Suddenly I felt something begin to push through my own back. I cried out and doubled over, reaching my hands behind me to feel what was happening. When I pulled them away, they were drippinga"not with blood, as I'd feared, but with the same liquid silver. Devin's eyes grew wide.

"Skye," Asher said with wonder.

I saw the shadow my wings cast onto the little clearing in the woods before I realized what was happening. My own wings, the same color silver as Raven's. As the rattle. As my eyes.

Asher stepped forward, with Ardith and Gideon close behind him, forming a V. "Raven, we can welcome you into the Rebellion, too. Skye, you'll officially join us now? We'll all fight against the Order together."

I looked around the woods. My friends surrounded me, watching to see what I would do.

"Come on, Skye," Asher said, offering a hand for me to take. He looked so hopeful, so sure that I would reach out and place my hand in his. The first breeze of spring ruffled his black hair, and he grinned. "Let's go."

Which is why my heart was breaking at what I was about to do.

I took a step back. "I can't," I said.

For a second, it looked like he hadn't heard me. He continued to hold his hand out to me, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. His dark eyes stirred, as if trying to process what I'd just said.

"What?" His voice was no more than a whisper.

"No," I said, louder this time. My heart was breaking into millions of shards of glass. My insides felt cut up from them. "My wings are silver, like my eyesa""

"Don't do this, Skyea"" he pleaded, his voice cracking at my name.

"Asher, you know I have to. You've known this for a while now. I'm not a Rebel, and I'm not a Guardian. I don't think I was ever meant to be either. I need the balance of both in order to live without buckling under this power. I'm both and I'm neither. The dark and the light. I can't exist without the other."

"You can," he said. His voice sounded strange and sad and desperate. Were those tears in his eyes? I looked down, biting my lip and trying hard not to let my own tears spill over.

"I can't." I forced myself to keep saying the words I knew I had to say. "I have to finish what my parents started. I was born to do thisa"to start a new faction. I'ma"I'm grateful to you. To both of you." Devin looked up and met my eyes. It felt so wrong to be facing both of them like this, almost like we were back on the roof of the school during my first lesson. Only this time, I wasn't going to learn what I needed to know from them. I was going to have to find it in myself. "We'll make our own rules," I said. "Maybe there is such a thing as fate, and all this is supposed to happen. But if that's true, my fate has always been to make my own decisions. My parents died trying to find a way for us all to live. I can't let them down."

Raven stepped up beside me.

"You and I have never quite . . . seen eye to eye." She paused, and I could tell it was an effort for her to be nice to me. "But our lives are connected now. I healed you; you healed me. Our powers run through each other. I think our wings have made that clear." She took another step toward me. "If I belong anywhere in this universe now, it's with you, Skye."

"I'll join you, too." I looked to see who was speaking and saw Ian step into the clearing. He looked so serious, so determined, and I knew instantly that we would be friends forever, our entire lifetime. He would fight beside me, I'd seen it with my own eyes. And if it would be anyone there beside me, it would be Ian. Loyal, observant Ian, always watching, noticing when something was wrong, just a step or two behind. A strange and sudden thought occurred to me, then. Could Ian be a Rogue, like Aunt Jo? A little bit alone, a little bit out of sync, and quick to notice angelic powers like my eyesa"even if he didn't know what he was seeing? They both shared a particular hatred for Asher, that's for sure. A Rogue's hatred.

"I'm behind you one hundred percent, Skye," he said, moving beside me and Raven. "And I always have been. I'll die fighting alongside you." He put his arm around me and grinned.

"So will I," said Aunt Jo. "I always said you should follow your own star. And I don't belong to either factiona"the Rebellion or the Order. I've always been somewhere in between."

"Skye?" Asher said, and I turned to face him finally. He looked like he was fighting back something massive within him. My heart ached. In a perfect world, there would be no Order and no Rebellion. There would be no division of sides, nothing standing between us. But I knew I was making the right choice. "I love you," he said. His voice shook with effort. "I love you so much, it's like my whole life was just leading up to the moment I met you. And then as soon as I did, I lived in fear, every day, that you would be taken away from me." He looked down. "I just never thought you'd be the one to do it."

"I love you, too, Asher," I whispered. Somewhere, by the edges of the clearing, I could hear Cassie sigh, and the shards of my heart were breaking into smaller, sharper pieces. I felt like my whole body was breaking. But I had to stay strong. "I have to do this."

Asher's hand fell, finally, to his side, and hung there without purpose, as if its entire reason for being had suddenly been taken away. Beside him, Devin put a hand on his back. I was finally able to see all of the emotions in his eyes, everything he could now let himself feel. And beneath the concern, I saw something else. Hope. But was it hope for me? For the Rebellion? For the fate of the universe? Was he hoping I could save ita"or hoping that there was still a chance for us now that he was free to love?

I couldn't think about those things just yet. They would have to wait. I had a mission now, of my own.

I looked at Ian and Raven and Aunt Jo. They stood on either side of me, hands poised at their sides, and for the first time, I felt purpose. I finally had a clear direction. I knew who we were and the journey we were about to embark on.

We weren't light, and we weren't dark. We were the in-between. We were something fractured and put back together again, better, stronger, illuminating the night.

Acknowledgments.

HEARTFELT THANKS (AND HUGS) go to: The team at Harper, especially Karen Chaplin, Andrea Martin, Barbara Lalicki, and Marisa Russell.

Colin Anderson and Erin Fitzsimmons, for your breathtaking vision.

Maria Gomez, for being a phone call away.

The readers, bloggers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers who supported A Beautiful Darka"and all of your wonderful emails, tweets, postcards, and messages!

Dark Days cohorts extraordinaire Amy Vincent, Kiersten White, and Amy Garvey, for being the best late-night-empty-Italian-restaurant-dinner-company a girl could have, and providing inspiration, support, and raucous, delirious, sleep-deprived laughter.

Anne Heltzel, Jess Rothenberg, Leila Sales, and Rebecca Serle, for rooftop wine, stoop coffee, cheese anytime, advice, tips, photo ops, horse-dancing, puns, panicked phone callsa"I'm so glad we found one another.

My friends near and fara"from Boston to Snug Harbor, from Chicago to DC to San Fran to right down the block; from the booth at Heidelberg to the halls of Page to caaandyhouse to sharing a cubicle wall. Whether I take the subway, the B63, or the Bolt Bus to see you, thank you for reading, for cheering me ona"and reminding me that life is meant to be lived (in addition to being written about). If I know how to write about friends convincingly, if I understand friendship at all, it's because of you guys.

And always, Jody and Lee Davies, Shelby Davies, Sandra and Mark Messler, and the Sigler clan. With so much love.

About the Author.

JOCELYN DAVIES is the author of A BEAUTIFUL DARK, the first book in this captivating trilogy. She edits young adult fiction at a publishing house in New York, a job that has allowed her to cultivate a keen interest in all things angsty, hilarious, and/or unrequited. She is a graduate of Bates College, and lives in an apartment overflowing with books. Visit her online at www.jocelyndavies.com.

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A Beautiful Dark.

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