Page 73 of Gift from the Nexus

My ears roar with the pounding of my heart because obviously something is wrong. Very wrong. Patting my body down, my hands don’t pass through like when I dream walk or in visions, but as I gaze down, I shriek.

My legs are distorted, barely visible even to me, and depending on how I turn them, they almost completely disappear. The same happens with my hands when I hold them out in front of me and turn them over. It’s like seeing a mirage. One moment, I’m here. The next, I’m not.

“Guys…” I call out in a trembling voice, now full-on freaking out, and a tear slides down my cheek when none of them turn back to me.

“Please. Please hear me,” I mumble softly in my mind.

Draken and Tillman whip around at the same time, which also draws Caspian’s attention, and he jogs over to stand with Tillman, whose head is turning in every direction, searching for me. When I seek out Corentin, he’s the only one looking in my direction with his head tilted to the side, staring in concentration.

“Corentin, please. I’m freaking out. None of you can hear or see me.”

His eyes grow as wide as saucers. One minute, he’s halfway across the clearing. The next, he’s in front of me, picking me up and spinning me around. I latch my body in a death grip around his ’cause fuck me, that was petrifying.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay. I see you, princess. There’s nothing about you I don’t see.”

Gripping my hair, his fear and worry melt away to overwhelming excitement that I don’t understand or have time to question it as he tilts my head back and plasters his lips tomine. He pours every bit of himself into me with every swipe of his tongue and I wrap my whole body around him as tightly as I can, sucking it all up regardless because I never want to go a moment again where they can’t see, hear, or feel me.

“Little wanderer.”

“Will.”

“Primary.”

The others all breathe as they surround us and Corentin reluctantly breaks our kiss and sets me back on my feet.

“Of everything I’ve been through, that was by far the scariest. Why couldn’t any of you hear me or see me?”

“What?” Draken, Tillman, and Caspian all ask, confused.

“Because you were bending the light. My gift just emerged, princess. You were bending the rays of the sun. Instead of reflecting yourself the way I did, you made yourself invisible. As soon as I saw a glimmer of you, I was able to see through the magic.” Corentin beams, running his thumb across my bottom lip.

Holy shit.

“That…that was your gift? You can do that?” I stutter.

“Yeah. You’ve seen me move in and out of the light. I just did it to get to you. You, on the other hand, moved in and never came back out, so essentially you made yourself invisible,” he says, smiling.

I cast my wide eyes across the other three, who are just as surprised as me. Well, of course not Caspian. He’s wearing his devilish smirk that says he expected nothing less. When I meet Gaster’s and Oakly’s gazes, I snicker as he looks back at me with so much pride, but Oakly is more furious than an angry bull.

“You’re trying to kill us. Just admit it already,” she says, crossing her arms and staring me down.

“I’m not. I swear. Elementra sucked me into the past literally mid-flight. I don’t even know how I got into the clearing. Ihave no recollection whatsoever of landing, shifting back, or anything,” I swear to all of them.

“We watched you come down, little wanderer. You descended like normal and everything. After a few minutes, you didn’t respond to any of our mental connections, so we came out here to the clearing, and you weren’t here. So we freaked out, called everyone in,” Draken says, tugging me out of Corentin’s arms and kissing me stupid.

“Yeah, I don’t recall any of that. How long has it been?”

“Almost two hours,” Caspian says darkly.

Damn.

By the look in his eye, I know if I had pulled this shit on my own, not of Elementra’s making, I’d be in so much trouble.

“What did you see, child?” Gaster asks, cutting off the naughty fantasy I was creating in my mind about how Corentin and Caspian would deliver my punishment while Draken and Tillman watched. Maybe they’d participate. My flaming face and the small, quiet groans from the guys let me know I didn’t hide that from my bonds very well.

“My mom. The moment she escaped Franklin for the first time. It was amazing,” I tell him.

Jumping right into the story as we all make our way back to the mansion, everyone listens in quiet fascination and the more I get out, the more powerful, proud, strong I feel. I know there is still so much to her story that I’m missing, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, Elementra told her or showed her everything to expect. And she owned it. She was an absolute badass. And…

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