Page 104 of To Save a Broken Nebula
Imara and Hawk both stirred from where they’d dozed on the thermal mat.
Lysa, still next to him on the cot, sat up and wrapped an arm around him.
Nadine yelled his name from outside his tent. “You need to see this!”
Lysa dropped her arm, and Christian forced himself to get off his cot. Each step he took felt like wading through stone. His chest felt hollow and raw as he pushed aside the tent flap. Grief roiled in his gut, heavy and restless, a storm with no outlet.
Then he froze.
Near the scorched ground where Gemma had died, the air shimmered. The ash that had once settled, black and lifeless, was spiraling upward in slow, deliberate currents. They moved like smoke, twisting toward the ceiling as though pulled by some invisible force.
The few Dissent members who had gathered stood back in stunned silence, their eyes fixed on the impossible. Nadine stood at the edge of the blackened ground, hand clamped over her mouth.
Christian barely felt his feet beneath him as he stumbled forward, grief and terror twisting his gut until he could hardly breathe. His pulse thundered in his ears, matching the rhythm of the spiraling ash—strands of glistening violet threading through the gray. Hope clawed at him, savage and merciless.
“Gemma?” he whispered, his voice breaking. He reached out a hand as though he could touch the threads, afraid that ifhe blinked, they would scatter and be gone forever. His chest heaved as he edged closer, every muscle in his body taut with longing and dread.
Christian snatched his hand away when the ash thickened, curling in on itself. It shivered in the faint lamps’ light, caught between dissolving into nothing and solidifying into something more.
He stepped back, nails biting into his palms. Half of his mind screamed this was madness, a cruel trick of his grief. But the other half clawed with desperate hope.
The spirals gathered. Shapes teased in and out of existence before dissolving back into dust. The purple threads pulsed as they knit themselves with the ash and bound it.
A silhouette, thin as smoke, shimmered as the strands of violet light weaved tighter.
Christian staggered back a step, breath tearing in and out of him. He’d seen her burn. He’d held her ashes in the space where she’d been. Yet he would know that outline anywhere. He knew it the way he knew the sound of her voice, the curve of her smile, the feel of her hand in his.
Gemma.
His heart slammed against his ribs so hard that it hurt. His legs wanted to carry him closer, but fear rooted him in place. If he moved too soon, if he reached out and broke the fragile thing that was happening . . .
The silhouette swayed as the ash coiled tighter, creating features from where there was no form. Features that were unmistakably hers. Light sparkled inside the column of ash, faint and pulsing like a heartbeat.
He held his breath. He dared not blink, terrified the moment would slip as soon as his eyes closed. Then the fragile violet threads gave way to the suggestion of flesh, of shape, ofher.
Her hair rippled into existence, long and dark, tumbling down her shoulders in waves, in a cascade of shadow and light. They shifted as though caught by an invisible current, each strand threaded with splendor, more halo than hair.
Her face followed as if an unseen artist sketched her features stroke by careful stroke—the curve of her cheekbone, the sweep of her jaw, the bow of her lips.
And she was brilliant.
Radiance bled through her veins, her tattoos no longer just markings but rivers of molten violet cutting across her skin. They lit her from within, spilling across her arms, her chest, her legs. An entire constellation mapped onto her body.
Christian sank to the ground. His chest convulsed with a breath that tore through his spine.
Her delicate hands reached for something unseen, the air around her shimmering, bending as though the space itself was in awe. Each pulse of light steadied her outline further, knitting the gaps, filling the hollow places with grandeur. And with a sudden, blinding flare, her being locked into place.
Christian’s fist flew to his mouth as a sob broke free. Her name poured out of him raw, his chest heaving. Lysa was at his side in the next heartbeat, holding his hand, her own cheeks stained with tears.
The ash that had spun around her fell away, drifting like dying embers toward the surface below, until only she remained. Ethereal and terrifyingly beautiful.
The familiar, unmistakable woman he loved.
For one terrible heartbeat, Christian couldn’t move, too afraid that if he reached, she would vanish again. But then her eyes opened and her lips parted, and he saw her chest rise with a breath—real, sharp, and alive.
A sob tore from him so raw it bent him forward. His hands braced on the ground, his tears falling against stone.
The sight of Christian on his knees in front of her, with his head bowed and shoulders shaking, tore at her heart. His fingers dug into the blackened stone; tears dripped off his chin. She had never seen him so undone. He looked shattered, as if the weight of galaxies had pressed him into the ground—as if he wanted to stay there.
