Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

A death wish. Insanity. Suicide.

I looked out into the wind, the darkness, and the night.

Where are you, L?

I could see the moonlight pouring into the cave. Lena was out there somewhere waiting for me. She didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop me from reaching for her.

I’m coming.

“Maybe Liv’s right, and we should think about goin’ back. Gettin’ some help.” I noticed Link’s breathing was labored. He had been trying to hide it, but he was still in pain.

I had to own up to what I was doing to my friends, the people who cared about me. “We can’t go back. I mean, I can’t.”

The Seventeenth Moon wasn’t going to wait, and Lena was running out of time. The Arclight brought me here for a reason. I thought about what Marian said at my mother’s grave when she gave it to me.

In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.

It was something my mom used to say. I pulled the Arclight out of my pocket. It was turning a brilliant green, incredibly bright. Something was happening. As I turned it over and over in my hands, I remembered everything. It was all there, looking back at me from the surface of the stone.

Sketches of Ravenwood and Macon’s family tree, spread across my mother’s table in the archive.

I stared at the Arclight, seeing things for the first time. As I did, images rose to the surface of my mind, and the stone.

Marian handing me my mother’s most treasured possession, standing between the graves of two people who finally found a way to be together.

Maybe Ridley was right. All we had going for us was this stupid shiny stone.

Then a ring, twisting on a finger.

Mortals alone were no match for Dark power.

A picture of my mother, in the shadows.

Could the answer have been in my pocket all along?

And a pair of black eyes that reflected back my own.

We weren’t alone. We never were. The visions had laid it all out for me from the beginning. The images vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, replaced by words, the second I thought them.

&nbs

p; In the Arc there is power, and in the power there is Night.

“The Arclight—it’s not what we thought.” My voice echoed off the rock walls surrounding us.

Liv was surprised. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not a compass. It never was.”

I held it up so they could all see. As we watched, the Arclight shone, brighter and brighter, until it was eclipsed in a perfect circle of light. Like a tiny star. I could no longer see the stone within the light.

“What is it doing?” Liv breathed.

The Arclight, which I took so innocently from Marian at my mother’s grave, wasn’t an object of power, not for me.

It was for Macon.

I held the Arclight up higher. In the iridescent moonlight of the shallow tidal cave, the dark water around my feet glittered. Even the tiniest flecks of quartz studded in the rock walls caught the light. In the darkness, the sphere seemed to ignite. I could see the glow of the round, pearlized surface revealing the swirling colors of a hidden interior. Violet churned into somber greens, then burst into vibrant yellows, which deepened into oranges and reds. In that second, I understood.