Death Before Daylight (36 page)

“Would Robb die for him?”

Linda’s cheeks flushed. “What are you getting
at, Welborn?” Her gaze became a glare. “You can’t mess with
me.”

“I’m not trying to.” Even I wasn’t sure if it
was a lie. “I’m trying to help you two.”

“And in turn, we help you,” she spat.
“Right?”

She knew what I ultimately wanted, and I
wasn’t about to hide it. “It’s a way we can all survive.”

“Except Robb.”

I nodded.

She leapt to her feet. “Forget it.”

I grabbed her hand. “The Dark will take
lights,” my words rushed out of me. “Jessica is going to take over
anyway. Help her now, and she’ll help you more in the future—”

She yanked her hand out of my grasp. “Jess?”
Her tone was tight. “She’ll never accept her powers.”

“She will.”

“She didn’t.”

“You tried to force her,” I argued as I stood
up, but I kept my distance by leaning against the brick wall.

Linda’s eyes moved to my hands and arms—as if
she were waiting for an attack—and she stepped back before looking
at my face again. “She tried to kill herself instead of joining
us.”

“And then, you really wouldn’t have a single
leader.” Robb would’ve been dead, too. “That’s how your Light half
will die. Jessica is your only hope.”

Linda stopped moving away.

I shoved my hands in my pockets to assure her
I wouldn’t attack. “Don’t you see that Jessica has to live, no
matter what?” I chose my words carefully. “Whether I die or Darthon
dies, she has to take over the other side, and she will. She’s
prepared for it.”

Linda huffed. “So, let her take over the
Dark.”

“I can’t do that.”

Her right eyebrow lifted. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t believe Darthon will let the
Dark live,” my confession escaped me. “I don’t think he’ll let
Jessica live.”

“She has to—”

“Not after I’m dead,” I interrupted. “I know
how the rules change. I’ve seen it happen.” When the prophecy
failed, everything changed. We even had Jada. New shades meant a
new beginning, and it had already started a long time ago. “Her
life won’t be connected to his anymore. He’ll be able to kill her
without dying himself.” There would be no need for the weaknesses
to exist. “He’ll kill her for power.”

I expected Linda to argue, to pale, or react
with shock, but her frown was frozen. She already knew what I had
been thinking all along. Darthon didn’t want balance. He never
did.

I knew it when I heard how he treated Jessica
in the Light realm. Her life didn’t matter to him, not beyond
keeping himself alive. Once I was dead, she would be his next
target.

“The sects should’ve never fought for
themselves,” I continued when she was silent. “We should’ve been
fighting for one another this entire time, and I can’t take back
the past, but I can fight for the future, and—”

“Shut up, Welborn.”

My mouth snapped shut.

“Seriously. You’re a walking headache.” Her
fingers rubbed her forehead. “The Dark won’t let the Light live
either.”

“That’s not true.”

“What part of ‘shut up’ do you not
understand?”

The rebel inside of me always ignored the
rules. “The Dark proved they won’t destroy the Light,” I spoke
anyway.

Her sneer crinkled her nose. “How?”

“Jessica’s alive, isn’t she?” Even Linda knew
the Dark was aware of both of Jessica’s sides, but I hoped Linda
was oblivious about Ida. “What has the Light done to prove they’ll
keep the Dark alive?”

“Why should I care about the Dark?”

“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I’m asking
you to care about your own life.”

Linda’s head didn’t move, but her eyes met
mine from the corners. Her upper lip twitched.

“I care about your life,” I said, knowing it
was true. As little as I knew her, she had helped me. She had taken
the pain of the illusion off me, and by doing that, she had
protected my relationship with Jessica. Even if she didn’t admit
it, she had to have cared about me to do any of it. When she
started caring was the question, but if I had to guess, it was
during our time in the Light realm—it happened when she was
watching Darthon treat Jessica the way he had. Fighting for someone
so cavalier had to be impossible, but Linda never responded.

“The Dark will care about your life,” I
added. “Jessica, too.”

Linda’s hand finally dropped from her
forehead, but she didn’t look at me. “You trust her so much, and
you’ve only known her a year.”

“A year and two months.”

Her eyes met mine. “You can’t love that
quickly.”

“We have one word for love.” I smiled when I
thought of Jessica. “But we have no words for how it grows over
time.” Every moment we had meant more, and as time passed, each
moment grew into another. “Does your love for Darthon still
grow?”

Linda froze.

“I think you should consider that,” I said
and stepped away from the wall. It was time for me to leave. I had
done the last thing I needed to do before the Dark went into
battle, and now, all I had left to do was prepare to fight. This
time, I would win, and I wouldn’t hesitate, but I didn’t take two
steps before Linda grabbed my arm.

“Why?” She let me go almost as quickly as she
had touched me. “Why help me?”

Instead of facing her, I stared at the willow
tree I hadn’t sat under in weeks. “I learned one thing from Robb.”
The tree was the same place where I had almost died. “We were all
born into this.” I couldn’t help but remember all the times I spent
with Robb, too. The way our childhoods melted together was a cruel
reminder of our fate. “But we still have choices to make.”

I stepped away before I said anything else. I
couldn’t risk showing my emotions about Robb to her, the girl I was
trying to get on my side, the girl who was supposed to be on his
side. If she saw my face, she would know how I felt. In all of my
suffering, I had my friends and family, but Darthon only valued his
violence. Robb had been alone more than I had ever been, and I
couldn’t bring myself to tell her I needed him to be alone when he
died. It was a horrible decision, a selfish one, something I would
live with for the rest of my life, simply because I would live and
he would die, but I had no other choice to make. He had to die so I
could live, but—more importantly—he had to die so the Light and the
Dark could live in peace. Harmony would only come with
destruction.

“Not anymore.” Linda’s shout flew over
me.

I spun around, but kept walking backward,
away from her, toward my family. “What?”

“It stopped growing a long time ago,” she
shouted louder.

Her love for Darthon. It had stopped growing,
and in my mind, that meant she had stopped loving him.

“You’re going to have to prove that,” I
shouted back.

She did the last thing I expected her to do.
She jogged toward me, and she kept walking by my side as I
increased my speed. “Then, you’ll believe me when I tell you the
truth.” Her words came out as fast as our strides.

“Try me.”

“She went back today,” Linda’s voice dropped.
“Jessica is in the Light realm.”

48

“I knew you’d come back,” Darthon’s voice met
mine milliseconds after I transported into the realm. It wasn’t
difficult. In fact, it was easier than I had anticipated. All I had
to do was think about it, and I was there. Even then, I hadn’t
transformed. I had remained human, but Darthon wasn’t.

His golden hair was the first thing I saw,
but I forced myself to stare at the pits he had for eyes. “I’m sort
of predictable, aren’t I?”

His elongated arms folded in front of his
chest, but he towered over me. Every part of his stance told me
that he was expecting the unpredictable. Even he knew my arrival
wasn’t as simple as he wished.

I wasn’t on his side yet.

After all, I was remaining a human, and both
of my powers simmered deep inside of me. I had come for a reason,
though, and I wasn’t leaving without completing my last
mission.

“There’s something I have to know.”

“And what would that be?” His shoulder
pressed against the stone wall, and I searched for familiarity in
his movements. Would Zac lean, or would Robb? I thought both of
them would, but they should’ve been in school, too. If it came down
to it, Jonathon would be able to tell me who was missing that day,
and we would know. No matter what, I had to know for certain.

“Who are you?”

His lips stretched into a smile, but the
right corner twitched. “Why would I tell you that?”

“Eric would.”

Darthon’s mouth opened. Then, his lips
flipped into a grin. All of his teeth were spikes. “I’m not
Eric.”

Eric’s name on his lips caused my nerves to
race, but I curled my fingers into a fist. When I felt his
heartbeat in my palm, I could breathe again. “I know you’re Zac or
Robb.”

Darthon’s eyes slid over me. “And?” Not even
a denial.

“And you’ve wondered why I haven’t taken your
side,” I clarified. “Eric would sacrifice his identity for his
people.” I waited, and waited, and waited some more, but Darthon
didn’t budge.

“I will gladly tell you when you’re on our
side,” he spoke slowly enough that every word dragged out like a
sentence. “I would bet Eric didn’t even tell you his name in the
beginning.”

It was true. I had figured it out on my own,
over months of time spent together. With Darthon, I only had days.
Horrible, drowning days.

“Is that what you wanted?” Darthon asked as
he pushed himself off the wall. He took two steps toward me before
he stopped. “Is that all you want to know?”

“I want to know how to use my powers fully.”
I forced myself to stand my ground. I couldn’t step away from him.
I wouldn’t. Not until I got what I wanted. “I want to know
everything about the Light.”

“Both of those are pretty simple,” he stated.
As he walked, his back muscles shifted his shirt. “Come with
me.”

I followed him, but not for long. The entire
realm shifted, and the floor melted into wooden ground. Bookshelves
surrounded us, and every spine was marked with golden thread. The
titles glittered in the dim light. The dust made me sneeze. We were
in a library.

Darthon waved his hand over the nearest
shelf. “This is every text we’ve ever written, anything we’ve ever
collected.” Hundreds of books circled us. Hundreds of texts I never
even knew existed. The Dark had a library, too, but Darthon’s
collection made the Dark’s room look like a simple stack. “You can
learn everything here whenever you want to.”

I stared at the array of papers until my eyes
landed on the single desk that sat in the corner. It was covered in
books, and I wondered how much time Darthon had spent studying
every single word. An entire lifetime wouldn’t be sufficient, yet
he had already tried.

Darthon sat on the desk, and his torso
blocked me from seeing his latest read. “Once you’re a light,” he
spoke, “you can manipulate this realm just like I do.”

I stepped toward the nearest shelf and
touched a leather-bound book. I half-expected it to disappear
beneath my fingertips, but it didn’t. The bumpy ridges rubbed my
skin. “Do these explain what we are? Where shades and lights come
from?”

“Of course.”

I only looked away from the books to stare at
him.

He placed his hands on either side of his
hips. “We come from the Highland, another realm much like this
one.”

I had never heard the word before. Not once.
I hadn’t even heard Eric mention it, and I knew why.

“The Dark doesn’t know this,” I guessed.

“Not anymore,” he said, confirming the amount
of history that had been lost over the hundreds of years the
bloodlines had lain dormant. “We keep them out of here.”

I pulled my hand away from the book to
prevent my temptation to take it. “Why?”

“They followed us here from the Highland,” he
said. The Dark and the Light were more alike than I knew. “The
Light broke through, and they came here to learn, to explore the
humans’ abilities, but the Dark—” A growl escaped him. “They tried
to stop it all.”

“Why?”

Darthon’s eyes slanted into a glare. “So many
questions.”

My ears burned beneath my curls. “Do you want
me to take your side or not?”

He stared, and for a moment, his chest didn’t
even move. He didn’t breathe or budge. “The Dark thought we
destroyed the Highland when we broke through.” Darthon was telling
me everything I wanted to know. “They didn’t want us to destroy the
humans, too.”

I knew enough about the Dark’s past to know
how many wars had erupted. Thousands of people had died, but it was
impossible to know which wars were caused by the Light, by the
Dark, or just the humans. I had to bet the books around us would
explain it, but I hardly had the time to read. Not yet.

“Did you destroy them?” I asked. “The humans,
I mean.”

“Not intentionally. They did as all good
creatures do,” he said. “They fought for a better cause, and we
created that cause, and we will continue our cause when the Dark is
gone.”

I had to bite my lip to keep myself from
screaming at him. Not only had he admitted to his agenda, he had
told me the one thing that stayed with me ever since I had left the
first time. Darthon would kill me, too. He may not have even
realized it, but he would in the future. If I were left to govern
the Dark, I wouldn’t let him affect the humans. The war would never
end. If it meant gaining knowledge, Darthon would rip the Earth
apart. He would kill the humans, too. He was too desperate to win
to see my true intentions. Or, worse, he simply didn’t care. I was
his weakness, too, just as I was Eric’s, but I was starting to
realize mine—the people—and I knew humans were the reason my
bloodline was created.