Torment - Lauren Kate [134]
Then the Outcasts disappeared into the night.
Back in the yard, Daniel barreled into Cam, throwing him to the ground. “What’s wrong with you?” he yelled, his fists wailing down on Cam’s face. “How could you?”
Cam strained to stop him. They rolled over each other on the grass. “It was a better end for her, Daniel.”
Daniel was seething, tackling Cam, slamming his head into the dirt. Daniel’s eyes blazed. “I’ll kill you!”
“You know I’m right!” Cam shouted, not fighting back at all.
Daniel froze. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know anything now.” His voice was ragged. He’d been gripping Cam by the lapel, but now he just slumped to the ground, burying his face in the grass.
Luce wanted to go to him. To fall on him and tell him everything was going to be okay.
Except it wasn’t.
What she’d seen tonight was too much. She felt sick from watching herself—Miles’s mirror image of her—die from the starshot.
Miles had saved her life. She couldn’t get over it.
And the rest of them thought Cam had ended it.
Her head swam as she stepped forward from the shadows of the shed, planning to tell the others not to worry, that she was still alive. But then she sensed the presence of something else.
An Announcer was quivering in the doorway. Luce stepped out of the shed and approached it.
Slowly, it broke free of a shadow cast by the moon. It slithered along the grass toward her for a few feet, picking up a dirty coat of dust left by the battle. When it reached Luce, it shuddered up and rose along her body, until it hovered blackly over her head.
She closed her eyes and felt herself raising her hand to meet it. The darkness fell to rest in her palm. It made a cold sizzling sound.
“What is that?” Daniel’s head snapped around at the noise. He raised himself from the ground. “Luce!”
She stayed put as the others gasped at the sight of her standing in front of the shed. She didn’t want to glimpse an Announcer. She’d seen enough for one night. She didn’t even know why she was doing this—
Until she did. She wasn’t looking for a vision, she was looking for a way out. Something far away enough to step through to. It had been too long since she’d had a moment to think on her own. What she needed was a break. From everything.
“Time to go,” she said to herself.
The shadow door that presented itself in front of her wasn’t perfect—it was jagged around the edges and it stank of sewage. But Luce parted its surface anyway.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Luce!” Roland’s voice reached her at the edge of the doorway. “It could take you anywhere!”
Daniel was on his feet, jogging toward her. “What are you doing?” She could hear the profound relief in his voice that she was still alive, and the sheer panic that she could manipulate the Announcer. His anxiety only spurred her on.
She wanted to look back to apologize to Callie, to thank Miles for what he’d done, to tell Arriane and Gabbe not to worry the way she knew they were going to anyway, to leave word for her parents. To tell Daniel not to follow her, that she needed to do this for herself. But her chance to break free was closing. So she stepped forward and called over her shoulder to Roland, “Guess I’ll just have to figure it out.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel rushing toward her. Like he hadn’t believed until now that she would do it.
She felt the words rising up in her throat. I love you. She did. She did forever. But if she and Daniel had forever, their love could wait until she figured out a few important things about herself. About her lives and the life she had ahead of her. Tonight there was only time to wave goodbye, take a deep breath, and leap into the dismal shadow.
Into darkness.
Into her past.
EPILOGUE
PANDEMONIUM
“What just happened?”
“Where’d she go?”
“Who taught her how to do that?”
The frantic voices in the backyard sounded wobbly and distant to Daniel. He knew the