Page 158 of The Never List
I suck in a deep breath. I’ve endured so much—the harsh conditions in the mountains in the Ashlands, my parents going on the Never List, enforcers like Turner treating me like garbage, and my sister disappearing. If I can survive that, I can survive my mates’ powers.
“How do I give it back to them?”
“How does water roll down the side of a mountain?” Tareena asks.
“It’s not so easy to explain,” Neph adds.
“Time is running out,” Evaluna says. “Make your choice.”
“I choose them,” I say confidently despite the uncertainty wavering in my soul.
Evaluna steps closer to me, and I bow low, doing my best not to drop to my knees from her sheer power. “Hurry,” she says. “They’re in danger of meeting us again, but on fate’s terms, not their own.”
“Be wary of who wanted you dead,” Neph says, only adding to the adrenaline racing through my body. “We did not craft that elixir to kill you.”
Tareena and Eirdis nod to me, and then all four of them give me a singular wave, and my entire body rips into a million pieces—
I struggle for breath, swimming up from a pitch black sodeep and dark, it’s heavier than anything imaginable.
Sounds hit me all at once.
Chaotic, rage-fueled thoughts echo inside my mind—Axl’s voice and Kal’s. Pierce’s and Jax’s. I can’t distinguish between the words, only the guttural sounds as they fill me from the inside out.
I pry my eyes open, cringing against the onslaught of thoughts storming my mind and the weight of the emotions accompanying them.
Grief.
I’mdrowningin it, but it doesn’t belong to me.
I can’t breathe around the anger, the rage, the unmistakable pain of loss.
I roll to my side, immediately emptying the contents of my stomach onto the marble floor. The violent action pushes the powers back, allowing my mind to clear enough to blink the fog from my eyes.
I’m behind Evaluna’s obsidian statue, the sounds of a fight happening just beyond it. I crawl, my legs feeling too wobbly to stand—
Goddess, my mates… They’re fighting off a handful of Faders, powerless.
They have nothing beyond Jax’s small blades, and they’relosing.
Kal has a cut along his right arm, Axl has one above his left eye, Pierce is on one knee as he gasps for breath, and Jax…helookslike a nightmare, chaotic and terrifying as he thrashes despite being severely outnumbered.
I have to get to them.
I will my muscles to work, try to lift myself under the weight of all the new powers prowling beneath my skin.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
This…this is too much.
I close my eyes, desperately trying to catch each power, to grip it and mentally wrap it around the bonds I can feel snapping inside me.
Sun.
I feel the warmth of the sun first, and I leap atop it, grabbing it with one mental hand and Kal’s bond with the other—
“Rylee?” Kal’s voice is drenched in hope as he yells my name, as I feel his power zap down that bond and return to him, making me feel lighter—stronger, somehow, despite surrendering his power.
Sweat dots my brow, but I stay right where I am, doing my best to send Axl his power. His is so damn slippery, his water strong and vast and mischievous. Instead of trying to catch it, I will it to swirl around Axl’s bond—
