The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

White light encased in shadows swirled around my palm, threading between my fingers. It sparked and pulsed tiny licks of power that resembled arcing electric lines.

“I did it.” I almost couldn’t believe it as I turned my hand over. The Source followed the movement. Glancing at Luc, I felt my lips curve up as excitement bloomed in my chest. “I did it.”

Luc smiled, and it was a big one, the kind that transformed his features from beautiful to simply breathtaking.

Then I saw it—the strange mottling of the skin of my arm I’d seen at Kat’s. Shimmering onyx-colored dots appeared under my skin.

“Do you see that? My arm?” I asked, glancing quickly at Luc.

He nodded as he looked me over. “It’s not just your arm, Peaches.”

“What?” My eyes widened.

“It’s all over,” Grayson said from his corner. If he weren’t talking, I’d question if he were breathing, he was so still. “Splotches of it. On your neck. Your right cheek.”

“It’s all over?” I looked down but somehow resisted the urge to pull up my shirt to see if it was on my stomach. “I have an outbreak of glittering black dots.”

“Could be a worse outbreak,” Luc said, and I gaped at him. “You looked like this before, Peaches, while you were in the woods. And the night before last, I saw the marks on your cheeks.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me that?”

“I didn’t want you to freak out.” He paused. “Obviously.”

“I’m not freaking out!”

He cocked his head. “You’re not?”

I snapped my mouth shut. The spots seemed to move under my skin, crowding closer and then stretching farther apart. “I thought I saw this yesterday while I was with Kat and Dee. I didn’t say anything because they didn’t seem to see it. I thought I must’ve been imagining it.”

“Interesting,” murmured Luc. “It could’ve been a spike of the Source. What were you feeling or thinking when you saw it?”

My thoughts raced back to that moment. “We were talking about me not remembering my time with the Daedalus.”

“Makes sense, then. I’m sure there was emotion attached to that conversation.” Luc’s gaze roamed across my face in a way that made me want to see what he saw. “It must’ve only been on your arm, then, because there’s no way they wouldn’t have noticed this.”

“I want to see what I look like,” I said, looking around, but there was no window clean enough to even attempt to see a reflection in. Did they have bathrooms here?

“When we get back to the house, you can look.”

Impatient but knowing there were more important things than checking myself out, I let it go. “I bet I look weird.”

“It’s actually kind of beautiful,” Grayson said, and I about fell over in shock. Did he just sort of compliment me? He must’ve surprised himself, too, because he also looked like he was about to topple over. He averted his eyes—wait. Was he … blushing? “But yeah, it’s also really weird,” he added. “I’d be uncomfortable if I were you.”

My lips pursed.

“It is beautiful,” Luc said, and when I looked back to him, he was smiling. “And it is different. You know what a Luxen or Origin looks like when they use the Source. Sometimes there are no other visible signs. Other times—”

“It’s white light in the veins or the pupils turning white.” I swallowed. “Do I have black veins?”

He shook his head. “Not right now, but when you were in the woods, there was a faint darkening in the veins, and you had the aura of the Source around you.”

Like with the nightmare. “What does it mean when there’s an aura?”

Luc studied me. “What does it feel like to you when it happens?”

I mulled that over. “I felt … I don’t know, like the power—the Source—was building up in me. Like it was expanding outside of me.” And then, just like that, I answered my own question. Anytime I’d seen a Luxen or Origin do that, it was when they were very angry or about to go toe to toe with someone.

“There you go,” Luc said.

Realizing Luc wanted me to figure out what I already knew, I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re annoying.”

“And sexy.”

I shook my head, returning to watch the white and dark light swirl over my knuckles. “Do Arum get black dots on their skin?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen. They are a near mirror opposite of the Luxen. I imagine this is how the Arum DNA shows in you.”

“This is just crazy.”

My gaze shot to Grayson. I hadn’t heard him move, but he was no longer perched on the cable spool. He stood only a few feet away.

Curiosity marked his face as he stared down at my hand, shaking his head. “It really is a mixture of Arum and Luxen.”

He sounded so surprised that I asked, “You didn’t see me in the woods, did you?”