Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

For the first time in hours, I could see the sky. Only now it was dark. The black clouds of Caster magic had rolled in over us. Then I felt something, from far away.

More like, I heard something.

Lena.

Ethan, run!

It was her voice, the voice that had been silent for so long. But if Lena was telling me to run, who was tearing the trees out of the ground?

L, what’s happening?

I couldn’t hear her answer. There was only darkness, those Caster clouds rushing at us like they were chasing us. Until I saw the clouds for what they were.

“Look out!” I pulled Liv backward and pushed Link toward Ridley just in time. We fell into the brush as a shower of broken pines came falling from the sky like rain. The branches flattened into a great pile exactly where we had been standing. Dust stung my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything. The dirt caught in my throat as I coughed.

Lena’s voice was gone, but I heard something else. A humming sound, as if we’d stumbled across the hive of a thousand bees, all looking to kill for their queen.

The dust was so thick, I could barely make out the shapes around me. Liv was lying next to me, bleeding above one eye. Ridley was whimpering, huddled around Link, who was pinned by a massive tree branch. “Wake up, Shrinky Dink. Wake up.”

As I crawled toward them, Ridley shrank back. The look on her face was pure terror. Only she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at something behind me.

The humming sound grew louder. I felt the burning cold of Caster darkness on the back of my neck. When I turned around, the massive pile of pine needles that had almost buried us had formed some kind of bonfire. The pyramid of needles crea

ted a pyre, a giant burning platform pointing up into the black clouds. But the flames weren’t red, and they didn’t produce heat. They were as yellow as Ridley’s eyes, and they emitted only cold, sorrow, and fear.

Ridley’s whimpering grew louder. “She’s here.”

I looked up as a stone slab emerged from the hissing yellow flames of the pyre. A woman lay on top of the rock. She looked almost peaceful, like a dead saint about to be carried through the streets. But she was no saint.

Sarafine.

Her eyes jerked open, and her lips curved into a cold smile. She stretched, like a cat waking from a nap, then rose to stand on the stone. From down below where we stood, she might as well have been fifty feet tall.

“Were you expecting someone else, Ethan? I can understand the confusion. You know what they say. Like mother, like daughter. In this case, more and more every day now.”

My heart was pounding. I could see Sarafine’s red lips, her long black hair. I turned away. I didn’t want to see her face, the face that looked so much like Lena’s. “Get away from me, witch.”

Ridley was still crying, huddled next to Link, rocking back and forth like a madwoman.

Lena? Can you hear me?

Sarafine’s haunting voice rose over the flames, and she was there again, standing at the top of the fire. “I’m not here for you, Ethan. I’ll leave you for my darling daughter. She’s grown up so much this year, hasn’t she? There’s nothing like watching your child reach her full potential. Really makes a mother proud.”

I watched the flames crawl up her legs. “You’re wrong. Lena’s not like you.”

“I think I’ve heard that somewhere before—on Lena’s birthday, perhaps. Except then you believed it, and now you’re lying. You know you’ve lost her. She can’t change what was meant to be.”

The flames were at her waist. She had the perfect features of the Duchannes women, but they seemed disfigured on Sarafine. “Maybe Lena can’t change it, but I can. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect her.”

Sarafine smiled, and I cringed. Her smile was so much like Lena’s, or how Lena’s smile seemed lately. As the flames moved up her chest, she disappeared.

“So strong and so much like your mother. Her last words were something like that. Or were they?” I heard a whisper in my ear. “You see, I’ve forgotten, because it didn’t matter.”

I froze. Sarafine was standing right next to me now, still wreathed in flames. I knew it wasn’t an earthly fire, though, because the closer she came, the colder I felt.

“Your mother didn’t matter. Her death was neither noble nor important. It was simply something I felt like doing at the time. It meant nothing.” The flames rose to her neck and leaped up, consuming her body. “Just like you.”

I reached for her throat. I wanted to tear it out. But my hand slipped through her, into the air. There was nothing there. She was an apparition. I wanted to kill her and I couldn’t even touch her.