It was there, behind everything else. The feeling. The electricity of the air, as if this side of the world was full of life I couldn't see but could sense all around me.
"Come on." Ridley was behind me, pulling Link, whose eyes were squeezed shut. Ridley let go of his hand. "You can open your eyes now, Super Stud."
Liv appeared after them, breathless. "That was brilliant." She came up beside me, barely a golden hair loose from her braids. She watched the waves crash against the rocks in front of us, her eyes sparkling. "Do you think we're --"
I answered before she had a chance to finish. "We've crossed into the Great Barrier."
Which meant Lena was here somewhere, and so was Sarafine.
And who knows what else.
Lucille was sitting on a rock, casually licking her paw. I saw something next to her, snagged between two rocks.
It was Lena's necklace.
"She's here." I bent down to pick it up, my hand shaking uncontrollably. I had never seen her without it, not once. The silver button was shining through the sand, the wire star caught in the loop where she had wrapped the red string.
These weren't just her memories. They were our memories, everything we had shared since we met. The evidence of every happy moment she'd ever experienced in her life. Tossed aside like all the other lost bits of broken shells and tangled seaweed that washed up on the beach.
If it was some kind of sign, it wasn't good.
"Did you find something, Short Straw?"
Reluctantly, I opened my hand and held it out for them to see. Ridley gasped. Liv didn't recognize the necklace. "What is it?"
Link looked at the ground. "It's Lena's necklace."
"Maybe she lost it," Liv said innocently.
"No!" Ridley's voice was rising. "Lena never took it off. Not once in her whole life. She couldn't have lost it. She would've noticed the second it slipped off."
Liv shrugged. "Maybe she noticed. Maybe she didn't care."
Ridley lunged at Liv, Link holding her back by her waist. "Don't say that! You don't know anything! Tell her, Short Straw."
But even I didn't know anymore.
As we picked our way along the shore, we approached a rocky line of uneven coastal caves. Tidewater pooled in their sandy floors, and jagged rock walls kept everything in shadow. The pathway between the rocks seemed to be leading us toward a particular cave. The ocean crashed around us, and I felt like it could wash us away in a second.
There was real power here. The rock was humming under my feet, and even the light of the moon seemed alive with it.
I jumped from one rock to the next until I was high enough to see past the rocky outcroppings of the coastal caves. The others climbed after me, trying to keep up.
"There." I pointed at a large cavern, just beyond the caves surrounding us. The moon was shining directly above it, illuminating an enormous jagged crack in the ceiling.
And something else.
In the moonlight, I could barely make out figures moving in the shadows. Hunting's Blood pack. There was no mistaking them.
No one said anything. This wasn't a mystery to solve anymore. It was quickly becoming reality. It was a cave most likely filled with Dark Casters, Blood Incubuses, and a Cataclyst.
All we had was each other and the Arclight.
The realization hit Link hard. "Face it. The four of us are dead." He looked down at Lucille, who was licking her paws. "With one dead cat."
He had a point. From what we could see, there was only one way in or out. The entrance to the cave was heavily guarded, and what waited inside was likely to be an even more formidable threat.
"He's right, Ethan. My uncle's probably in there with his boys. Without my powers, we're not going to survive the Blood pack again. We're useless Mortals. All we had going for us was that stupid shiny stone." Ridley kicked at the wet sand, as hopeless as ever.
"Not useless, Rid." Link sighed. "Just Mortals. You'll get used to it."
"Shoot me if I do."
Liv stared out at the sea. "Maybe this is as far as we can go. Even if we could get past the Blood pack, to take on Sarafine would be ..." Liv didn't finish, but we all knew what she was thinking.
A death wish. Insanity. Suicide.
I looked out into the wind, the darkness, and the night.
Where are you, L?
I could see the moonlight pouring into the cave. Lena was out there somewhere waiting for me. She didn't answer, but that didn't stop me from reaching for her.
I'm coming.
"Maybe Liv's right, and we should think about goin' back. Gettin' some help." I noticed Link's breathing was labored. He had been trying to hide it, but he was still in pain.
I had to own up to what I was doing to my friends, the people who cared about me. "We can't go back. I mean, I can't."
The Seventeenth Moon wasn't going to wait, and Lena was running out of time. The Arclight brought me here for a reason. I thought about what Marian said at my mother's grave when she gave it to me.
In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.
It was something my mom used to say. I pulled the Arclight out of my pocket. It was turning a brilliant green, incredibly bright. Something was happening. As I turned it over and over in my hands, I remembered everything. It was all there, looking back at me from the surface of the stone.
Sketches of Ravenwood and Macon's family tree, spread across my mother's table in the archive.
I stared at the Arclight, seeing things for the first time. As I did, images rose to the surface of my mind, and the stone.
Marian handing me my mother's most treasured possession, standing between the graves of two people who finally found a way to be together.
Maybe Ridley was right. All we had going for us was this stupid shiny stone.
Then a ring, twisting on a finger.
Mortals alone were no match for Dark power.
A picture of my mother, in the shadows.
Could the answer have been in my pocket all along?
And a pair of black eyes that reflected back my own.
We weren't alone. We never were. The visions had laid it all out for me from the beginning. The images vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, replaced by words, the second I thought them.
In the Arc there is power, and in the power there is Night.
"The Arclight -- it's not what we thought." My voice echoed off the rock walls surrounding us.
Liv was surprised. "What are you talking about?"
"It's not a compass. It never was."
I held it up so they could all see. As we watched, the Arclight shone, brighter and brighter, until it was eclipsed in a perfect circle of light. Like a tiny star. I could no longer see the stone within the light.
"What is it doing?" Liv breathed.
The Arclight, which I took so innocently from Marian at my mother's grave, wasn't an object of power, not for me.
It was for Macon.
I held the Arclight up higher. In the iridescent moonlight of the shallow tidal cave, the dark water around my feet glittered. Even the tiniest flecks of quartz studded in the rock walls caught the light. In the darkness, the sphere seemed to ignite. I could see the glow of the round, pearlized surface revealing the swirling colors of a hidden interior. Violet churned into somber greens, then burst into vibrant yellows, which deepened into oranges and reds. In that second, I understood.
I wasn't a Keeper, or a Caster, or a Seer.
I wasn't like Marian or my mother. It wasn't for me to keep the lore and the history or protect the books and the secrets that made up so much of the Caster world. I wasn't like Liv, charting the uncharted, measuring the immeasurable. I wasn't Amma. It wasn't for me to see what no one else could or to communicate with the Greats. More than anything, I was nothing like Lena. I couldn't eclipse the moon, bring down the skies, or kick up the earth. I could never convince anyone to jump off a bridge, like Ridley could. And I was nothing like Macon.
In the back of my mind, I had been searching for how I fit into the story, my story with Lena. Hoping I could fit into it at all.
But my story had found its way to me through all of them. Now, at the end of what seemed like a lifetime in the darkness and confusion of the Tunnels, I knew what to do. I knew my part.
Marian was right. I was the Wayward. It was my job to find what was lost.
Who was lost.
I rolled the Arclight to my fingertips and released it. The stone hung in the air.
"What the --" Link staggered closer.
I pulled the folded yellowed page out of my back pocket. The one I had ripped from my mother's journal and carried all this way, without a reason. Or so I thought.
The Arclight cast a silver light around the cave as it hovered. I stepped closer to it and held up the paper so I could speak the Cast from the page of my mother's journal, even though it was in Latin. I pronounced the words carefully.
"In Luce Caecae Caligines sunt,
Et in Caliginibus, Lux.
In Arcu imperium est,
Et in imperio, Nox."
"Of course," Liv whispered, moving closer to the light. "The Cast. Ob Lucem Libertas. Freedom in Light." Liv looked at me. "Finish it."
I turned the paper over. There was nothing on the other side.
"That's all there is."
Liv's eyes widened. "You can't leave it undone. It's incredibly dangerous. The power of an Arclight, let alone a Ravenwood Arclight, it could kill us. It could kill ..."
"You have to do it."
"I can't, Ethan. You know I can't."
"Liv. Lena's going to die -- you, me, Link, Ridley -- we all are. We've come as far as Mortals can go. We can't do the rest alone." I put my hand on her shoulder.
"Ethan." She whispered my name, just my name, but I heard the words she couldn't say almost as clearly as I heard Lena's voice when we Kelted. Liv and I had a connection all our own. It wasn't magic. It was something very human, and very real. Liv might not like what had unfolded between us, but she understood it. She understood me, and a part of me believed she always would. I wished things could have been different, that Liv could have everything she wanted at the end of all this. The things that had nothing to do with lost stars and Caster skies. But Liv wasn't where my road was taking me. She was part of the path itself.
She looked past me to the Arclight, still glowing in front of us. Her silhouette was framed in light so bright it looked like she was standing in front of the sun. She reached for the Arclight, and I remembered my dream, the dream of Lena reaching out to me from the darkness.
Two girls who were as different as the sun and the moon. Without one, I could never have found my way back to the other.
In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.
Liv touched the Arclight with a single finger and began to speak.
"In Illo qui Vinctus est,
Libertas Patefacietur.
Spirate denuo, Caligines.
E Luce exi."
She was crying, watching the ball of light as tears streaked down the sides of her face. She forced out every word, as if they were being etched into her, but she didn't stop.
"In the One who is Bound
Freedom will be Found.
Live again, Darkness,
Come out of the Light."
Liv's voice faltered. She closed her eyes and spoke the final words slowly into the night between us.
"Come out. Come --"
The words broke off. She held her hand out to me, and I took it. Link limped over to us, and Ridley clutched his arm on the other side. Liv's entire body was shaking. With every word, she was falling farther from her sacred duty and her dream. She had taken a side. She had Cast herself into the story that was only hers to Keep. When this was over, if we survived, Liv would no longer be a Keeper-in-Training. Her sacrifice was her gift, the one thing that gave her life meaning.