Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

I looked at my friends. “I think you guys should go back. This is too dangerous. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

“Nobody dragged me anywhere. I came to—” Link looked at Ridley, then turned away awkwardly. “To get away from it all.”

Ridley flipped her muddy hair dramatically. “Well, I certainly didn’t come here because of you, Short Straw. Don’t flatter yourself. As much as I like hanging out with you dorks, I’m here to help my cousin.” She looked at Liv. “What’s your excuse?”

Liv’s voice was quiet. “Do you believe in destiny?”

We all looked at Liv like she was crazy, but she didn’t care. “Well, I do. I’ve been watching the Caster sky for as long as I can remember, and when it changed, I saw it. The Southern Star, the Seventeenth Moon, my selenometer that everyone at home teased me about—this is my destiny. I was supposed to be here. Even if… no matter what.”

“I get it,” said Link. “Even if it wrecks everything, even if you know you’re gonna get busted, sometimes you gotta do it anyway.”

“Something like that.”

Link tried to crack his knuckles. “So what’s the plan?”

I looked at my best friend, who had shared his Twinkie with me on the bus in second grade. Was I really going to let him follow me into a cave to die? “There’s no plan. You can’t come with me. I’m the Wayward. This is my responsibility, not yours.”

Ridley rolled her eyes. “Obviously the whole Wayward thing hasn’t been explained to you properly. You don’t have any superpowers. You can’t leap over tall buildings in a single bound or fight Dark Casters with your magic cat.” Lucille peeked out from behind my leg. “Basically, you’re a glorified tour guide who’s no better equipped to face a bunch of Dark Casters than Mary P. over here.”

“Aquaman,” coughed Link, winking at me.

Liv had been quiet until now. “She’s not wrong. Ethan, you can’t do this alone.”

I knew what they were doing—or more like not doing. Leaving. I shook my head. “You guys are idiots.”

Link grinned. “I’d have gone with ‘brave as hell,’ myself.”

We stayed pressed against the cavern walls, following the moonlight pouring through the crack in the ceiling. As we rounded a corner, the rays became impossibly bright, and I could see the pyre below us. It rose from the center of the cave, golden flames encircling it and licking up the pyramid of broken trees. There was a stone slab, which almost resembled some kind of Mayan altar, balanced on top of the pyre as if suspended from invisible wires. A set of weathered stone stairs led up to the altar. The snaking circle worn by Dark Casters was painted on the cave wall behind it.

Sarafine’s body was lying on top of the altar, just as it had been when she had appeared in the woods. Nothing else was the same. Moonlight streamed through the roof and hit her body, radiating outward in all directions as if refracted by a prism. It was like she was holding light from the moon she was calling out of time—Lena’s Seventeenth Moon. Even Sarafine’s golden dress looked like it was stitched together from a thousand shining metallic scales.

Liv breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sarafine seemed to be in some kind of trance. Her body rose a few inches above the stone, the folds of her dress cascading down like water, past the edges of the stone altar. She was amassing some serious power.

Larkin was at the base of the pyre. I watched as he moved closer to the stone stairs. Closer to—

Lena.

She lay collapsed, her hands extended toward the flames, her eyes shut. Her head was in John Breed’s lap, and she looked unconscious. He looked different—blank. Like he was in a trance of his own.

Lena was shaking. Even from here, I could feel the biting cold radiating from the fire. She must have been freezing. A circle of Dark Casters surrounded the pyre. I didn’t recognize them, but I could tell they were Dark by their crazed yellow eyes.

Lena! Can you hear me?

Sarafine’s eyes flashed open. The Casters began to chant.

“Liv, what’s happening?” I whispered.

“They’re calling a Claiming Moon.”

I didn’t need to understand what they were saying to know what was happening. Sarafine was calling the Seventeenth Moon so Lena could make her choice while she was under the influence of some sort of Dark Cast. Or the weight of her guilt, a Dark Cast of its own.

“What are they doing?”

“Sarafine is using all her power to channel the Dark Fire’s energy, and her own, into the moon.” Liv was fixated on the scene as if she was trying to memorize every detail, evil or not. It was the Keeper in her, compelled to record history in the making.

Vexes whipped around the cavern, threatening to bring down the walls—spiraling, gaining strength and mass. “We need to get down there.” Liv nodded, and Link grabbed Ridley’s hand.