Page 97 of Fractured Souls

You’re my host. I know you better than you know yourself.

The old Alexis would have walked away, thinking this whole thing was total insanity.

Spirits?

A hand that could kill with a touch?

Kordolians that were actually noble?

Most of all, Nythian, this fierce, dangerous alien… was all hers?

It was insane, but it all made perfect sense in her Universe.

She could do this.

You can. Send me home, Alexis. I am ready.

In the background, Rucha was speaking to Nythian with great urgency, but his voice barely registered.

Are we starting? Is this it? She’d been expecting it to be a little more… ceremonial or something.

What am I supposed to do, Anuk?

Close your eyes.

Alexis threw caution to the wind and did just that.

Feel it?

What?

Feel it, Alexis. Now Anuk’s tone changed, becoming stern and commanding, a side to her she’d never seen before. A strange energy rippled through Alexis’s body, and she dropped to her knees in the center of the stone circle.

She pressed her palms against the cold stone and looked up to the pure blue sky.

There. She could feel it now, a gentle, seductive pull that grew stronger, like a riptide in an ocean, threatening to sweep her away. The sunlight blurred her vision, which was tinged with green at the edges.

I need you to let go.

Wh-what do you mean?

Drop your guard. Forget the things that make you hard and sharp-edged. Dissolve your barriers. I need you to be as innocent and open as you were on the day you first came into being.

How am I supposed to do that? She stared up at the blazing sky. Her vision split, becoming a kaleidoscope of white and blue and green.

Think of the last time you felt that way.

She glanced to the side and saw Nythian standing at the edge of the circle. He was the dark aberration in her vision, a black hole sucking in the light.

And he was the only being in this room—perhaps in the entire Universe—that she completely trusted.

“Whatever it is, just do it,” he said quietly. “If Enki managed to let go of her, then so can you. I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.” He shrugged, as if releasing a disembodied Tharian into the afterlife were an everyday occurrence.

His voice; rough, gravelly, baritone… she clung to the sound, used it as her anchor. She remembered the way he spoke to her, his lips so close to her ear they were almost touching, his breath feathering her cheek, his powerful arms around her.

When she was with him, nothing in the Universe could touch her.

She held onto that memory, and Anuk’s presence amplified that feeling a thousandfold.

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