Death Before Daylight (43 page)

“It was a lie,” I screamed, trying to explain
what Fudicia had insinuated—the prophecy, the threat,
everything—but I didn’t have the energy, and I didn’t need to,
because Luthicer said the only thing I needed to hear.

“She’s breathing.”

61

I woke up in a burnt world. Everything was
coated in gray ash, and the walls were feathering out into dust.
There was no ceiling. The sky was black and starless—like Darthon’s
eyes. I took a breath. I never knew I could breathe in death.

“You aren’t dead.”

The voice sent chills up my spine, freezing
my head in place. I had to take another breath before I could
unlock my muscles and bring my face down to look at the woman.

Camille stood in front of me, and she wasn’t
alone. A woman with slick, black hair, cropped into a bob, was by
Camille’s side. The woman’s blue eyes were too familiar—like
Shoman’s. She had to be Eric’s mother.

“Well,” I said, thinking I couldn’t breathe,
but I breathed, nonetheless. “I must be dead.”

“No.” Camille smiled. “Not exactly
anyway.”

But I remembered what had happened, after
all. Eric had finally killed Darthon—Robb McLain—and I had died
with my enemy. It had to happen if the Dark would live in safety.
It was the right decision.

“I don’t understand,” I managed.

“That immortality spell was never meant for
Eric. Neither was the necklace I gave him,” Camille spoke of a time
that seemed too long ago to fathom. “Those spells were meant for
you. I only wanted to see you one last time.”

“How?”

“My spirit has been trapped here,” Camille
spoke as I realized where we were—the destroyed Light realm. I
recognized the burnt horns on the crumbling wall. We weren’t in the
afterlife at all, but she was still dead, and so was Eric’s mother.
“She’s trapped as long as I am.”

Eric’s mother never spoke, but she smiled for
the first time. She had Eric’s smile.

“We won’t be trapped anymore,” Camille said
and stepped forward. She lifted her hands, palms facing me. I
couldn’t move as her fingers landed on my face, tracing over my
cheeks. “Just like before.”

She was even dressed in the same clothes she
had died in.

I pulled away before she could do what she
did before—send me back—but Camille reached out again. “You have to
lead the Light, Jess,” she said it like I wanted to die, but in
truth, I didn’t want to leave them behind. “You need to live.”

“And my shade side?”

“That no longer exists.” A frown escaped her.
“When you transform again, you’ll officially be a leader, and they
need one.”

“And you?”

“Tell the others I love them,” she said.

I swallowed my nerves. “They’ll think I was
hallucinating.”

Camille’s face tilted to the side as her
frown flipped into the only sweet smile I had ever seen from her.
“Perhaps we all were.”

With her words, Eric’s mother moved forward,
and her hand landed on my arm. She was warm. They both were. And as
soon as they had appeared, they were gone.

***

I gasped as my lungs filled with ice-cold
air. My muscles ached as I sat up, and a groan escaped me as I
leaned forward, elbows on my legs. I had been lying down on a bed I
recognized too well. I was in the nurse’s ward of the Dark’s
shelter, and I was alive.

And so many people weren’t.

The hum of the chaos caught my ears. The
battle wasn’t completely over. I only sat up so I could hear more,
but what I saw stopped my original decision.

Eric was sitting at the edge of my bed, his
upper torso collapsed on the mattress. His brown hair was mangled,
matted together with dirt and blood, but his injuries had healed. I
must have been out for hours, and now, he was deep asleep,
clutching my hand.

“He hasn’t let go of you since you were
brought in here.”

The voice was all too familiar, and it filled
my lungs with relieved breath. Jonathon was leaning against the
wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Little bags hung from his
eyes, but he smiled. He almost looked like he had been sleeping
while standing up.

He was alive, too.

Before I could ask, he answered, “Crystal’s
fine. The remaining elders, too.”

No one I knew had died, and as much as I
wanted that to be a comfort, I knew others weren’t so lucky.

“The battle is still going on,” he whispered
after a minute. “Just not with us.”

I stared back at him. “What happened?”

I could only remember Darthon dying, how his
death had brought mine, and what I saw in the burnt Light
realm.

Jonathon’s eyes moved to my hand that held
Eric’s. “I think that kept you two alive.”

I glanced down, but only for a moment. The
jewelry was no longer glowing. Whatever power it had held was gone.
It had done the job it was meant to do, and the spell had died with
the passing of Eric’s mother and Camille, two souls that had been
trapped all along. In their death, I had found my own. I could feel
it—how my Dark side was gone. My heart was heavy against my ribs,
but it was beating. I had another identity to control. The Light
side was mine, and it would be in chaos until I accepted it. Once I
did, they would stop fighting. My veins tingled with a desire I had
never felt before, but with a confidence I knew too well—it felt
like the home the Dark had given me so long ago.

I had to tear my eyes away from my guard
before I told him what I was thinking. My battle wasn’t over yet.
My journey wasn’t complete. Only theirs was.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“A day,” he answered. “It’s midnight.”

I stared at Eric. His breathing was hoarse,
but he didn’t wake up, even when we spoke. It was unlike him. Too
unlike him. “What’d you do to him?”

“Drugged him.”

I couldn’t help but gape at my guard, but
Jonathon only shrugged. “The guy wouldn’t sleep until you woke up.”
He scratched his head, but it didn’t prevent the shameful blush
from cascading over his cheeks. “We didn’t really have a choice. He
had to heal.”

I bit my lip so I could nod in agreement.
Eric had already been through too much, but I squeezed his hand out
of reflex. As much as I didn’t want him to wake up, I wanted him to
wake up. I wanted to hear his voice, to see the light in his eyes,
to hug him.

“Darthon’s dead, Jessica.” Every word
Jonathon said came out in struggled pauses. “It’s over.” The words
were the words the Dark had wanted to speak for decades, but it had
finally happened, and resulted in the death of a teenager who
hadn’t chosen it.

In that moment, I remembered Darthon as Robb
McLain—the first person I met in Hayworth as a human. It seemed
fitting that I had met Eric the night before as a shade. I had been
connected to both of them from the beginning, and while Robb
started as a friend and Eric as an enemy, it had flipped over a
year’s time. Now, only one was alive, and I was left to take Robb’s
place.

I shivered. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being there for me—and Eric.”

Jonathon didn’t speak, but I looked up in
time to witness his nod. Thanking one another over the
circumstances seemed cruel. People had died, after all, but at
least we hadn’t lost one another.

We remained like that—in our silence—for only
a moment before the others heard us. One screamed, “She’s awake,”
and then, the room was filled with familiar faces. Urte was in his
shade form, and he only stayed for a minute before disappearing to
join Luthicer and Jada. They were trying to get the Light under
control, a sect that was only fighting itself out of madness, but
Bracke stayed.

“How are you feeling, Jess?”

“Better,” I managed before I finally found
the strength to explain what I saw—his wife and Camille in the
realm, protecting us all along.

Bracke returned my words with a smile. “I
always was wrong.” He had thought his wife was trying to kill Eric
when all she had done was guarantee his life if his guard died as
well.

“Stop beating yourself up.”

The voice came from the last person we
expected to hear from.

Eric shuffled around, lifting his head from
his sleepy state. “And don’t think I’ll forgive you for drugging
me,” he spoke directly to Jonathon, but a smile crept along his
lips. His tone said the opposite—he had already forgiven all of
us—and his eyes said what he wanted to say. His soft irises were
locked directly at me. “Glad you’re feeling okay.”

I laid my hand on top of his hair, trying not
to cringe at the crusty feel. “Are you?”

He nodded, never lifting his face from the
mattress. “I will be.”

Eric had killed Darthon—finally—and unlike
the rest of us, he didn’t praise it. Not even his expression did.
He only looked groggy, as if a part of him had faded away in the
chaos, and I squeezed his hand as if I could pull him back.

He reciprocated the squeeze. He never said a
word about his mother, or Camille, or what had happened in the
control room, and I imagined it was because a part of him already
knew they hadn’t truly died. They had lived through us all along.
It was the reason he had never dealt with their deaths. I could see
it now, even though it was finally over, and because of that, I
could breathe again.

He fell asleep again, and no one spoke.
Bracke simply nodded and left the room. Jonathon followed, and I
was alone with Eric for the first time in what seemed like months.
But it wasn’t peaceful. The room sizzled with energy from the
battle that had happened, and the battle that was continuing to
happen outside.

The new breeds of Light and Dark members
existed, and the Light had crumbled beneath their leader’s death.
Until they got a new one, they would fight, and I was the only one
who knew how to step in and fix it, but not yet, not now. I was too
tired.

My eyes closed, and I fell into a deep sleep
once more.

62

I didn’t know how much time had passed, but
it hadn’t been as long as I thought. When I found the clock, only a
few extra hours had ticked away, but I felt alive again, not
drained like I had felt before. I glanced at Jessica—her sleeping
face, the calmest expression I had seen on her delicate features in
weeks—and I slowly inched away from the bed.

I needed to talk to the others, figure out
what was happening, and see if there was a way I could help, but I
wanted to do it without waking Jessica. In a way, she had died and
come back to life—all in the name of the Dark and the Light—and I
had simply killed Darthon.

Simply.

It disgusted me, but I pushed myself away
from the bed with a focus on making it right. Still, Jessica woke
up. She never let me get away with anything.

“Where are you going?” Her voice was as
groggy as her eyes as she rubbed them.

I didn’t speak as I looked at her blue eyes.
I doubted I would ever see them as violet again. Even though the
prophecy could’ve been a lie, I believed what Darthon had said.
Jessica would be a light. It was a matter of time until her eyes
would be black.

“I’m going to check on the others,” I managed
as I stood on shaky knees. My legs were tired, but with every
movement, my strength grew.

She sat straight up. “Me, too.”

I didn’t argue with her, because there was no
point in fighting. She would come if she wanted to. That was her
right.

I walked out, knowing she was behind me, and
when I stopped in the hallway, she stopped next to me.

Everyone was there. Urte, Luthicer, and my
father were still in their shade forms, but Crystal and Jonathon
were human, and they were the first ones to see us. Crystal even
had her lip ring in.

“Jess!” She ran over, and before Jessica
could react, Crystal’s arms were wrapped around Jessica’s torso.
“You’re awake.”

Jessica hugged her friend back before slowly
prying Crystal off. “I’m alive.”

Crystal’s lips formed into a pout. “Don’t be
so dreary.”

Somehow—in some way—I wasn’t surprised that
Luthicer’s daughter, out of all people, was the most callous about
everything. He must have raised her that way, gone against the
rules and trained her from the beginning. We knew she was tracking
Zac, after all, and that was long before she had developed powers.
The one elder notorious for following a strict policy was also the
one who had broken the most rules.

“You two lovebirds get some alone time?” she
joked.

Jessica laughed—actually laughed—before she
responded, “We got some nap time.”

Crystal cringed. “Boring.”

“These two are boring,” Jonathon interrupted,
sporting his usual grin, but this time, he laid his forearm on
Crystal’s shoulder. She didn’t even move away from him. “And they
probably need more time alone.”

Before I could argue, Jessica grabbed my arm
and pulled me away from the two. Even then, I kept my eyes on my
best friend and Jessica’s best friend. Her white hair was eerie
next to his dark hair—almost as if they hadn’t transformed back
into humans at all—but they smiled like humans, and they talked
like it was any other day.

Jessica and I didn’t speak as we leaned
against the wall feet away from them, our arms pressed against one
another. I no longer sensed her heartbeat in my veins, and I knew
she probably didn’t sense mine. Our rings were regular pieces of
jewelry now, but they still mattered to me. Even then, our touch
seemed to be missing something when I watched Jonathon and Crystal
interact.

They talked, seemingly in their own world,
but the sight relaxed me. “She doesn’t seem too heartbroken about
Zac.”

In my peripheral vision, Jessica cringed.
“I’m pretty sure she was only doing that for research.”