“No,” she said. “No one ever does.”
She turned on her heel, her patterned maxi skirt billowing around her ankles, bangles jingling on her tanned arm. I got up and followed her out the door, but she was already halfway down the hall as the bell rang and students began to filter in around us.
She caught up to Gideon and said something in his ear.
Gideon turned slightly and looked at me.
If you didn’t know his past, had no idea he was a Rebel angel who had been brutally tortured by the Order, that his mind had been manipulated and infiltrated, and that he had learned, with every bit of strength he had, how to protect himself from it—had held out, kept his secrets, saved Ardith’s life—if you knew none of these things, you would think Gideon was just a normal seventeen-year-old guy. He had a mop of curly hair, and even today, was wearing his signature band T-shirt under a blazer, wire-rimmed glasses. He could have been in Cassie’s band.
But I knew who he was. I knew about his past. His eyes usually looked tormented and haunted. But from across the hall, at that moment, they smoldered and glowed. They burned. I had never seen anything like it.
He looked away quickly, and before I could do anything, he and Ardith had turned the corner and were out of sight.
6 
Gideon’s eyes haunted me all day. I knew that Ardith meant business. This was going to be war.
It also meant that I didn’t have any time to waste when it came to finding Aaron. As soon as the last bell of the day rang, I booked it out the door and to my car. The sky was so dark it was almost black—a heavy storm was brewing.
“Hey!” A girl’s voice called as I neared the car. “Where are you going?” I whipped around to find Raven rushing after me, a sheet of silky blond hair flying behind her in the wind.
I hesitated. I knew Raven was on my side now, but some small part of me still wasn’t used to trusting her. “I have to go find Aaron Ward,” I said.
“Alone? In this weather? Are you crazy?” She looked scornfully up at the sky. “Those Rebels are so obvious. No subtlety whatsoever.”
“If you’re so worried, here.” I tossed her my keys. “I’ll handle the storm.”
Raven met my gaze coolly. A two-hour drive alone in my car would be the most one-on-one time we’d spent, like, ever. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but I needed to go to Rocky Pines, tonight.
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Come with me.” She took off, back through the parking lot, winding her way between the cars toward the school.
“Hey!” I cried, following her. “Where are you going?”
Everyone was leaving school, flooding past us in the opposite direction. But for whatever reason, Raven led me back inside, through the halls and up the stairs.
At last I stumbled past her through the fire door and onto the wide, white cement of the roof.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a faster way to get to Rocky Pines.” She raised a challenging eyebrow. “I know you haven’t had them that long, but have you already forgotten?”
“Had wha—” But before I could finish my question, a tumble of glossy silver feathers spilled from her back.
“Your wings,” she said triumphantly, as hers rose above her, massive, bright against the gathering storm clouds. “We can fly there.”
The wings were a part of my body that had been added on, foreign and strange, and using them still took some getting used to. I guess that’s what Raven was trying to do—help me.
“I can trust you, Raven,” I said. “Right?”
“You don’t have to question my loyalty,” she said, her smile small and slightly shy. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. We belong together, Skye. For better or for worse.”
That would have to count as reassuring.
I closed my eyes.
You can do this. You were born to.
When I opened them, I could feel my pupils burning brightly silver. I let my powers sweep across the sky, changing the colors underneath the darkening clouds from a light pink and gold to dusty mauve, burnt orange. The feathery silver liquid took hold of me, hot, then cold, fire and ice. I grimaced and clenched my fists. It wasn’t as painful as it had been at first, but I felt the sharp feathers of my wings slice through my back nonetheless. The massive vibrations echoed in the hollows of my bones.
And as the colors in the sky shifted and sharpened, I could see the shadow of my wings on the concrete before me.
Here we go, I thought.
Raven smiled—a genuine, impressed smile.
“Ready?” she said, her hands resting on her hipbones.
Let’s do this.
I nodded.
I aligned my toes with the roof’s ledge. I bounced once, twice, on the balls of my feet. And then, I took a leap.
At first I fell, plummeting through the air like a skydiver before pulling the string on the parachute. The wind roared around me, and for a split second I waited for Asher’s arms to wrap around me, for his wings to catch the wind and glide us toward the sky. But I remembered just in time. He wasn’t here, he wasn’t coming for me. I was going to do this on my own.
I spread the massive wingspan wide behind me, catching the wind in my silver feathers, feeling the drag and then the pull. And then, as if caught by the strongest and most delicate of threads, I halted in midair. I began to soar upward.
One morning, months ago, in the darkest dead of winter, I woke up floating. And now I knew why. My body had been preparing itself for this.
Raven flew up alongside me.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered, yet somehow I could hear her perfectly above the rushing clouds. “I hate to admit it, but they are.”
I nodded. “I could never have imagined what it would feel like to have wings.”
“Sometimes I imagine what it’s like to not.” She looked serious. “I envy the way you grew up. Your friends. People, really. They don’t have to live by the rules I was bound to. They’re free.”
“You were a Guardian,” I said. “The Order has always controlled our fate. So are my friends really as free as they think?”
She seemed to contemplate this, as thunder rumbled around us. “I guess not. But they’re freer than I was.”
“Well, you don’t have to follow commands anymore,” I said. “You’re free now.” We dipped together, then rose again, as the sky churned angrily around us.
It struck me how strongly our lives were tied to each other. We’d been through a trauma together, we shared a strange, unspoken bond. She’d saved my life. I’d saved hers.
“Look out!” she called as lightning forked across the sky. “Can’t you control that?”
The Rebellion doesn’t want to see us make it to Rocky Pines.
“You’re going to do something about this storm, right?” Raven called, panic rising in her voice. Her silver wings shone like lightning against the churning sky, as the real thing flashed behind us.
I spread my arms wide and let energy burst through my fingertips. The sky seemed to grow brighter, but not because the clouds were thinning. All of the electricity in the sky was gathering, hurtling toward me.
“Skye, look out!”
But I didn’t need to—because I was making it happen. The light zapped into my fingers, and as the storm came crashing down, I pulled it inside of me.
Almost at once, the clouds vanished, and a ray of late-afternoon light broke through the mountains. Raven stared at me, her jaw hanging open.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I flew with reckless abandon above the mountains and valleys below. Raven stayed by my side. The higher we rose, the deeper the color of the sky grew. The moon rose high above us, waiting for the sun to set. It was such a different feeling from skiing, where the speed picked up beneath my feet, pulling the very breath from my lungs, leaving me panting. Now, I embraced the wind instead of fighting against it. I embraced the feeling of letting go, and gave in to the swoop of flight.