A Fractured Light (Beautiful Dark)

themselves through my hair. His lips were dry from the sun and wind but were warm against mine. They tasted salty, from my tears and maybe his, and I wanted more. I wanted as much of him as I could have.
    And then a memory coursed through me.
    He’d been carrying me. Cold feathers brushing my cheek and hair. My eyes were closed, but I could feel the wind rushing past me and smell the winter sky.
    His hands were fire on my neck, trailing down my body, finding their way over my jeans and under my sweater. I pulled him even closer to me, tangling him up in the quilt. My limbs were still stiff from my being asleep for so long, but I wasn’t in pain anymore. I was alive.
    “Stay with me, Skye.” As we flew higher, he grasped me tightly in one arm and pressed a hand over my wound with the other. “Don’t die. You can’t die. Not yet.”
    Asher’s fingers were searing hot against my skin, and the soft fabric of his thermal shirt grazed my stomach as he drew my body closer to his. He rolled on top of me and the weight of him felt comforting, like gravity was pulling me back down to Earth.
    I couldn’t break my lips from his. My fingers trailed against his neck and over the rough edges of his jawline. He’d saved my life; he must have. The heat running through my veins threatened to consume me until I combusted in a pop of spark and ash. We were together now. There was nothing standing in our way anymore.
    The air brushing past us had smelled like pine needles and clouds, and something else. Something black and acrid.
    Smoke.
    “Skye!” Asher cried suddenly, pulling away from me sharply and batting at my legs with the quilt. I looked down and drew in a breath. The hems of my jeans were smoking, bursting into tiny flames.
    Flames.
    Asher whipped the blanket out from the tangle at my feet and smothered the fire. But I couldn’t feel anything. I could only sit there, bolt upright, numb, staring at him as he made sure the last of the flames were out. Ardith had been right—my powers were unstable. I was dangerous.
    My heart was pounding furiously. And not because of what had just happened.
    But because of what I suddenly remembered.
    In the clearing far below me, a wall of fire rose from where I’d fallen. A black spiral of smoke curled into the air.
    “Skye, are you okay?” Asher was right next to me, but his voice came from a million miles away as my heart lurched. “The fire’s out,” he said. “It’s okay. Are you hurt?”
    “Skye!” a voice called. “I have to warn you!”
    “Hurt?” I asked, as if searching for the meaning of the word.
    Warn me? I stood there, immobile, rooted to the ground like a tree. “About what?”
    “From the fire,” said Asher, still trying to catch his breath. “Your powers are still as out of control as ever, it looks like.” He paused to grin devilishly. “Was it because of me?”
    A cold blade, icy and sharp, plunged through my stomach.
    My dream. The flash of metal on the nightstand. The blood blooming out across my shirt like a watercolor rose.
    “Asher,” I gasped, reaching for my stomach. He looked alarmed.
    “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    I was surprised at how sudden the pain was when it came on.
    “I remember. I remember it all.”
    “Skye, calm down,” Asher urged. His eyes searched mine. “You don’t want to get too agitated. We have no idea what could happen. What you could do .”
    But I ignored him. I remembered now. And the truth was even more terrifying than I could imagine.
    “It was Devin,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”
     

Chapter 3
    T he little room in the cabin in the woods was suddenly much too warm, and I could feel a faint rumbling beneath us as I struggled to steady my breathing. Asher noticed, too. “Shh,” he said, like I was some wild animal who needed to be soothed. “Stay calm. You’re okay, remember? You’re safe. You don’t want to cause anything else to happen.”
    Eyeing him, I felt around my midsection for a wound where Devin had stabbed me. But there was none. No bandages or tenderness. I lifted my sweater a few inches and looked down. The skin on my stomach was smooth. It looked the same way it always had. There was no evidence that I’d been stabbed at all.
    “He did—didn’t he? I remember . . .” I winced and brought my sweater back down. “He stabbed me.” I whispered the words, afraid, however irrationally, that saying them out loud could somehow make it happen again. “He stared me right