Passion Read Online Free PDF

here?” Luce would have recognized the haughty voice anywhere. She didn’t need to see Cam step out of the doorway of the bomb shelter.
    With a soft snap and rumble like an enormous ag being unfurled, he extended his great wings. They stretched out behind him, making him even more magni cent and intimidating than usual. Luce couldn’t keep herself from staring. They cast a gold-hued glow on the dark street.
    Luce squinted, trying to make sense of the scene in front of her. There were more of them, more gures lurking in the shadows. Now they al stepped forward.
    Gabbe. Roland. Mol y. Arriane.
    Al of them were there. Al with their wings arched tightly forward. A shimmering sea of gold and silver, blindingly bright on the dark street. They looked tense. Their wing tips quivered, as if ready to spring into bat le.
    For once, Luce didn’t feel intimidated by the glory of their wings or the weight of their gazes. She felt disgusted.
    “Do you al watch it every time?” she asked.
    “Luschka,” Gabbe said in an even voice. “Just tel us what’s going on.”
    And then Dani l was there, gripping her shoulders. Shaking her.
    “Luschka!”
    “I’m not Luschka!” Luce shouted, breaking away from him and backing up a half dozen steps.
    She was horrified. How they could live with themselves? How they could al just sit back and watch her die?
    It was al too much. She wasn’t ready to see this.
    “Why are you looking at me like that?” Dani l asked.
    “She’s not who you think she is, Dani l,” Gabbe said. “Luschka’s dead. This is … this is—”
    “What is she?” Dani l asked. “How is she standing here? When—”
    “Look at her clothes. She’s clearly—”
    “Shut up, Cam, she might not be,” Arriane said, but she looked fearful, too, that Luce might be whatever Cam was about to say she was.
    Another shrieking from the air, and then a blast of artil ery shel s raining down on the buildings across the street, deafening Luce, igniting a wooden warehouse. The angels had no concern for the war going on around them, only for her. There were twenty feet now between Luce and the angels, and they looked as wary of her as she felt of them. None of them drew closer.
    In the light from the smoldering building, Dani l’s shadow was thrown far ahead of his body. She focused on summoning it to her. Would it work? Her eyes narrowed, and every muscle in her body tensed. She was stil so clumsy at this, never knowing what it took to get the shadow into her hands.
    When the dark lines began to quiver, she pounced. She gripped the shadow with both hands and started twirling the dark mass into a bal , just as she’d seen her teachers, Steven and Francesca, do on one of her rst days at Shoreline. Just-summoned Announcers were always messy just as she’d seen her teachers, Steven and Francesca, do on one of her rst days at Shoreline. Just-summoned Announcers were always messy and amorphous. They needed rst to be spun into a distinct contour. Only then could they be pul ed and stretched into a larger at surface.
    Then the Announcer would transform: into a screen through which to glimpse the past—or into a portal through which to step.
    This Announcer was sticky, but she soon pul ed it apart, guided it into shape. She reached inside and opened the portal.
    She couldn’t stay here any longer. She had a mission now: to nd herself alive in another time and learn what price the Outcasts had referred to, and eventual y, to trace the origin of the curse between Daniel and her.
    Then to break it.
    The others gasped as she manipulated the Announcer.
    “When did you learn how to do that?” Dani l whispered.
    Luce shook her head. Her explanation would only baf le Dani l.
    “Lucinda!” The last thing she heard was his voice cal ing out her true name.
    Strange, she’d been looking right at his stricken face but hadn’t seen his lips move. Her mind was playing tricks.
    “Lucinda!” he shouted once more, his voice rising in panic,