A Beautiful Dark

play you’ve never even heard of. I balled my fists tightly behind my back. What was it that always made the strange things happen? When I was emotional, or exposed to the elements, or near electricity . . .
    I closed my eyes and tried to focus what energy I had. The rush of wind in the sky around me. A bird chirping. Asher’s spicy scent curling through me from across the clearing. How warm and safe he made me feel. Devin, who I would never understand.
    “Your powers have emerged.” Oriax’s voice echoed from the other side of my closed eyes. “They’re more than we’d ever imagined.”
    My eyes flew open in time to catch Asher and Devin exchanging uneasy glances.
    “Light and Dark, in small ways and large,” said Astaroth. “In many ways, combined even. But dangerous, yes.” He picked up a rock off the ground and tossed it in the air. When he caught it again, he looked me square in the eye. “So very dangerous to us all.”
    “To some ,” Oriax said with a look toward Astaroth, the excitement in his voice growing. He turned back toward me. “Your other ability, the whole reason we have our messengers watching you . . .”
    What? What whole reason? Wasn’t it to see what kind of powers I had? I looked wildly to Asher, to Devin, but they were avoiding eye contact. I knew they’d been hiding something, that they’d been vague about the parameters of their mission. What was it?
    “Yes, your . . . ability,” Astaroth said with preternatural calm. “Your ability to obstruct the one thing we hold above all else. But what to do with such a dangerous girl? What to do, indeed.”
    “What ability?” I cried, whipping around to look at Raven.
    “Skye,” Asher jumped in.
    “Silence!” Astaroth commanded. “Have you no control over your Rebels, Oriax?”
    Asher stepped back, his head down. It was the strangest thing, to see him so submissive.
    Oriax seemed nervous. “You know what must come now, Skye, don’t you?”
    “I think,” Astaroth said in a booming voice, “before anything else, we must have you choose. You must give your power over to one side and one side alone.”
    Raven smirked from the side of the clearing.
    She’d been the one to tell them to interfere. After my flash at the hospital parking lot. But what had that been? And how did that mean I was dangerous?
    One side alone.
    Alone.
    Why did that word continue to bother me?
    “You may return to the Order now, Raven,” Astaroth commanded. “You have accomplished your mission here.”
    “But—”
    He gave her a look that would have ignited her into flames if he’d possessed the earthly powers. Lucky for her, he didn’t.
    She bowed submissively. “Yes, sir.”
    As I watched her soar gracefully over the treetops, I couldn’t help but think that sometimes beauty camouflaged the ugliest creatures.
    “Well, Skye?” the Rebel Elder said, cutting into my thoughts. “What will you choose? Will you align yourself with those who believe in free will? Or”—he gestured to Astaroth and Devin—“with those to whom humans are mere puppets?”
    “We keep the world in harmony,” Astaroth said. “Without us, the Rebellion would destroy humanity with chaos. You know which you must choose, Skye. Choose. ”
    The Order had been trying to manipulate the events in my life to get us to this point. But why hadn’t the Rebellion prevented this moment from happening? My mind scrolled back through memories, through snippets of words, clips of my life, like a movie reel.
    Not a scratch on you.
    Gurneys, everywhere.
    Stay with me, Skye. Come on. Stay with me, girl.
    The Order had been capable of crashing Cassie’s car.
    She’s blurring your destiny.
    And they crashed my parents’ car, too.
    “Mom!” I screamed. “Dad!”
    They were responsible for my parents’ deaths.
    “You’re alone now, Skye.”
    And they had wanted me dead, too. But what about now? What did they want from me now? Could I trust them?
    Raven is dangerous, Skye. If she’s here, something bad is up.
    Could I trust either side? Did the Rebellion want me for its own reasons? What was it that Raven had said at the hospital?
    You are dangerous! They were right!
    And the only reason I was still alive was because the Rebellion interfered to save me. Asher was on their side. But I knew somehow that it didn’t mean what I’d thought it meant. They’d wanted to save me because they could use my powers. The ability they were talking about? It was my ability to