Chapter Forty-Nine

Fireflies danced before Rebel’s eyes like tiny sparks, pulling her toward a starry sky. Multiplying until they were all around her, all she could feel, as if she were flying, drifting toward the heavens. She felt of light, flowing and free. No longer confined in the prison of her body. She was a shining piece of limitless state. Connected to every living creature.

The stars swirled and flashed into images before her, one after the other: birth, life, heartache, countless decisions that had built and molded her into who she had become. She watched all the world around her, strung on a visible thread of a vast tapestry, and looked far below, seeing the twinkling city stretched out before her. She saw the clock tower chiming in the distance, the river glistening like a glass road, and Westminster as a big gray beast. But underneath her, a figure stretched out ahead, illuminated in a fiery glow.

Anjeline.

No longer bound, kneeling over a lifeless body. Rebel’s body. She could feel every fiber of Anjeline’s essence, her pain, her sorrow, and the pure devotion that dwelt there. Felt the heat and scent of her, the thrill of her kiss, and those eyes that she saw the world in. The world she wanted. Words were being whispered to her. She saw Anjeline’s eyes, looking directly up at her as her spirit was drawn ever upward.

It seemed impossible that this would be how she would die. Losing everything that she had found. She was not ready. Not yet. Love creates a magic of its own. Her father had been wrong. It wasn’t fleeting in the way he had let it slip away. It was more savage than any force, than all the power he’d stolen. Nothing mightier in any realm than the devouring of it, no miracle greater than when it banished the darkness within. And she had to wonder if her books—what she perceived as magic and truth—might just be wrong. Maybe light didn’t always burn away the darkness.

Or maybe, her soul shouted, it must consume it.

Words whispered louder. Rise up, my love.

Rise…

Up…

They pulled Rebel from the sky, toward her home, and then she was being channeled inside herself again. There was a thrumming. A release of the muscle in her chest. A sharp intake of air drawn in—then expelled in a blinding light. Her heart overflowed at its seams into a thousand stars. As if her blood had turned to liquid fire. As if her heart had become starlight.

Starlight transformed into a force.