by Frankie Rose
“Hey, you.”
The quiet voice behind me made me jump but Daniel didn’t notice. He was still locked in argument with Jacob. I spun around and found Kayden standing right behind me, so close I could smell the distinctive chemical bite of the five different colors of paint sprayed across his t-shirt. It was even dried in his pale hair.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
Kayden gave me a beatific grin and held out his hand. “Here to whisk you away, Madame. This situation looks decidedly dangerous, and we wouldn’t want any harm coming to you, now, would we?”
“I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to kill Daniel. I have to stay and help him. Why can’t they see you?”
The blond boy laughed and withdrew his outstretched hand. “Because I’m glamored. They can’t see me talking to you. They can’t see you talking to me. To them, you look like you’re staring with your mouth open, which I thought was an appropriately human reaction to what’s happening right now. They won’t notice for a few more moments. Plenty of time to make our getaway.”
“I told you. I’m not going anywhere. Not without Daniel, anyway.”
Kayden sucked his teeth. “That’s going to be tricky. The Quorum aren’t very happy with your boyfriend. He was supposed to end his life and give back all of his power to Aldan so that the prophecy could be fulfilled. You can imagine how it looks now that Aldan’s dead and Daniel’s wandering around toting a fully loaded talisman. They think he broke his oath. That’s a pretty serious infraction in their eyes, especially when there was blood involved. Daniel’s a marked man. Might be better to let him fight his way out of here. With you gone, he could do it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Daniel did give back all of his power. Aldan tricked him. It wasn’t his fault, Kayden.”
The boy shrugged.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” I hissed. “You’ve hated Daniel for the last fifty years. You couldn’t care less that he’s going to die. You make me sick.”
Kayden, through his tan, paled. “I don’t hate Daniel.”
“Then why have you been fighting with him all this time?”
A torn look battled its way across his face. He shoved his hands into his pockets. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel turn to look at me, and a strange expression passed over his face.
“Daniel and I are friends,” Kayden said. “We had a falling out a while back. This is just a flash in the pan. If you had eternity to work through your disagreements with other people, fifty years might not seem like such a long time to you, either.”
I fixed Kayden with an accusing glare. “Daniel doesn’t have eternity. He has about five seconds before the Reavers start dismantling him piece by piece. And you refuse to help him. Just tell me one thing, Kayden, before you go. Did he really make that deal with the Quorum? Did they really promise to try and find another way to end this?”
He didn’t reply immediately. The crowd around us was reacting to something happening on the dais, and my attention flickered to the three men on the judgment seats. Tobin was on his feet, descending the steps towards us, and Daniel was looking at me. Really looking at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Daniel knows you’re glamored. I’m not sure about your grandfather.”
“Don’t! Don’t call him that. Just answer the question and leave.”
It was as though Kayden didn’t know how to keep emotions from his face. The hurt that appeared in his eyes was shocking. “Yes,” he said. “The Quorum did make that deal with Daniel. But—”
“But what?”
“You have to be very specific when you agree to something with the Quorum. Emissary Nevoi did swear to try and find another way to fulfill the prophecy, but she didn’t promise to use the alternative solution. Having Daniel give himself over to Aldan, and then having Aldan drain the life from you offered a rather convenient solution to two imbalances in the natural order of things. Daniel was never supposed to exist, and you…you aren’t normal. If they used you to kill the Reavers, what would they have done with you then?”
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t react. Tobin had almost reached Daniel, who was moving to put himself between me and the other man.
“Kayden,” I growled, “Tell me. If there’s another way to stop them, tell me now. If you truly believe you’re Daniel’s friend, then you have to help him. You have to help me.”
Tobin was approaching Daniel with a satisfied smirk, while Daniel met his gaze. There was no fear in his eyes but I felt differently. I cried out as the slight man reached, his hands swathed in that cold, cold flame, and grabbed hold of Daniel’s head. Daniel crumpled to his knees in an instant.
“Kayden!” I screamed. The crowd leapt into a furor, the people surrounding us struggling to get away from what was about to happen. I pushed down the hysterical urge to throw myself at Tobin and turned back to the paint-splattered boy. I was about to scream at him again, but I didn’t have time. He reached out and touched me on my forehead. The slight pressure of his fingertip was less than a gentle kiss, but it felt like being smashed in the head with a bowling ball.
There were images, voices, all kinds of languages charging through my mind, and yet I understood them all, saw them all at once. I knew everything Kayden knew, knew everything there was to know about the prophecy. I knew what I had to do.
“STOP!” My shout cut over the crowd’s panicked cries.
Daniel was still on his knees, his body bowed exactly like back in the hangar with Aldan, but now the light was pulsing out of him and up through Tobin’s arm. Tobin’s head was thrown back like a sickening declaration of victory. Only Elliot and Jacob heard me cry.
“Stay back!” Jacob yelled. He remained seated, as though I didn’t pose enough of a threat for him to rise. Elliot wasn’t even looking at me. He was watching with a look of resentment as Tobin pulled all the power out of Daniel.
“Are you just going to let him take it all?” I shouted at my father. “Why does he get all the power? Shouldn’t you get a share of it, too?”
Elliot cast me a bitter look but quickly turned back to watch Tobin. Trying to rile him had been worth a shot, but I was clearly going to have to take matters into my own hands. I raced forward, pushing past bodies as they tried to move the other way. I was about to reach Tobin when I found myself lying out flat on my back, wheezing, as though I’d run straight into a brick wall.
Kayden stood in front of me. If he had seemed torn about helping before, he’d definitely made up his mind now. A grim determination was set on his face, and his hands were bathed in a golden light. It was the same color as his pale hair, and it flared into an unbelievable brightness as he struck out at Tobin. The light formed into the shape of a long, brilliant sword that hurtled through the air and slammed into Tobin’s body. As it made contact, Kayden’s t-shirt ignited, and black marks began to appear around his neck and shoulder blades. Smoke curled away from the thin material to reveal his tattoo—the one that I had seen chaining his collar bone—burning brightly through the glyph-shaped holes in his scorched t-shirt.
Tobin flew back with the force of the strike and suddenly Kayden was nowhere to be seen.
“Daniel!” I ran to his side. His eyes were rolled back in his head and sweat was pouring off him. His hands were shaking, but he was slowly coming around.
“What happened? He was here, wasn’t he?”
“Who? Kayden? Yeah, he was here.”
Daniel blinked, getting to his feet. “He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have helped.”
I fought the urge to slap him. “He said he was your friend, Daniel. He wanted to help you.”
Daniel was deathly pale and there was a horrified look in his eyes. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand what he’s done.”
“Never mind that now,” I said. Tobin was stirring, and Elliot and Jacob had roused themselves from their surprise at Kayden’s attack. “He told me what I hav
e to do. I know how we can both survive.” I whispered just enough of what I had seen to fill him in on the plan, and he fixed me with a guarded look.
“Are you sure? Are you sure you can do this?”
“Am I sure I can go through some minor pain in order to save the life of the person I care most about in the world, as well as my own? Yes, I’m sure.” I saw the flash pass over Daniel’s face: a startled, burning look, and I realized what I had said. At least I hadn’t told him I was in love with him. I shrank back from the nightmare that would have been dealing with that revelation, and pulled on his arm. “Come on. We have to do this. Are you strong enough?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s roll.”
“That was remarkably stupid.” It was Tobin, right behind me. “What do you intend—” His sentence fell short.
There was no buildup this time. Daniel exploded.
His body bowed back, and the full force of his power erupted from his hands and chest. The arcs of lightning struck out, reaching Tobin first. He hurtled back through the air until he crashed into the wall at the other end of the room. The other forks of energy took their time in finding Elliot and Jacob, and the two men had scrambled to their feet and were making for the door by the time they found their mark. In an instant, they were pinned beside Tobin.
This is it, I told myself, feeling my heart race away. I stepped towards Daniel.
“Farley!” Oliver screamed, running towards me with the knife in his hand. “What are you doing? Come on, we should go now while we can!”
I squeezed his arm as he looked at me, confused, and gave him a small, regretful smile. “I think it would have been nice to have a brother, Oliver.”
He reached to grab hold of me but I jumped out of the way and rushed towards Daniel before Oliver could stop me. I had to do it now. I felt horrible for having lied to Daniel, but if I told him what Kayden had shown me, that this option gave me a chance of surviving, an imperceptibly small chance, then he would never have agreed. And it was the only way.
The Quorum, Aldan, my father—they were all right. To fulfill the prophecy, I would likely have to die. It just wasn’t going to be the way any of them had imagined.
Daniel’s head was thrown back and his eyes were closed tight, his whole body being torn under the strain of the power surging from him. He was in pain, and I wished in my heart that I knew he was coming out of this alive, even if I probably wasn’t.
There was no time to linger, though. Oliver rushed forward again, and I pushed all other thoughts out of my mind as I ran forward. At the last possible second I leapt. Oliver’s fingertips brushed the back of my shirt but it was too late—I was snatched into the stream of burning blue and white.
The impact was like when I had touched Aldan, but much, much worse. I’d never known there were so many different dimensions to pain. How it could fill you from head to toe and rip you apart until there was nothing left. How you could wish that you didn’t exist if only to escape from being you, the person whose soul was being torched. My body was ripped from the ground, and the lances of energy were striking me now, over and over again.
What Daniel had said was true. This energy really was made up of people. With each passing second, some new hurt rushed to consume me. Bitterness at a life ended too soon. Fear for loved ones long dead. Anger. Anger. Anger. But worse than that—loss. The light was filled with such an abundance of loss that I wondered how I would ever be able to breathe again under the crushing weight of it all. And I couldn’t. My chest remained paralyzed as all the horror and the pain poured through me. It ignited and burst out from my back in three fierce streams to strike out at the Reavers anew.
Daniel and Oliver were down there somewhere below me, but I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything but the brilliant, terrible light.
I could feel, though.
I was connected to Daniel. His soul and mine were twisted together in a way I couldn’t have ever imagined possible. He was burning, too. He was exhausted, clinging onto consciousness, yet he kept going, and I kept burning.
At the very back of my mind, I could sense the presence of the others, knowing that as the power passed through me and hit the Reavers, I was somehow connected to them, too. They were weak compared to this power. Their own energy was failing, their own light growing dimmer and dimmer with every whispering spirit that charged through me and fell upon them.
Through the disordered chaos of my mind, a hazy memory came creeping back to me. We were back in the silo and Daniel was showing me the distributor again, explaining how it worked. It was obvious now. That’s exactly what I was: a part of some greater machine, required for it to work properly. My body was focusing and directing Daniel’s energy, making it strong. Making it lethal.
The pain was endless, but as the seconds ticked by I somehow managed to accept it. It began to lessen, becoming a tangible part of me that I could control. It was a strange sensation, and I reveled in it as my life began to slip away. The light was washing me clean, and I wasn’t sad anymore.
It was a relief that this was the way I was going to die. I wasn’t going to be turned into a whyte, and I wasn’t going to have my life pulled out of me by my insane grandfather. I was just going to slowly slip away into the bright light. I let go and stopped trying to breathe. The power intensified and the pain picked up, but the rush of fear I felt only lasted a moment. In its place, a bottomless calm settled over me.
Daniel was stronger than me. He somehow knew I’d given myself over to the light, and I could feel his energy tugging at me, trying to pull me back, but it was useless. It was too bright. It had already taken hold. It was much easier to just stop fighting. The Reavers pinned to the wall behind me were close to death, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Only Daniel mattered. He was my last thought.
I just wish I could feel his arms around me…
And then the light went supernova.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Still Breathing
