“Neither do I.” Dorian started walking around the lack of space and staring at it intently.
“Dorian…” Bel waited until his brother looked at him.
There was a strange silent communication between them, and both brothers looked truly angry at the same time.
The air around us trembled a bit, and I got a terrible feeling. “Step back, everyone. Just step back. Something isn’t right.”
Instead, Bel grabbed Gwen, who grabbed Lord Cato, while Dorian grabbed Aiko and me, and they jerked all of us back through the doors we’d crashed through.
Half a moment after the doors slammed shut, thenothingtrembled and rippled. A tremendous bang had all of us covering our ears, and the bubble of nothing popped and grew larger. The sudden push—or sucking away—of reality shook the mountain again.
“What thehellis that?”
“Still nothing,” I whispered.
“Kimber!” Aiko tried not to laugh.
“What? I’m right. It’s just more of nothing.”
Gwen choked on a laugh, which earned her a scathing look from Lord Cato. The look did precisely the opposite of its intended purpose, and Gwen lost it.
Even though this was a dire situation, the laugh got to us, and we were all laughing one by one. Aiko looked around. “We’re laughing at nothing!”
Another round of belly laughs passed around, and we were all gasping for breath.
The air popped again just like the last time the nothing grew, and we immediately stopped laughing. Well—as best we could.
I looked through the glass in the doors, and the bubble didn’t seem like it was getting ready to grow this time. “It feels like it’s going to do something else. We should probably stay here.”
“I feel like I agree,” Gwen said.
This time, it was a hard pull on reality, jerking it back in closer and sucking the air out of the room as the rocks trembled around us.
The air rushed back in, and we all hauled in a breath.
“What is going on?” Lord Cato yelled.
The air crackled again.
“Again, so soon?” Aiko asked.
There was a snap, a pulse, a twist, then the nothing that had been floating there was reformed reality and— two completely naked figures standing in the center of it.
Standing was probably generous. One had a leg propped up on the other’s back. The other had one arm up, his hand laying on the crown of his head. The other arm draped over his genitals—in some weird attempt at modesty. The second figure had one knee on the ground, the other knee up and reaching with both hands to the sky for…something.
The ridiculousness of the poses passed in a flash, and my eyes landed on their faces.
Rilen and Roran.
Very much alive.
And naked.
I passed out.
* * *
“She’s waking.”
