving. I had to make a deal with Crane, told him that I would become whatever he needed. He set me free, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. When I got back, Selene didn’t trust me anymore. After everything I’d done for her. That was how she betrayed me. Gave my team to that idiot of a man with his stupid owl.

  Henry. My heart contracted as I thought about him. Had she killed him too?

  “She didn’t believe that I’d escaped with my life after Tom told her how many Casters we were fighting against. Had me locked up for observation to make sure my sand was still light. It was, brighter than before, which only helped me gain her trust again.”

  She gave a sweet smile.

  “Still you were safe, why didn’t you just stop?”

  “I never wanted to be a Caster, Chas. They made me forget about all the heartache they’d caused me when they brought me here, made me start loving everything I stood for. Well that couple of weeks in the Oblivion made me remember all that pain they’d caused.” She took a couple of steps toward me. “You want to know why I liked you so much? We were so much alike, you and I. I used to live in the Domain too. Grew up there. My mom was the Caster, my father the Nomad. When she had me, she didn’t want this life for me, so she gave me to my dad. We had everything. A beautiful home on almost every continent. I was normal, rode horses, swam in the bluest oceans. Anything I could possibly want, I got it. Then on my sixteenth birthday, a guy wanted to have sex with me. I didn’t, so he thought he could just take it, that was when my sand came and he screamed. The next thing I knew Seekers showed up on my doorstep forcing my father to give me up and then they just erased me from his memory. I had no choice but to go with them. They had no right to do that to me. The deal the Shadow Casters made with me is everything I’ve ever wanted. They’ll reverse everything. Make me human again so that I can go back home.”

  “You can’t. Nobody will see you.”

  “They can reverse it, Chas. We could live among humans like normal people. Have a good life without these psychos intervening. Don’t you want to go back home?”

  “No, I am home, remember? That’s wha
t you said.”

  Her lips got thinner and thinner and her blue eyes turned darker. Her nostrils flared slightly. “Then you give me no choice, but to destroy you, Chas.”

  The sand in her hands appeared. It was bright, like my father’s. I knew I didn’t have the experience to fight Fox. She was a Level Four Caster and I knew I would die.

  I blocked my face with my arms and waited for her sand to blow me apart, but it never came.

  Did she have second thoughts?

  When I opened my eyes I was surrounded by dark sand. It protected me and I could see light trying to seep through.

  When the light stopped, the dark faded slowly.

  Fox just stared at me, she was drained, and heaving like she’d just run a hundred meters.

  “What did you just do?” she asked through deep breaths. She looked at her hands again. Nothing came. “What did you do to me?” she yelled.

  I had no idea, but the time had finally come. “I have a secret of my own, you know.”

  She squinted and rested with her hands on her knees. “The woman that kidnapped me. She didn’t. She was my mother.”

  “Your mother?” She stared at the carpet, probably reliving a memory that was inside her mind somewhere.

  “You wondered why she disappeared and why she suddenly showed up with me. They wanted to take me away, but she had other plans.”

  “She’s your mother, which means Crane is your grandfather.” Her face lit up again as if she’d just found a huge bargain. “I can take you to him. He would be so happy to have you, Chas.”

  “You freak. I would rather die than spend the rest of my life in the Oblivion. You only think about yourself, Fox. What about the millions of kids that will have to live in the Oblivion once Revera is destroyed? What about Grissy?” I huffed. “Guess you don’t really care about her.”

  “Chas, the Shadow Casters aren’t what you think they are. They have no choice about living in the Oblivion. They only want things to be equal.”

  “Bullshit. That’s what they want you to believe.”

  “It’s not. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “You would say anything to get yourself out of this one. Like you said, you had everything, and you will do anything to get it back. You should’ve never taken me from my mother.”

  My sand flew, this time it was dark and I was angry. I hit Fox in the chest and she flew against the wall, landing on the other side of Margot.

  I fell down on my knees and started to cry as everything just overwhelmed me.

  A huge cracking sound coming from the cathedral’s tower made me stop. I got up and went to investigate.

  The light was almost gone.

  I looked back at Fox again and I had to tie her up, if she woke up…

  I hopped to the drawers, and searched like hell.. There was nothing.

  Then, my eyes landed on the tie backs that held beautiful draped curtains back. I took both and rushed over to Fox, tying her hands behind her back. I pulled at her feet and tied them together too, attaching them to her hands with the second rope.

  When I was sure that she wouldn’t get out the ropes, I hopped on one leg to Selene’s vault and locked myself inside.

  Margot was the only one who knew the code and she would let me out, even if it was to hand me over to Selene once Revera and the Virtual Realm were safe.

  The lights flickered again and it turned darker.

  I started to search for the pendant. Selene used to carry it with her and I looked in the spots Fox hadn’t searched yet.

  I found it in one of her jewelry boxes. This meant that Fox had no idea what it looked like.

  It was a beautiful pendant, the twin Orb was dark blue and resembled a round pearl.

  A stone angel with long hair held it in her hands.

  I took it out of her grip and held it inside my own palms.

  Happy thoughts, Chas.

  I closed my eyes.

  The first memory that jumped into my head was my mother’s face. We were laughing, like we used to and I could speak to her about anything. It got replaced with a bit of dark, anger. I was angry at her for not telling me what I was. For her ending up leaving me, even if she had no choice.

  Next my friendship I’d had with Clare, both of them. The time she’d been my best friend and the time she was upset with me, even if it wasn’t my fault. I thought about Shades, when I was still under the impression she was a girl, and the day I discovered she was actually Mr. Grey and that she was indeed male. That he never tried to tell me the truth.

  Natalie came next and the relationship she shared with her parrot. Speaking to him, laughing at his silent jokes. It would be a reunion that I wished I would be able to see and how she looked at me when Margot yell that I was a Shadow Caster.

  Max and Margot jumped in there too. Even though I thought Max’s friendship came first, and the fact that he wanted to fight, even though he was broken, then the dark came, he was a douchebag for not telling me the truth a couple of months ago, and for beating me up.

  Leigh was last. I wouldn’t be able to live in a world where he wasn’t. Whether that world was Revera or the Oblivion, I didn’t care. I had to save him, and the dark part was that he wasn’t real. He was a character in a very realistic game.

  Then my mind did something on its own, it was as if I succeeded and a memory of what was going to happen, or what would’ve happened, flashed through my mind.

  It was the memory of my dream with me as an adult walking hand in hand with someone filled my head again.

  It had been a winter’s evening. I wore a coat and I laughed. The hand in mine was warm. This time I looked up and smiled in awe as I saw the face of the person that would treasure me the way my father had treasured my mother, even if she wasn’t the right one for him. He loved her nonetheless and couldn’t live his life without her.

  I knew now what she’d felt – to love someone that you shouldn’t be with – as I was staring at Leigh, watching his lips moving as he spoke to me. I didn’t hear what he said, but I knew he loved me. I could feel that.

  My hands burned and I opened my eyes. A bright light—even brighter than the one Fox carried in her hands when she wanted to kill me, even brighter than Leigh’s—shone from my hands.

  I flew backwards in the air and hit the wall of the vault hard before I crashed to the floor.

  My ears rang loudly and images of fire and burning ashes fell onto the floor. Then everything blurred out and my world went dark.

  THE RINGING FINALLY STOPPED BUT I STRUGGLED

  to open my eyes. When they finally opened I was staring at a ceiling with lights flashing by.

  The air that filled my lungs burned so much that I didn’t want to breathe.

  People wearing masks hovered over me and I realized where I was. I was at the hospital and I knew my mother was going to lose her mind.

  I tried to remember what Clare had done this time to make me end up in the hospital, but nothing came. I was so tired and I closed my eyes again.

  Leigh…it was the last thing that entered my mind before the darkness consumed me again.

  “SHE’S WAKING UP?” I HEARD A FAMILIAR VOICE.

  I opened my eyes and found a grumpy-looking face inches from my own. “Welcome back, Chas.”

  I lifted up my hand and scratched his ears softly.

  Natalie slept in the chair next to my bed with Charlie on her shoulder.

  I blinked around the room suddenly confused. Damn it! I was color-blind again. It was as if I was stuffed inside an old black and white TV once again and all the beautiful color I had just started to love had been sucked away.

  I felt like crying, suddenly remembering that I would not see my mom barge through the hospital door demanding the doctors tell her what happened.

  I would never see her again, or maybe I would, but she wouldn’t see me.

  I was sure that by now Selene would know what I was and that she would wait until I was better to chuck my ass into the Obliv
ion.

  To be honest I didn’t care as I had one thing on my mind, and it was something I had to know immediately.

  I cleared my throat and Natalie jumped in her chair. Charlie fell off her shoulder and his wings flapped as he landed on the floor gracefully.

  “You okay?” She came closer and I nodded.

  “Can I have some water please?”

  “Yes, of course.” She poured a glass half full and handed it to me. “Here.”

  I shifted myself upright with my arms. She kept the glass close to my mouth so I could take a couple of sips and when I’d had enough she put it back on the table.

  “Did I save Revera?”

  She nodded with a soft smile, but it disappeared. I could feel my heart breaking as I knew what that meant. I hadn’t saved the Virtual Realm in time.

  “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “I’m so sorry Chas,” she said softly. “I remember telling the kids not to be afraid, that there was a loophole. Even Leigh told them that. He didn’t show any fear– not even for a second. Then it came. It hurt like hell and I could hear all of our screams. When I opened my eyes, we were back in Revera. Max is fine, the kids are fine too. Margot woke up yesterday. She said that Dingle hit her with his sand.”

  “It wasn’t Dingle.”

  “Told you it wasn’t him,” Shades said.

  “It was Fox.”

  “Yes, Dingle told us that, but not everything. What happened, Chas?”

  “It’s a long story and from that question something tells me that she got away.”

  She shook her head. “She’s dead Chas.”

  I gasped. My heart stopped beating for a few seconds.

  “Don’t you dare feel bad. Fox chose to betray us all. If you didn’t …Revera would’ve been lost. We owe you our lives for what you did.”

  I killed Fox. And I killed Leigh.

  The tears started to flow. I couldn’t hide it anymore and I didn’t care if they were a sign of weakness or not. I would never see Leigh again. He was gone and I killed Fox, even if she turned out to be the bad guy, I killed her..

  Natalie folded her arms around me. “It’s going to be okay, Chas. When they found you inside Selene’s vault, your sand was gold again. There is no trace of you being a Shadow Caster. Max made Margot promise to not say anything, she’s agreed to it. You can stay in Revera. Think of it as your reward for saving us.”