Courage (Mark of Nexus) by Carrie Butler Read Free Book Online Page A

journal. I read some of it while I was waiting. I didn’t know…” She looked up at me, covered her mouth, and then gasped from behind her hand. “Oh God. You’re bleeding.”
    “Forget that.” I scooped up the book and tried to make my eyes focus. “What’s in here?”
    She set her bag aside and wrung her hands. “The Mark of Nexus. Adelyn crossed paths with a man named Luke, someone she repeatedly referred to as an Augari.” Her head lowered and she muttered, “Someone whose presence had an effect on her powers.”
    My knees felt weak as I slid down the door to the carpet. “Okay…”
    “That’s a note, too.” She gestured to the front of the book and I opened it, letting a few papers slip out. “I guess Faye pressed Henry for information, but I don’t get why she would assume he knew anything.”
    I struggled to scan the note. “Think about it. He takes care of the oldest living member of our family. If she wanted to piece the past together, he’d be the one to call.”
    “And he had already been holding onto information he wasn’t sure of,” she added, filling in the blanks. “He was probably waiting for an excuse to get it off his chest.”
    Ah, hell. It really did make sense. “So, when he figured out her intentions—which I’m assuming relate back to today—it was too late to take it back. She had something on him, and he had no choice but to move up here. Closer. Where she could keep an eye on him.”
    Rena nodded and took the book from me. “Yeah, but why?”
    I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes and leaned back, trying to concentrate. “I don’t know.”
    She read in silence for a few minutes, working her way through the pages. “Apparently, Adelyn and this dude knew about each other’s races. They were both raised to accept the notion of balance—some kind of checks and balance system among the supernatural. She even mentions a third race, the Nullari.”
    I lowered my hands and forced myself to focus. “What?”
    “Every Dynari is gifted with special abilities, right?” she asked, her eyes darting back and forth to feed the flow of information. “Well, it seems like the Augari intensify those abilities and the Nullari cancel them out. So, if you threw ‘em all in the same room, it would balance. The Dynari would maintain his or her original power.”
    The room lurched to the side in a blur as my brain scrambled to catch up. “You’re telling me there are people out there who can strengthen me and people who can make me weak?”
    “No weaker than a normal human, but yeah, that’s what it says.” Her tone didn’t waver, but I felt her unease knot inside my chest. Was she thinking what I was thinking?
    “What does it say about the Nexus?” I asked, pressing for the confirmation we both needed.
    A heavy sigh worked its way through her body, and her shoulders sagged. “Let me see.” She flipped a few pages and scanned the text. “The rare bond of a Dynari and an Augari. A give-and-take of power described as both a blessing and a…curse.”
    The heater hummed quietly as she continued to read in silence, her eyes widening more with every line. Panic, disbelief, horror…
    “So, that makes you—” I started, before she slammed the book shut.
    Her face had completely drained of color. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”
    “Rena.”
    She shook her head, and her cagey gaze swept the room. “The note says Faye can’t know we have this, so we better find a place to hide it. How about here?”
    “Listen to me.” I enunciated each word, calling upon my last reserves of patience as she slid the journal under my bed. “You know we need to talk about this.”
    “There’s nothing to talk about,” she waved me off, slinging her bag across her chest as she stood. “So there are two races we didn’t know about, and your great-grandmother had the Nexus. That doesn’t change the fact that Faye is out to get us or that Henry could be in danger.”
    I