Chapter 104
As soon as the doors were opened, the horror rushed inside. Its jaws were wide. It snapped its teeth, tearing me apart, fighting to devour my light.
It was a small flame.
Inside of it was everything good I ever was, had ever felt, or had ever known.
There was Finn and his gentle, reassuring touch and his steady, warm smile.
His belief from the very first time he saw me that we were meant to be, because I felt like home.
And my belief that he was the light in my darkness, because no matter what, he was always there next to me, even when I couldn’t see him.
There was my laughter as Luvic and I had tossed birdseed to a flock of pigeons at Bethesda Fountain. His delight at meeting Cora after making a penny wish in its waters.
There was my love for Rou’s cooking and the warm blueberry scone and saffron stew scent of her kitchen.
There was the night Justice and I had cheered Griff up after one of his deaths.
We’d taken him to an all-night diner with a buffet and had laughed for hours while he ate plate after plate of pancakes topped with mashed potatoes and chicken dipped in cupcake frosting.
There were so many good things. So many memories. Not just happiness. Not just love. But my hope too. I’d tucked that away. I’d tucked away all the times I’d chosen to do right instead of wrong. The little times and the big times. The small kindnesses and the large ones.
In Hell Gate, a small kindness was often enough to get you killed. That was why I never sneered at a person for doing a small kindness. I didn’t know how much it had cost them or how brave they’d had to be to do it.
It was all there. The shining light I’d hidden.
Justice had claimed that someday, I could take it out and use it to fight Jagger.
Now, he was claiming Jagger was a liar and could be killed.
I didn’t know if the second was true. But I knew the first was wrong.
This light of mine, it couldn’t defeat the horror. It couldn’t fight Jagger.
Not on its own.
It would be swallowed, and so would I.
So, as the jaws closed, I cried out.
I called out to the voice that had beckoned me.
“Please!” I cried. “I can’t. I’m too weak. I’m not strong enough. Help me. Please!”
Ever since I’d become a mine, I’d been fighting. Fighting to save myself. Fighting to save Finn. Fighting for Griff, Justice, Luvic, the world.
But I saw more clearly than I ever had that I wasn’t enough.
The good inside me hadn’t ever come from me. It had been given to me. I’d kept it locked away, but it was from a source that could never be locked up, consumed, or devoured.
“Please,” I whispered.
My light was being ravaged and torn by the horror. I was in the shadow of despair, and my light was nearly gone. The horror tore at it greedily. Jagger laughed. It was a satisfied, gloating sound.
I saw then that the only way to save my light was to give it to someone stronger. To something stronger than me or anyone else. Something stronger than the darkness.
“I give my light to you,” I said.
“Yes!” Jagger cried.
“I give myself to you.”
Jagger laughed gleefully.
But I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to the light that had begun to crest over the darkness. It was only a whisper. A tiny voice. The echo of the sun before it lights the horizon.
But it heard me, and it knew me.
I surrendered everything. I surrendered myself to the light, and in a violent flash, it consumed me.
There are some people in the world who think meeting the ultimate good face-to-face will be a wonderful, soothing, nice experience.
They think it will be full of wispy clouds, dancing rainbows, and gentle love.
They need to think again.
As soon as I surrendered myself, ultimate good struck me like a lion batting me with a giant paw and throwing me to the ground. It roared. And the roar was louder than the boom of thunder or the violent crack of a volcano erupting.
I was swept up in the roar, and my spirit trembled.
I was torn apart. My being was searched and sifted, and every part of me was made known.
The light shined into the darkest crevices of my soul.
It blazed through me, and I was weighed and measured.
Every deed, every thought, every feeling that had pulsed through my beating heart was known.
I couldn’t hide. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t shield myself from the light.
There were things I’d done that I was ashamed of. There were things I’d not done that I was even more ashamed of. There were some things I’d lied to myself about or hidden away—terrible things uncovered that I hadn’t even known were inside of me.
I’d lived in Hell Gate for twenty-two years, and I saw in the brilliant, uncompromising light that it had been twenty-two years of darkness.
I wept.
It’s a horrible thing to realize you are what you’ve always claimed to hate.
A horror.
A creature.
A dirty, uncaring, mean-spirited, prideful, resentful, malicious thing. I wasn’t na?ve—I knew those things were inside me. I was a mine, wasn’t I?
But I’d never seen them under this bright, searching, truth-filled light.
I was used to unraveling illusion.
Nearly all my life, I’d been ripping illusion away.
But now, a different kind of illusion was uncovered.
I was darkness. I was weak. I had seeds of evil in me that were constantly sprouting.
The only way I could survive, the only way I could save my good, was by giving myself completely to the light and asking it to save me.
Rou had once told me you could find God in a single flower and the quiet of a silent hour, but was he also here, in the lowest depths of darkness.
The battle raged. The line in my heart was split between good and evil.
I held out the white flag, surrendered, and good rushed in.
I was swept into its arms. Overcome and consumed.
I was held in the gentle arms of mercy.
Then, the light flared in a blinding, brilliant sunburst that chased away the horror. The good roared, and the horror fled, screaming in terror.
“Are you truth?” I asked, floating in the light.
Yes.
“What happened?” I asked. I looked down at my spirit. The darkness that had floated in me was gone. Jagger’s chains and the bite of his blood was gone. My spirit was light. It glowed brightly.
You’re free, the voice said.
It boomed through me, a thunderous, rumbling sound.
And after the terror of revealing my darkness, I was swept with a peace so deep, a love so infinite, that I realized the reason I’d had to know my darkness was so I could receive the light of truth’s grace.
And then, at that realization, a cosmic, light-filled wind hit me. The gust shoved me through space, and I somersaulted across time until I slammed back into my body.