Epilogue

“In the Light there is Dark, and in the Dark there is Light,” Lila Jane Evers translated, for the thousandth time. She was still holding the translucent scrap of parchment, still no thicker than onionskin, between her fingertips. “Licentia in Lux Lucis. Freedom in Light.” She looked up at Marian. “Freedom from what?”

Lila Jane sat back in her hard wooden chair—at her customary table for one (though with Marian’s chair now shoved up against hers)—in the rare documents reading room of the Perkins Library, as she did every night.

Lila Jane was obsessed. At least she was aware of it.

And Marian doesn’t point it out that often.

Lila Jane straightened one curling edge of the parchment with her white-gloved hand.

It’s all I have left of him.

She smoothed the scrap of paper in her hand. “There has to be more to it than words on a page.”

“What’s wrong with words on a page? They’re our specialty, Lila.” Marian smiled. She didn’t call her best friend Janie anymore.

Not even Jane.

Marian couldn’t make this easier or take away the pain; no one could do that. But she could make sure her best friend didn’t have to face it alone.

Lila Jane took off her white gloves. “It’s not just any Cast. There has to be a reason I found it. A reason it brought us together.” She didn’t say his name.

She couldn’t.

“In the Dark there is Light? You think that’s about the two of you?” Marian asked.

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” Lila Jane asked. “But if we were so different that we could never be together, why didn’t it feel that way? Why did he feel like my kindred spirit? Like a part of my soul?”

Every word was agony.

“A Ravenwood and an Evers? I wonder…” Marian shook her head. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now.”

Don’t you understand? I have to.

Lila Jane looked at her friend. “I want to go back to the library, Mare. I want to know what you know. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I’ve started down a road that has no end, and I can’t stop now. Not even if I wanted to.”

Marian pulled off her gloves. “It’s a dangerous road, Lila.”

“Macon said you were a Keeper. I want to be like you.”

“Lila—”

“It’s my choice. You said it was always my choice,” Lila Jane said, reaching to take Marian’s hand in her own.

“It is.”

“I feel like it’s more than that, Mare. I feel like it’s my destiny.” Lila Jane squeezed her best friend’s hand. “And you know I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”

She looked at Marian with huge, heavy eyes.

They were the kind of eyes that wanted to see the truth, and nothing less.

Thirty years later and hundreds of miles away, Lila Evers Wate’s only son stared up at Marian with those same eyes.

He clutched Marian’s hand, with Lila Jane’s mother-of-pearl watch strapped to her slender wrist. Listening as intently as his mother always had.

Marian couldn’t find her voice.

He’s so much like his mother. But he’s more than just Lila Jane’s son. He’s her destiny now. She closed her eyes. You’re not done yet, Janie, but you’re close. I can feel the road’s end. Just a bit farther, I promise.

It was a promise Marian could make because she knew something no one else in Gatlin County did.

Destiny wasn’t finished with this boy and his mother.

Not yet, Janie.

Not yet.