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“Charge?”
“Fuel. Um. Give your power to someone else to help their power.”
“Are you implying that I could do such a thing to you?”
“I’m pretty sure the concept of a battery won’t have much meaning here, but yeah. My magic can be amplified by someone else’s power.” The other untranslatable word—battery—lay heavy on her tongue.
But Nesta looked her over. “For what purpose?”
“So I can teleport.” Another word that didn’t translate. “Winnow.” She pointed to the other side of the divide. “I could winnow us over there.”
Azriel said, “Give me a reason to believe you won’t winnow out of here and leave us.”
“I can’t. You’ll have to trust me.”
“After what you just pulled?”
“Remember that I’ll be trusting you not to blast a hole through my heart.” She tapped the star. “Aim right there.”
“I told you already: we don’t want to kill you.”
“Then aim carefully.”
Azriel and Nesta exchanged a glance.
Bryce added, “Look, I’d offer you something in return if I could. But you literally took everything of value from me.” She pointed to the sword at Azriel’s back.
Nesta angled her head. Then reached into her pocket. “What about this?”
Her phone.
Her phone. With Nesta’s movement, the lock screen came on, blaring bright in the gloom, with Hunt’s face right there. His beautiful, wonderful face, so full of joy—
Azriel and Nesta were blinking at the bright light, the photo, and then the phone was gone, stashed in Nesta’s pocket again.
“There’s a portrait hidden inside its encasing,” Nesta added. “Of you and three females.”
The photo of Bryce, Danika, June, and Fury. She’d forgotten she’d put it in there before heading to Pangera. But there, in Nesta’s pocket, shielded by those fancy-ass waterproofing spells she’d purchased, was her only link back to Midgard. To the people who mattered. And if she was stuck in this fucking world … that might very well be all she had left of her own.
“Were you waiting to dangle that in front of me?” Bryce asked.
A shrug from Nesta. “I guessed you might find it valuable.”
“Who’s to say I’m not playing you? Making you think it means something to me so I can leave you down here anyway?”
“Same reason you came running back to see if we were alive,” Azriel said coolly.
Fine. She’d exposed herself with that one. So she said to Azriel, “Hit the star.”
“How much power?”
Gods, this was potentially a really bad idea. Experimenting with power she didn’t know or understand—
“A little. Just make sure you don’t deep-fry me.”
After the shit with the Wyrm, he’d probably like nothing more than to do exactly that. But Azriel’s lips tugged upward. “I’ll try my best.”
Bryce braced herself, sucking in a deep breath—
