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He was right.

My hands were almost see-through, and glowing. I peered up at the moon, which was shining brightly, its power magnifying my body with strength. “What?” I said again, completely dumbfounded. “What’s wrong with me?” I couldn’t help but ask.Worry creased his brow. He didn’t know what was happening to me, either.

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“What are you thinking?” I begged, needing to know why my skin looked like a poisonous frog.

“Well, this is one of the side effects from themaxzClemmy told us while you were passed out, but it doesn’t make sense because you’re not touching Belle…”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t, either. Come here, let’s go ask everyone.”

His strong arms enveloped me, lifting me effortlessly off the ground, cradling me close to his chest. I nestled my face into the fabric of his shirt, feeling the rise and fall of his chest beneath me. The urge to tell him to let me down tugged at my thoughts, yet my weary limbs betrayed me, unable to muster the strength.

The weight of everyone’s golden eyes was fixed on us as we passed through the trees.

“She’s see-through,” Luella said.

“What?” Abner and Angie questioned simultaneously as they approached us, their eyes fixed on me as if I were a creature in a museum. Damian dashed a look so fast at Abner, I knew he couldn’t have missed it. There was still tension buzzing between them.

“Belle!”I called out in my mind, needing her now. I heard the rhythmic thud of her wings in the distance, answering my mental plea. I jumped out of Damian’s arms and blasted flames upward, charring the trees that encircled us like a dome, making way for her to come down.

“You could’ve asked us to bring it down,” Loker muttered, but I didn’t care. I needed her now.

“Belle, what’s happening?” I pleaded, feeling like a freak. She joined by my side, flapping down quickly, but not answering, knowing that this wasn’t normal.

“Lia, try shadow-wielding,” Abner demanded. Damian stepped in protectively, and I glared at him, telling him to stop, wanting to try anything for my skin to go back to normal.

“What? How?”

“Make shadows appear, or make our shadows move,” he said, watching me intently. I walked toward Belle to touch her for themaxzto work. “Without Belle,” he added.

My skin was turning translucent without touching Belle and using the maxz together.

Wielding my hands and putting imagery in my mind, I thought of a Deathly. Its form came to mind as I drew it out with my fingers, my eyes closed, concentrating.

A black shadow of a Deathly rose from my own shadow, swerving through the small area we lived in. It opened its mouth and looked like the image engraved in my mind, like a forever nightmare. The wings were bat-like with holes—the beady eyes of death. Everything was exactly to the point.

The Deathly I wielded swept its wings into the air, capturing and creating chaos. At first, there were gasps, not understanding that it was created from my shadow. However, the blackness of the shadow matched how it looked in real life. Its claws curled, ready to draw blood with a small scrape of its talon, ready to infect someone with the disease of death itself.

Panic in his eyes, Loker fell over a tree trunk, the object that he had whittled flying over with him. Luella screamed, watching as the shadow-formed Deathly dissipated, flowing down into nothingness, bleeding back into the original shadow of my body.

“Wow,” Loker said, choking out the words as he picked himself up, brushing the dirt pellets clinging to his faded clothes.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Abner said. Abner had themaxzof shadow work. However, with the lunarmaxz, there was a lot more to it than shadows and the moon.

Damian’s words rattled through my head,my Shadow Queen.

“Am I going to always be translucent at night?” I cried out, not wanting to look like an iridescent, poisonous frog for the rest of my life.

“No. I think you are just learning to control your abilities; some things will become easier and others more difficult. I think this is the start of you learning how to become invisible under the moon’s light. It looks like you picked up shadow-wielding pretty easily though,” Clemmy said, comforting my fear.

“I don’t understand how she can use hermaxzwithout touching Belle,” Angie pointed out, her arms over her chest.

“I don’t, either, but they say that theMachmuaxbreed is always unreliable,” Clemmy piped in. I looked over at Belle. She nodded, almost smiling.

“Can she use themaxzas well without me?” I asked, pointing to Belle. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be able to use it alone?”