Isabel’s words surface in my thoughts, a seashell revealed by ocean waves.
Evil is its own undoing.
I hear it over and over as Rael draws nearer until he stands before me, tall and still, his stillness amplified by the struggle behind me and the sounds of the guys fighting for their lives.
I stare into his eyes. Stare into the complexity of who he is, full of falseness or truthfulness, or both. Aren’t I those things, too? Honest and dishonest? Kind and cruel? Selfless and greedy?
Trust, Isabel told me. Especially when it’s difficult.
“Tell them to stand down,” I tell Rael. “Call the Harrows off.”
CHAPTER 44
GIDEON
I’m fighting my way to Daryn, slashing at Harrows with my sword, when the unbelievable happens.
She turns around. To Samrael.
And walks in his direction.
“Daryn! Daryn, no!”
She glances over her shoulder. There’s no uncertainty in her expression. She knows what she’s doing.
What’s she doing?
Is she going to open the portal for him?
The roaring noise in the clearing lessens noticeably as the Harrows disengage from our battle. They retreat and cluster in groups. In less than a minute, it’s nearly quiet and they’re crouched together like bats. Watching us. Waiting to be unleashed again.
Without them to fight, my path to Daryn is clear.
I cue Riot and he gives me everything he has, flying toward her. “Daryn, don’t!”
She whirls around at the sound of my voice. “Stop!” she yells. “Don’t hurt him!” She stands in front of Samrael, her arms wide, using her body to shield him.
I check Riot. Seconds later Marcus, Jode, and Bas thunder up beside me. They look like they want to rip Samrael apart as badly as I do.
“Trust me,” Daryn says. “I know what I’m doing.”
She’s addressing all of us, but her eyes are on me.
If I trust her, I could lose her.
If I don’t trust her, I will lose her.
She turns to Samrael again. The way he looks at her, with adoration, sickens me.
“After I betrayed you … more than once. You’re granting me freedom?” he asks. “You’re forgiving me? Giving me a chance?”
“No,” Daryn says. “You’re going to do it.” She slips the orb from her jacket pocket and holds it out in front of her.
“Gideon,” Marcus says. I feel his desperation to make this stop.
It doesn’t stop.
Daryn begins the process of opening the portal. The orb rises from her palm and dissolves, solid becoming light and color that tumbles around us. I wait for it to break into the network of threads that show everything—fields and oceans and stars—but seconds pass with no change. Then the light intensifies, growing brighter, growing heavier. Light that gains power. That passes through me, a gale whipping at the blood inside my veins.
It’s a sandstorm of light.
It swallows the stone house in the distance. Then it blots out the clearing with the Harrows lurking along the edges.
Everything washes out.
Samrael and Daryn disappear, eclipsed by the brightness. Even Marcus and Ruin, who are three feet to my left, disappear.
When I can barely see Riot’s ears anymore, the white glare slowly begins to recede.
“Gideon, look,” Jode says.
The earth beneath us is cracked and bleached—to the dirt that should be there. As the light continues to dim, I no longer see the clearing on the hilltop in the Rift. There’s no stone house, or wall in the distance. No Harrows crouched together, waiting to attack.
Night desert stretches out around us.
I know this place. It’s the Nevada playa, with the ring of mountains silhouetted in the distance. Above, the sky is loaded with stars. So many stars that they give the night a glow.
It’s exactly like the place we left behind, with one difference: this desert is bisected by a barrier.
The threads that have always whirled around us in our crossings are here, but they’re pulled straight. They run in parallel lines that vibrate like exposed electrical currents, stretching into the sky and out across the desert as far as I can see, forming a living wall with no vertical or horizontal end.
The world—at least everything I can see—is now divided.
There’s my side and the one across the barrier, and they’re mirror images.
Daryn stands beside me—but she’s across from me too, opposite the barrier.
And so am I.
I see myself on the other side.
I’m right there. So are Jode, and Marcus, and Bas. Our horses.
I keep waiting for this glitch to fix itself, but it doesn’t. There’s two of everything.
Then I see it: there’s only one Samrael.
He stands at the dividing line, looking one way and then the other, his movements setting the threads of the barrier rippling out like waves. “What is this?” he asks.
“It’s what you asked for,” says Daryn—the one on my side. “You wanted this, Rael. You wanted a chance to prove you’re worthy of leaving.” She falls quiet and now the other Daryn speaks. “But I won’t be the one to decide. It’s up to you, Rael. You decide your own fate.”
It dawns on me: Daryn’s doing this.
She created all of this.
Samrael doesn’t know where to look. He doesn’t know which Daryn to address. Then I can almost see him decide: Pick one and stick with it. He chooses the Daryn on my side.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Am I to choose which side is real? Am I supposed to blindly guess which is which?”
“No—I’ll tell you. I’m real,” says the girl beside me. “This side is your freedom. This side is your forgiveness.”
“That simple?”
“That simple. Believe me. Trust me. Or don’t.”
Samrael squares himself to her, to us. He laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. Then his eyes move to me. I brace myself, but when he reaches into my head, there’s nothing I can do.
Hello, Gideon. I’ve guessed right, then. She’s telling me the truth.
He withdraws just as suddenly. I don’t even move a muscle.
He cheated. He peeked at the cards. The Gideon on the conjured side would have no thoughts. He knows I’m real. And, of course, the real Daryn will be on the same side as me.
But she has to have foreseen this, hasn’t she?
The smile on his face disappears.
“I know which side is freedom,” he says to Daryn. “And I choose against it.”
He takes a step backward, away from us.
CHAPTER 45
DARYN
Rael takes a step away, choosing not to believe me.
Choosing to go back into the Rift.
Something crumbles inside me. I run for him, stopping at the barrier. “Rael!”
We stand on opposite sides, barely two feet apart. I can’t hold the porthole open anymore. It’s pulling at me, tearing at me. The desert behind Rael melts away. The Gideon and Riot I conjured. Everything I created begins to fade as the Rift returns.
The stone house appears again. The garden. The orchard and the paths that wander all over the hilltop. The Harrows, awaiting their next command.
“You really would have let me go,” Rael says.
“Yes. I would have.”