Chapter 105
I ricocheted into my body, and the bright light of my spirit burned through me.
The fire was brighter than Finn’s blue fire swords. It was brighter than the sun. It cleansed me and destroyed Jagger’s blood.
The horror crouched over us. It was a tidal wave about to sweep over Justice and Griff and swallow us all.
I’d landed back in myself, right before the horror struck.
“Watch out!” Winnie shouted.
The horror descended.
Finn sliced through the black wave, his fire swords blazing. He tore the horror in half and lunged through the hole.
“Mari—” he shouted.
Jagger whipped toward me. His flat gray eyes widened, and he gripped his obsidian dagger. His hand bled, and whatever he felt made him shout. He leaped toward me.
The horror reared and then swooped down.
I’d seen this.
I knew what would happen.
Everyone would die.
A human being couldn’t survive inside of it. They suffocated in the darkness.
I wasn’t the light, but I had light in me. I’d unlocked my heart and died. But when I’d died, the light had filled me with new life. I was glowing with it.
Jagger’s face contorted, his rocklike skin bulging with rage. He knew as well as I did that I wasn’t a mine anymore.
I belonged to the truth, and hatred and evil could never survive in the truth.
Jagger swung. His knife arched down, striking toward my throat. I reached out and placed a hand on his arm.
A long time ago, when we were kids, Griff, Justice, and I had played a game. It was a what-if game. One of our questions was, “What if Jagger could die permanently?”
Griff had whispered, “Then we’d die too.”
“What if that was okay?” Justice asked.
And both Griff and I had said, “Yeah. What if?”
Rou had heard us and told Jagger. We’d never played the what-if game again.
I gripped Jagger’s arm. He screamed.
It was a scream of agony. It was a terrifying scream of despair. It was a thousand screams sounding at once. It was Furtig, blood, and hate.
At my touch, his rocklike skin cracked. The cracks raced over his gray skin as if a hammer had slammed down on a slab of brittle shale.
He turned to stone. Then, as his scream echoed through the horror, the stone crumbled and fell to ash.
Less than a second had passed.
Finn raced through the horror’s curtain.
Winnie darted across the pavement.
As Jagger disintegrated, Griff screamed and then disappeared.
Justice clutched his chest and slammed to the concrete. He dropped like a tree mown down by a tornado.
Fear pulsed through me. Panic threatened to seize me.
“Justice!”
Was he dead?
Was Griff?
The horror swooped down.
Winnie leaped on top of Justice, covering him, just as the horror crashed over them.
“No!”
Finn dove in front of me and slashed, cutting the horror off. He stood in front of me, his swords coated in a bright light. They swirled and glowed like the wings of a firefly.
He looked over his shoulder and gave me a short, Finn-like smile.
My vision blurred. I blinked. “You’re you?”
“Mari,” he said, his hazel eyes filled with a thunderstorm of love. “How could you doubt it? I’ll always stand with you against the darkness.”
“You’re alive,” I whispered.
What had he figured out? What had my brother told him? That you can’t fight evil with evil? That darkness can’t defeat darkness? Had his surrender, his love, allowed the light to spear the cruel Finn and chase away the darkness?
“He was you,” I said, “but not you.”
He nodded, keeping himself between me and the horror. “I’m sorry. When I died, I fractured myself. I was me and I was revenge. I couldn’t fight it with anger—I had to become what it couldn’t exist alongside.”
“What was that?” I stepped closer to him and reached out to touch his cheek.
“Forgiveness,” he said. “Love.”
I felt the strength of him, the heat of his skin, the reality of him. “You’re really here.”
He smiled. “I vowed to protect you and shield you, help you and love you, all the days of my life. I can’t do those things if I’m not with you.”
Those had been our wedding vows. I’d promised the same thing.
I loved him beyond reason, and the light of it filled me.
He knew what I was thinking. He always did.
He swiped his swords as the horror swarmed, threatening. I pointed to the writhing mass.
“It has Justice. Winnie.”
“Can we get them out?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. They might already be gone.”
I could tell he wanted to hold my hand. Instead, he said, “You’re free.”
I nodded. “I’m free.”
The horror had grown so big it had swallowed four blocks and now reached over the highest building’s roofs.
Finn knew me almost better than I knew myself. He knew if I was free, I wouldn’t stop until Justice and Griff were safe and free too.
If they were still alive.
“All right. Let’s try,” he said. “We’ll save them. Save the city. Where there’s darkness, we’ll be light. Where there’s despair, we’ll be hope. Where there’s doubt, we’ll be faith.”
I smiled at him. “Where there’s hatred, we’ll be love.”
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Ready.”
He leaped forward, but instead of swords, he shot giant golden beams of light into the black mass. They looped like chains around the horror.
The horror wasn’t made of illusion. There was nothing for me to untie.
But Jacob had often used something I called not-illusion. It was his shadows and his eclipse.
I’d never realized before, but I had something similar inside me too.
My mom (before I realized she was my mom) had said Jacob was the eclipse to my sun. She’d shouted, “How can there be shadow without sunlight?”
As a truth seer, I unraveled illusion and unknotted lies. But I did something else. Something like the light had done. I shined in the darkness.
Before, my light had been small, because I was chained and locked inside my own darkness. I’d been trapped in Hell Gate, and then the asylum.
And maybe, if I’d tried before, my light would’ve failed, because I was relying only on myself.
But now I knew.
The sunlight came from the truth, which was greater than evil, greater than horror, greater than hate.
Finn looked back at me, smiling. “I was thinking of the message my mom left me.”
“What?”
“The truth can set you free, but first, you have to set the truth free.”
I grinned, and then I did exactly what he said.