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Ridley hugged Lena tight. “Come on, what am I going to do with seventy or eighty more years? Can you really see me hanging around Gat-dung, making out with Link in the back of the Beater? Trying to figure out how the stove works?” She looked away, her voice faltering. “Can’t even get decent Chinese in that crappy town.”
Lena held tight to Ridley’s hand, and Ridley squeezed it, then gently pulled her hand away, one finger at a time, and placed Lena’s hand in mine.
“Take care of her for me, Short Straw.” Ridley disappeared back down the steps before I could say a word.
I’m scared, Ethan.
I’m right here, L. I’m not going anywhere. You can make it through this.
Ethan—
You can, L. Claim yourself. No one has to show you the way. You know your own way.
Then another voice joined mine, from a great distance and also from within me.
My mother.
Together we told Lena, in the one stolen moment we had, not what to do but that she could do it.
Claim yourself, I said.
Claim yourself, my mother said.
I am myself, Lena said. I am.
Blinding light surged from the moon, like a sonic boom, shaking the rocks loose from the walls. I couldn’t see anything but the moonlight. I felt Lena’s fear and her pain, pouring over me like a wave. Every loss, every mistake, was seared into her soul, creating a different kind of tattoo. One made from rage and abandonment, heartbreak and tears.
Moonlight flooded the cave, pure and blinding. For a minute, I couldn’t see or hear anything. Then I looked over at Lena, tears running down her cheeks and shining in her eyes, which were now their true colors.
One green, one gold.
She flung her head back to face the moon. Her body twisted, her feet hovering above the stone. Below her, the fighting stopped. No one spoke or moved. Every Caster and Demon in the room seemed to know what was happening, that their fates hung in the balance. Above her, the brightness of the moon began to vibrate, the light pulling, until the whole cave was one ball of light.
The moon continued to swell. Like a moment from a dream, the moon split into two halves, dividing in the sky directly over where Lena stood. The moonlight behind her seemed to form a giant, luminous butterfly, with two brilliant, glowing wings. One green, one gold.
A cracking sound echoed across the cave, and Lena screamed.
The light disappeared. The Dark Fire disappeared. There was no altar, no pyre, and we were back on the ground.
The air was perfectly still. I thought it was over, but I was wrong.
Lightning sliced through the air, splitting into two distinct paths, hitting its targets simultaneously.
Larkin.
His face twisted in terror as his body seized, then started to blacken. He seemed to be burning from the inside out. Black cracks crawled along his skin until he turned to dust, blowing across the cave floor.
The second bolt traveled in the opposite direction, hitting Twyla.
Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her body fell to the ground, as if her spirit had stepped out and tossed it aside. But she didn’t turn to dust. Her lifeless body lay on the ground as Twyla rose above it, shimmering and fading until she became translucent.
Then the haze began to settle, the particles rearranging until Twyla looked more as she had in life. Whatever she had left behind in this life, it was finished. If she had business here again, it would be because she chose to. Twyla wasn’t tethered to this world. She was free. And she looked peaceful, as if she knew something we didn’t.
As she rose up through the crack in the cave ceiling toward the moon, she stopped. For a second, I wasn’t sure what was happening as she hovered there.
Good-bye, cher.
I don’t know if she really said it, or if I imagined it, but she reached out a luminous hand and smiled. I lifted my own hand toward the sky and watched as Twyla faded into the moonlight.
