Chapter 19 #2
Regret formed a jagged lump in Lunara’s throat.
“No matter what I did, nothing reversed the physical damage that’d already occurred.
The flesh had changed. Yet another thing I’d never seen before.
I caught her gazing into the mirror once and the look on her face…
” She shook her head, not wishing to remember Meliora’s pale, haunted eyes staring back at her from that glass.
“I woke up to Caius screaming. I tried to get in to the room to see if anything could be done, but he wouldn’t let me near her.
He was feral, snarling and fighting his change.
Not at all like the male I’d come to know over the months. Absolutely mindless in his grief.”
“So, she finally succumbed then.”
He sounded so certain, and it shattered her. Not even Caius knew her theory.
Theory being the key word there. What point could you have in telling him without knowing for sure?
No idea. Except… Shitting stars, she had enough secrets to be drowning in them. Sharing her speculations might help release her of at least one of them.
She couldn’t look at him while she did it, though.
“I can’t be sure. I only briefly entered the room before Caius banished me, but there was this smell.
Like roses thrown onto a bonfire, but cloying.
Sticky and wrong. I’d never encountered it before, but it reminded me of some of the more sordid potions one can purchase, if you know which darkened alley to visit in the Lower Blocks.
” Lunara blew out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how, or even if I’m right, but… I think Meliora took her own life.”
Shite, when had she started crying?
At home, Lunara could bottle and tamp and shove until she convinced herself that nothing bothered her. That the despair was just a spot of fleeting loneliness, and not the symptom of a deeper hurt that had no remedy.
A couple weeks away from the shadowy womb of Nachthelliae, and she was standing beside an orchard in Thodelebor spilling her tears and theories to an Imperial Son like he was any other person.
You’re too tired for this level of gravity. Just calm down and shut your damned mouth.
No such luck.
“I’m so sorry.” The words poured out of her, ripped from someplace that she didn’t fully understand. “I feel like I failed her, and Caius and Thaddeus. If I’d only known she had it, I might’ve—”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Brand rasped, stepping in front of her.
“Whatever happened, it was enough for Thad to trust you. To seek you out when we needed it most.” He caught her welling upset, swiping his fingers over her damp cheekbones.
“I have only gratitude for the things you’ve done. ”
She wanted to lean into that contact and accept the solace being offered. But, for some reason, the kindness in his eyes was choking her—a fisted hand around her throat whispering that she didn’t deserve it.
You don’t. It’s your fault that she’s dead—his own aunt. And you can’t forget the Elder Council or that his younger brother is one of them. Closeness to him means exposure to them. They’ll find you. They’ll force you.
With that in mind—fatigue weighing her down—Lunara recoiled slightly, cutting herself off from the temptation of his touch. “Please don’t do that. I probably shouldn’t have even told you, and I certainly don’t want to be comforted or thanked for it.”
It was his turn to flinch, hands falling and fisting at his sides. “I…” His confusion was evident, deep grooves forming between his brows.
She understood. Being pulled in so many directions, she was muddled as shite, too.
Better this way. It’s fine. You’re fine.
“Lunara—”
“Brand, come and see Glynmor!”
Brand’s nostrils flared and he stayed fixed on her for another beat, two, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
It felt like an eternity before he finally turned to acknowledge his brother’s voice booming from the top of the hill up the way.
She’d been so distracted, she hadn’t even noticed it looming there.
“My pride and joy!” Magnus shouted with a grin, his arm sweeping out towards what she assumed was the village.
Lunara didn’t need any more encouragement.
Before Brand could move, she fled up the incline ahead of him, towards the relative safety that waited at the top.
She raised her chin and ignored the strange looks as she joined the others, Brand’s heavy footfalls closing in from behind and mimicking the sickening pound of her heart.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Not with the beauty stretching out before her and snatching what little breath she had away.
Closest to them, Solyrian beat down on a swaying field of grain, a rolling rainbow of vines and vegetables alongside it. Bees buzzed and birds chirped, the warm breeze fluttering between branches and blossoms and bringing the smell of fresh tilled earth to her nose.
In the near distance, beyond a meadow brimming with wildflowers, lay the Thodelemaia Dread Chasm.
It was said that two warring Celestials—sister Star Goddesses from the Unknown—had torn through space and time, locked in a legendary battle of wills and carnage. Their epic conflict finally reached its bloody end when they crash-landed upon a ghostly hill in this barren and unformed world.
Both gravely wounded from their starfall, the Sisters joined hands in silent apology as they lay dying, their weeping regret mingling on the earth between them.
After eons of fighting one another, it had become too much, their injuries too great.
With the ground cradling their broken bodies, the earth trembled and a mighty plateau formed, lifting them towards the empty sky, and a ring of mountains shot into existence to enclose their island deathbed.
As the life slowly drained from them, the pool of their tears multiplied, filling the newly-formed basin that circled the goddesses.
It overflowed, and the raging waters swept out into the void in different directions, carrying the Sisters’ power with them.
Magic leached into the grey nothing as the rivers clawed through its fog and mist. Whole landscapes were born as rocks, and trees, and creatures sprang from their depths.
Moons and stars rushed from far away galaxies to witness the formation.
Where once there was nothing, there was suddenly everything.
With the last beat of their fearsome hearts, the universe quaked with sorrow, snapping the infant lands apart and leaving immense, fathomless rifts between them.
Even now, the cosmos still came to pay them homage in the form of the Occurrences, the surrounding celestial bodies mourning the death of their own and honoring the Sisters’ creations with continued gifts of power.
Thus, Bordoroth and the Five Realms were born—and the endless, gaping maws of shadow and stillness known as the Dread Chasms.
Every realm was completely surrounded by them, cut off from their neighboring lands.
There was no such thing as physically crossing one to reach the other side, no way to successfully enter their depths.
They dropped off into nothing and that was it.
If someone was unfortunate enough to fall in, they were never seen again.
The Chasms were used as a punishment for a reason.
With the endless night in the Evesong, Lunara had never actually seen one.
Not like this. Not with the sunstar hammering down to highlight just how unfathomable they could be, how impossibly dark.
It was as though the inky, undulating gloom was actually consuming the light, swallowing it in and erasing it from existence.
“Shitting stars,” she breathed.
Hedda chuckled beside her. “I had much the same reaction the first time I was this close to one as well. There aren’t really words.”
Lunara tore her gaze away from the dense murk and turned to take in the village of Glynmor, tucked neatly off to the side between their fields and the edge of a small forest. The idyllic scene called to her, and she dipped into the well of her power, reaching out to brush mystical fingers over the beauty of it, as if she could snatch some back to keep for herself.
Oh… no.
Wait.
No, no, no.
At first, she didn’t understand what her mind was trying to tell her, couldn’t comprehend what she was feeling through the thread of her magic, but then—
“Sisters help me,” she whispered, her feet moving of their own accord.
No wonder there hadn’t been anyone around. No sounds outside of nature. No one to greet them as they approached.
Before she knew it, she was flying down the hill. Just as she hit the halfway point of the decline, arms banded around her middle like a cage of iron, halting her momentum and knocking the wind right from her lungs, and she was lifted from the ground.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, legs flailing. “Something is wrong!”
Her body thrashed as she jabbed her heels back, Brand grunting when she finally connected with solid bone.
“Weeping fuck!” He hefted her up, shifting to wrap an arm around her thighs, trapping her against him, her back pressed firmly to his front.
“You can’t go running off like that if you suspect there’s danger, you bloody fool,” he hissed into her ear, voice little more than a growl.
“Calm yourself and speak plainly. Do so and I will put you down.”
Calm yourself? Calm yourself!
Brand’s first mistake was stipulating terms for her freedom. Lunara had spent her life ensuring it, guarding it with every waking moment, every ounce of her energy. That he would fucking dare to use it against her was enough to have her shaking with fury.
His second was forgetting she was a Sorcerit. He may not know just how powerful she was, that she could level the entire settlement if she wanted to, but it didn’t matter.
His third was not bothering to secure her arms—arms she knew how to use now, thanks to him and his own damned commanders.
Hedda and Faldir appeared in the fringes of her vision on either side.
“What the fuck, witchling?” Magnus said, his voice coming from somewhere behind.
Lunara ignored him and relaxed her body, venom in her tone as she spoke only loud enough for Brand to hear.
“There’s exactly one fucking heart beating in that village, and it’s barely holding on.
The rest are silent, though I can feel their flesh rotting as if it were my own. Is that fucking plain enough for you?”
Harsh, but someone needed her. Now.
The instant Brand went slack, she cranked an elbow right into his nose. With a curse, he dropped her like a sack of rocks and she hit the ground. Her knees crumpled, but no matter—she was already sending a shockwave of her power out to knock him and the others back as she regained her feet.
She was at the bottom of the hill, sprinting towards that one, lonesome heartbeat, before any of them recovered.