The sun cast brilliance, and the twins tumbled out of the cold, black caves into its powerful, warm beams. The rays shone on the mystery of Evyn’s new power. He was still thin and small—smaller than she’d ever known him to be—but he was no longer weak. His chest bloomed as red as fire, and something dark pulsed beneath his fair skin.
“Are you all right?” Sevyn held out her hand and wondered if her brother would be too afraid to take it. He looked over her fingers. “I can control the lightning now. An elf named Nolan taught me.”
“It’s dangerous to name names,” Evyn said in a voice she barely knew.
Screeches and howls echoed toward them.
The Knye were coming. They banged through the black caves below, their snarling voices charging ahead of them.
“Come on!” she called, still holding out her hand to him.
“Why bother?” Evyn said. “They will catch us, and they will make you into their own power as well.”
Sevyn shivered. “What’s happened to you?”
The Knye had nearly reached the cave’s entrance, and she couldn’t wait for an answer. She grabbed his hand, sending him a small shock for good measure. They ran together, hand in hand, across the Blackened Wastes of Thornbred. Tree stumps stood like charcoal graves, marking the fire that had turned a peaceful nation of elves into the charred-hearted Knye.
Sevyn thought this place might be damned—except green grass had begun to grow through the black ash, as thick as carpet. Perhaps life was returning to Elementia after all.
Peering into the distance, I watched the small figures of Sevyn and Evyn run hand in hand across a green hill, having escaped the black caves of Thornbred. A crane camera zoomed after them, while Eamon and Nell Waterson were in costume off to one side. They were waiting to sweep in and help defeat the Knye—a host of stunt doubles in all-green spandex suits—chasing them.
After this, the cast and crew would pack up and head back to LA to film the scenes in the island kingdom of Cerul where the twins are welcomed home, and Sevyn gets hailed as a hero. Right before Evyn murders the king, sets fire to the entire island, and disappears. Sevyn is left to save her people by taking them to the only land available—Elementia. Bam. End of Book One.
Nice one, Grandma Mae.
It was too bad that the sequels had been canceled because, the story twisted deeper, darker, and more passionate as the characters grew older. Maybe the movie will do so well that the fans will demand it, I hoped. I still didn’t know what happened at the end of the third book, but I was mostly through the second, and falling in love with all of it—which made me want to look up Mr. Sams and drop him a line.
Which then made me think about the challenge I’d issued my dad yesterday, and the phone number for John Warren in my pocket.
Time was doing that screwy thing: moving too fast. I wanted our last day to be years long, so each minute felt like an hour. I pulled out my notebook, scribbling lyrics before I caught sight of a narrow figure in a black casual suit. His nose was in the air; he was trying to seem composed, even though he looked downright scared.
I could see it in every inch of him. My dad was as terrified as I’d been ten days ago.
I closed my notebook and approached him. “Walk down to the harbor with me?”
He squinted, surprised, but I’d said the right thing. Getting away from the filming would help him relax. We headed down the road toward the town and the blinding-white rays reflecting off the water. We were halfway there before he spoke.
“I thought your song showed promise,” he said. I nearly sprained my neck looking at him. “Don’t seem so surprised. I have good taste, don’t I?”
About ten answers yammered through my brain, but I didn’t speak.
“Iris, I’m not going to pretend I want you to be an artist. I’d love for you to become a doctor or professor. Some career that doesn’t suck the marrow out of your bones for a paycheck the size of an insult which is then taxed at forty percent.” He sighed. “But if it’s in you, you have to let it out.”
“Is that what Grandma Mae said when you told her you wanted to be a writer?”
“You’re going to keep asking until I answer, is that it?” he snapped.
“Yes.” I paused, eyeing the water. “Maybe it’s not fair to make you remember, but it’s not fair to keep me in the dark.”
“Sam…” His voice was rough with old pain, his temples full of gray. Guess time was sneaking up on him too. “None of this is about your grandmother, Iris. It’s about my sister. She died. We were thirteen.”
I didn’t tell him I’d figured out that much. “That’s horribly sad.”
“You can’t imagine,” he said roughly, but then he sighed. “It had been the three of us. My father was more neglectful than yours, if you can imagine.” He cast a glance at me that I didn’t respond to. “So when Sam was gone, it was the two of us. I was angry. My mother was depressed. She started writing. She disappeared into her pages. I could have gotten addicted to heroin and she wouldn’t have noticed. She published that first book the same year I graduated from high school and I refused to read it. She moved to Ireland, fell in love, and made a new life without me. I hadn’t spoken to her in ten years when you were born.”
The road beneath our feet connected to the shore, and the bright
