Free The Last Days of Lorien by Pittacus Lore

hear them all?
    Devektra’s lips didn’t move, but she answered me anyway, in a voice I heard inside my head that was both hers and not hers.
    “It’s like standing waist-deep in a rushing river and trying to catch a million tiny floating leaves as they race past you. Some of them you catch. Most of them you don’t.”
    You invited me here tonight, and summoned me back here. But why me? I wanted to know. Who am I to you? You’re Devektra. I’m a nobody in a green tunic.
    “No. You’re like me. You’re different. Neither of us fit in on this world. I knew it as soon as I met you. Before I met you, I knew.
    “I sensed you out there in the crowd that first night. All those people and their thoughts all zooming past me. Except yours. Yours just bubbled up, and I could reach down and pull up each one, like every fear and hope you had was meant for me. It sounded like you were singing.”
    But what about tonight? I had to know. Why am I here now?
    “I knew you would make me feel less alone. Especially tonight. I can feel that something terrible is about to happen.”
    I looked over. Devektra was staring at my reflection in the mirror. She had the strangest look on her face, both peaceful and surprised. Something told me that she’d never done this before, had never used her Legacy to speak to someone wordlessly like this.
    I knew then, without understanding why, that this might be the only chance I ever got. So I leaned over, closed my eyes and kissed her. Her lips were soft and she smelled like something I recognized but couldn’t describe, even to myself. Her lips tasted like something I’d tasted in a dream, one of those dreams you forget as soon as you wake up. When I opened my eyes she was gone.

CHAPTER 9
    “Deloon this time of year is miserable ,” said the guy. “You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world.”
    “No argument there, bro,” I said, even though I’d never been to Deloon. I truly didn’t want to argue.
    I was on the balcony above the stage waiting with Mirkl and the rest of the entourage for Devektra’s performance to start. She was behind schedule, but most of the people on the balcony were pretty buzzed and no one seemed impatient, least of all me.
    Instead, I just felt strange. I was lightheaded and euphoric. I didn’t know where Devektra had gone after she’d left me, but, even after her warning— something terrible is about to happen —I wasn’t worried about her. My brain was still buzzing, turning loops and cartwheels on itself.
    Our kiss had been incredible. But it was the telepathic rapport that we’d shared that I was still reeling from. Speaking only with our minds, we’d managed to communicate on a level more pure—more real—than anything I’d ever experienced. No kiss could ever compare to that.
    The lights finally came down on the club, and as they did, a spotlight, positioned stage center, took shape, a blindingly white oval. Every single person in the place gazed into the brightness, our breaths all held together, in anticipation of what was coming next.
    Then came a sound, a thin, heartbreakingly fragile warble. It seemed to be coming from inside that small pool of light. As the warble grew in volume and intensity—never losing any of its beautiful fragility—the disc of the spotlight began to bend and twist, as if willing itself to break.
    Where was Devektra? It sounded like she was somewhere inside that orb of light.
    The light kept rising off the stage floor, and the voice contained inside it rose in pitch. It stopped, hovering in the exact center of the club, only yards away from where I stood at the edge of the mezzanine. It was so bright it hurt to look at, but I couldn’t pull away.
    The volume and pitch rose and rose. Some members of the crowd plugged their ears from Devektra’s sonic drill. But still no one dared to look away from the ball of light.
    Then it exploded.
    Suddenly light was everywhere. There wasn’t a single shadow left anywhere