Hold it.
Count to ten.
Let it out and breathe again.
The sharp stabs begin to recede, but what comes after isn’t much better. My cracks begin to repair. The bits of me that evaporated are being pulled back to me, each bit fitting into my puzzle, making me anew. But it’s all wrong. I feel … full. As if I’m being put back together incorrectly—more puzzle pieces going in than came out. A teddy bear with too much stuffing.
Even my breathing stops, the control I had only moments ago slipping away as the electricity inside me doubles, triples, grows larger than a house, a planet, a galaxy. But it’s inside me. Nowhere else. No escape. All that infinity is crushed inside my body, locked there as my cells reform, my molecules snap back into place, every part of me wrapping around that pool of pain, of electricity, ofpower.
My scream isn’t a scream anymore.
It’s a roar.
3
Ceredes
Igrit my teeth and keep my hands to Lana’s shoulders. Jeren and Kyte have a hold on her as well. We had to seal the circle, to connect with Lana before it was too late. But the stories they tell of what happens when a circle forms? They have nothing on the truth.
The sheer power that surges in my veins is like a dose of eternity. I could wipe out everyone in this field, every ship in the sky.
Jeren flickers in and out of shadow, his eyes like black pools of night and the tattoos along his throat pulsing with each beat of Lana’s heart. Kyte glows golden, his head bowed, concentrating on our Omega, healing her ruined body as the power of the circle creates a barrier around us.
Kyte flings his head back and lets out a yell that must reach beyond Centari’s atmosphere, but he doesn’t let go. None of us do. Even though her pain is ours, her suffering is almost too much to bear. Our power heals her, flows through us and into our Omega.
“Take whatever I have. Give it to her.” I meet Kyte’s gaze.
“Me too.” Jeren brings her hand to his lips and kisses it. “All of it for her.”
Kyte closes his eyes, and I feel the pull, the slow drain of energy that funnels to him, making him into a glowing sun, golden and terrible, destruction and resurrection. He sends the power into her, and she lights with that same golden glow, her veins shining through her pale skin, the char disintegrating, her limbs reforming and the pallor fading away as she becomes something more.
Her eyes open, the irises flickering green, then blue, then blackest night, then back to her warm brown. When she opens her mouth, a shriek rips from her, power in the multitude of tones—as if many voices live in her now—and another shockwave shoots across the surface as a second barrier forms. This one is spiky and red, lethal. Like Jeren, her body flickers in and out of darkness. Fear ripples through me as I sense her fading into the ether. I grip harder, willing her to stay where she is, but she bucks, and it takes a considerable amount of strength to hold her in place.
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!” she screams in my mind, and Jeren and Kyte wince. They hear it, too.
“Hold her down!” The medic Onin jumps from a ship as it and dozens of others land all around us.
“We’re trying,” Jeren grits out.
“Calm, Lana.” Kyte’s voice floats through the bond, smooth like cool water. “You are safe.”
“What’s wrong with me?” The roar is gone, and her voice is smaller, but power still emanates from nothing more than the tone of her voice. “Why does everything hurt?” On the last word, the red barrier spikes shoot out farther, and Onin almost catches one of them right in the chest.
He backs away. “Lana, I need to get closer, to heal you.”
Kyte looks up, the green of his eyes like energy beams through the night. “I’ve healed her.”
“I still need to check.”
“That blast.” Master Harlan approaches, his face graver than usual. “What was it?”
“It hurts so much.” Lana turns to her side and curls into a ball, the remains of her tattered and burned dress barely covering her.
I strip off my dress coat and drape it over her as Jeren strokes her hair.
“You’re a shadow now. I can feel you in the space between the stars.” He phases with her, both of them fading at the same time, then popping back into full view.
“You have my skill, too.” Kyte stares at the spiky, red barrier. “That’s all you.”
