Sudden understanding dawns in his eyes. “That’s what this breaking-up business was all about for you, wasn’t it? You thought I was going to get hurt. You pushed me away to protect me. You’re still pushing.” He shakes his head. “Losing you, that’s the worst kind of hurt there is.”
He reaches out and touches a strand of my hair, tucks it behind my ear, then backs off a little, tries a different approach. “Hey. How about this? You’re home for a couple more days, right? I’m home, as usual.” I see the news of his college situation rise up in his mind, but for some reason he doesn’t tell me about it. “Let’s go fishing. Let’s climb a mountain. Let’s try again.”
I’ve never wanted anything so much.
He sees the uncertainty on my face. “I should have fought for you, Clara, even if I would have had to fight you to fight for you. I should never have let you go.”
I close my eyes. I know that any minute now he’s going to kiss me, and my resistance is going to melt away completely.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. And then, out of self-protection more than anything else, I bring the glory. I don’t warn him or anything. I don’t damp it down. I bring it. The room fills with light.
“This is what I am,” I say, my hair ablaze around my head.
He squints at me. His jaw juts out a little in pure stubbornness. He stands his ground.
“I know,” he says.
I take a step toward him, close the space between us, put my glowing hand against his ashen cheek. He starts to tremble. “This is what I am,” I say again, and my wings are out now.
His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me.
“I can accept that,” he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me.
His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but then he pulls away and glances toward the front door. Groans.
Christian is standing in the doorway.
“Wow,” Tucker says, trying to grin. “You really know how to cramp a guy’s style.”
His legs give out. He falls to his knees.
My light blinks off.
Christian’s clutching a DVD copy of Zombieland in one hand, the other hand clenched into a fist at his side. His expression is completely shut down.
“I guess I’ll come back later,” he says. “Or not.”
Tucker’s still catching his breath on the floor.
I follow Christian to the door. “He just came over. I didn’t mean for you to—”
“See that?” he finishes for me. “Great. Thanks for trying to spare my feelings.”
“I was trying to prove a point to him.”
“Right,” he says. “Well, let me know how that turns out.”
He turns toward the door, then stops, the muscles in his back tensing. He’s about to say something really harsh, I think, something he won’t be able to take back.
“Don’t,” I say.
Dizziness crashes over me. I hear a strange whooshing sound, like wind in my ears, accompanied by the distinct smell of smoke. Christian turns, his face all scrunched up like he’s confused by what he sees in my head. He looks suddenly worried.
That’s when I pass out.
The black room is filling up with smoke.
I jolt into future Clara in the exact instant that the darkness explodes into light, and in that moment I understand: This light’s not glory. It’s fire. A fireball streaks over my shoulder and strikes the wall somewhere off to the side, behind me. Then Christian screams, “Get down!” and I drop just in time for him to literally leap over my body, his glory sword out and bright and deadly, blinding me. Everything’s a jumble of black-and-white flashing: Christian and the figures circling him, the swift movement of his blade against the dark. I scramble backward until my back hits something solid, glance over my shoulder to see what’s happening with the fire.
The flames lick up the side of the room, igniting the velvet curtains like tissue paper. This place is going to be an inferno in about five minutes. My heart’s hammering, but I swallow and push myself to my knees, then to my feet. I have to help Christian. I have to fight.