Page 1 of The Dark Before Light

Prologue

Talia

Galway, Ireland

“Oi! You lost?”

The voice, close and unexpected in a place I thought I was utterly alone, causes me to gasp so hard I suck in rain and cough. My heart takes off, adrenaline streaking like lightning through my veins. I jump to my feet. Dizziness makes me sway, my hip knocking against waist-high stone.

Two identical young men scowl at me from ten feet away. Rough-looking sorts, standing so close they look like conjoined twins. They wear matching, hooded black sweatshirts, holey jeans with dirty cuffs, and scuffed, muddy black boots. Dark hair curls damply around their narrow, pale cheeks. Under straight black brows, their eyes are blue. Maybe gray—the fading daylight makes it hard to tell. They’re extremely tall and slender, with that perpetually hungry look teenage boys have. They can’t be much older than me.

I should be running but can’t remember why. The more I stare at them, rapt and still swaying, the less dangerous they appear. Something about them makes me aware of every fast beat of my heart. I can almost hear my sister’s excited, hormone-soaked whispers and wonder if I’m finally—for the first time in my fourteen years of life—experiencing sexual attraction.

As I mull on this revelation, the boys lift damp, hand-rolled cigarettes to their mouths, suck deeply, and exhale identical streams of chalky-blue smoke. Licking their full lower lips, they gather a bit of escaped tobacco on their tongues before spitting it to the side.

This must be some weird performance art.

“You look like a wet hummingbird,” they say, but even though both of their mouths move, I only hear one voice. The same lilting tenor I heard before. Logic surfaces like a whale breaching in the sea of alcohol that is my brain.

Wait.

Oh.

I blink rapidly, squinting, and the two figures resolve into one. Not twins, after all. A giggle escapes me. Mortified, I slap a hand to my mouth, then wince as my braces grind against delicate flesh. The boy makes a face like he thinks I might be crazy and drops the dark stub of his cigarette to the ground.

Before I can stop myself, I say, “You shouldn’t litter.”

He grunts. “You shouldn’t be hammered and wandering around a graveyard at dusk, Birdie, but here we are.”

My thoughts hopscotch over his words, landing hard on the one making my face heat. “My name isn’t Birdie.”

He shrugs. “It is now. You’d better sit back down before you fall, Birdie.”

My head swims and my knees weaken, depositing my ass on soggy grass. I slump against the gravestone at my back and close my eyes. My senses melt, softening and expanding. Raindrops tickle my face with a hundred tiny kisses.

Sudden pressure along my right side brings my eyes open a crack. At the sight of the boy so close, his shoulder and arm touching mine, shock ripples through me. But it’s muffled by something brighter that feels like someone lit a New Year’s Eve sparkler in my stomach. A sputtering, stubborn sensation I’ve never felt before. But I’ve also never been this close to a boy who looks like this one.

He gazes straight ahead, a tiny, knowing smirk on his face. He’s aware I’m ogling him and is amused. I’m suddenly grateful for the shots my sister gave me. Finding my way back to the hotel in town and dealing with my parents—probably distraught by now since Olivia told them we were going for a short walk—is a problem for future me. Present, drunk-me is glad I don’t care if this boy knows I think he’s hot.

I can’t stop staring at the sweep of long, sooty lashes as he blinks. The faint freckles on his nose and blade-like cheekbones. The way a raindrop condenses at the tapered edge of one eyebrow, rolls downward, and is caught by a piece of dark hair on his cheek. There’s an indent beneath his lower lip, almost like a dimple. A promise of facial hair shadows his jawline and chin.

He shifts a little, hooking one boot over the other, long legs crossed casually on the soaked grass like the objective misery of wet jeans can’t touch him. The movement makes our arms press more firmly together. A familiar smell teases through the thick petrichor in the air. It takes me a few seconds to place the scent and where I’ve smelled it before—on my sister when she sneaks in late after partying with her friends.

He wasn’t smoking a cigarette.

“Do you have another joint?” I try to mimic Olivia’s flirtatious, confident voice, but the words are high-pitched and alarmingly slurred.

His head swivels to me, eyes bright with mirth. “Not a chance, Birdie.”

I sway toward him, caught in the undertow of his eyes. Their color is as unique as the rest of him—shifting ocean currents with hints of gray. I barely notice their glassy sheen or bloodshot sclera.

“How old are you?” I ask, then wince. I hadn’t given my mouth permission to say that.

His smirk returns. “Eighteen.”

The same age as my sister. She’d die to sit next to this boy. For a second, I feel guilty that I get to look at him up close and she doesn’t. Then I remember why I’m lost and soaking wet in a graveyard in Galway, Ireland to begin with. Because my sister lives to humiliate and discard me.

“What brings a wee bird out of her nest to fly among the dead this fine evening?”

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