Chapter 24
Sweat trickled down Brand’s back, every droplet his only way of marking the hours they’d been descending.
There was no end in sight to the oppressive fog. It stretched infinitely behind and before them, sometimes thickening into opaque arms to test the barrier, and he had to stop himself from snarling whenever it dared a searching touch.
Like now.
Another black tendril bumped against the shield, Luna twitching like she could feel it, and Brand had enough.
“This is a good time for you to clarify some things,” he said, voice crackling with disuse. “You can start with telling me what this is around us and why you seem to know it so well.”
At first, he’d been glad for the silence. Each step closer to whatever dangers prowled below had tested his resolve. He’d needed the quiet to convince himself that bringing her wasn’t the biggest mistake he’d ever bloody made.
She sat up a little straighter, biting her lip. “I was afraid you might say that.”
Her honesty tugged at him, softening the sharper edges of his curiosity. “You have nothing to fear from me, Luna. Nothing at all.”
Internally, his lesser self had railed at the use of that name, embarrassed he’d admitted to their thoughts about the little moon and her scent of blessed light.
Such a fool sometimes. The beatific look on her face when he’d explained, the shine in her eyes…
Obviously worth it.
Besides, pretense was impossible when he raged. He had no care for falsities and roundabout wording when the efficiency of raw truth was right there for the taking.
“Many have promised the same,” Luna murmured. “Most turned out to be liars.”
He bristled at that. “I am not most, and I will ensure the others suffer for their duplicity.”
Whoever they were, whoever had damaged her so thoroughly, he would find them. Crush them. Raze their homes to the ground while they were still inside, begging for—
A scream filtered through the bleak density.
The first in a long while and much further off than the last, and he felt another little chip of hope fall away.
He’d spent the hours torn between wisdom and barreling down the steps.
Between slow and wary to keep themselves safe, or getting to Faldir as quickly as possible.
It was starting to feel like a fool’s errand.
“Please, Brand.” Luna’s tone was a quaking strangle. “Put me down.”
He obeyed, helpless in this form to do anything but exactly as she wished.
The soft, lustrous light of the shield followed her across the platform, highlighting the quiet horror twisting her features. She stepped up to the cliffside, mere inches from the strange, dark liquid seeping from the stone, and he had to beat down the urge to wrench her away.
That same substance had been splattered on the ground above, mixed with Faldir’s blood.
It didn’t matter that her barrier kept everything at bay. There was a wrongness to it, even beyond its stench, and he didn’t want it anywhere fucking near her.
“I’ve seen this before,” she whispered, her fingers following the oozing filth as it crept down the rock to pool on his steps.
Her brows pinched down for a moment before she moved to the edge of the landing, her head tilting.
Once again, a writhing wisp condensed and tried to get inside, and Luna followed its motions with a single finger, as if to play with the thing.
She froze like that—head to one side, elegant hand in the air, and eyes fixed a million miles inward.
Until she said, “Meliora.”
The single word was a ghost upon her lips, and it raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
He thought back over their conversation before Glynmor, when she’d described his aunt’s illness. “Go on.”
“When she bled…” She blinked and pointed to the wall, to the ooze. “It looked like that. Not fresh and crimson, but rotting black.”
Brand leaned in to get a better look for himself, and the pieces started falling into place. “The shadows around us, are they like the stains you described beneath her skin?”
Her sigh carried the weight of all the realms. “Yes.”
She started pacing, running a loose curl back and forth over her lips.
Sisters, those lips… No.
Breathing deep, Brand stifled the volatile reactions of this body. It was not the time, nor the place, for lustful thoughts.
“Everything about her infection, the stains…” Half muttering, Luna gestured outside the shield.
“These move the same way. Reaching and wanting, seemingly harmless but… insidious.” She scrubbed both hands over her face, squishing her cheeks.
“Caius and I experimented with samples. He urged me to use my power in different ways, to see if I could repel it. Control it. Destroy it. Anything. The results made me rethink Meliora’s treatment. That… that was how I woke her up.”
“Explain.”
She hesitated, her dread so apparent he could practically taste it.
Oh, yes. Whoever had hurt her would suffer greatly.
“No fear,” he reminded her. “Not with me.”
Luna’s lip trembled as she turned to the barrier at last, her power multiplying to hum against his skin.
With a wave of her fingers, a wall of diffuse light formed and shot into the center of the chasm, clearing the shadows away for a moment.
A clench of her fist, and it disappeared, darkness sweeping back in to fill the void.
“I pushed them back, stopped them from feeding,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “I couldn’t remove them though, no matter how hard I tried. They recoiled from my power, obviously affected, but I couldn’t seem to get a hold of them.”
“How did you remove samples from my aunt, then?”
She shook her head. “I promise, that is one answer you don’t want.” The look on her face told him enough. “But if the chasms had something to do with Meliora, we… we need to be careful.”
Another scream, so far off he almost didn’t catch it.
“I think it’s time we hurry this along, hmm?” Brand bent and engulfed her shoulders with his hands, pretending calm. “I’m going to pick you up again. I would have this over with.”
Wary be damned.
“Yes. As would I.”
An idea came to him as he gathered her up and tucked her safely against his side—away from the chasm wall and its foul, crawling decay. “Do you trust me?”
Luna was already looking up at him, eyes narrowed. “Will I regret it if I say yes?”
He might have chuckled if they were anywhere else. If his friend wasn’t crying his agony for all the realms to hear. “Can you keep the shadows away for longer periods and distances than you showed me?”
There was a flicker of something he couldn’t identify before she replied, “I can.”
Nodding, he lifted her to eye level and pointed down into the gloom. “Follow the angle of the steps I’ve already called, as far as you’re able.”
With a deep breath, she pushed her hands down and out.
The shield shot forward about five hundred yards through the gloom, her power once more slamming into him and illuminating well past what he’d expected.
Strange, to see such a large swath of the cliffside at once, as if it was never meant to be viewed that way.
Brand summoned a large landing right inside the edge of the barrier. Quite a distance, but he could make it.
“Can you hold that while we move?”
His eyes were glued to the side of her face, so he didn’t miss it when that strange look passed over her features again. “Yes.”
“Tell me,” he said at her ear, swallowing the urge to bury his face in her hair. “How do you feel about flying?”
She whipped her head around. “What are you planning?”
“Hmm.” Careful of his horns, he ran his nose along hers. “That might be an answer you don’t want.”
“Not funny,” she breathed.
Her nails sank into the flesh of his arm, apprehension in every biting crescent, when he shifted to the edge and dropped into a crouch.
“Brand…”
“If death awaits, I would have a moment of joy before the Veil takes me.” A moment of weightless freedom with her. “Trust me,” he whispered.
With that, he launched into the air.
To her credit, she didn’t scream. The shield stretched and bent with them, following their trajectory through the gloom as they plummeted. Brand braced for the impact and they landed with a booming thud, his knees bending to absorb their momentum.
Luna’s hair was a wild, wind-blown nest. Half of it had flung forward, covering her face and body. The rest clung to him in snaking waves, and he used a finger to detach one, thick lock that had tangled in his horns.
“That was…” She sat forward to push the mass away, a wide-eyed look of wonder brightening her face.
“We like flying then?”
A thread of something wrapped around his heart, his lungs. Nervousness. Not his own, but hers.
It was a heady sensation, blood hammering through his veins. Brand barely stopped himself from rubbing at his chest. From giving up the small clue. She would run, if she knew. Hide. He could feel that as surely as her trepidation.
Her voice was tentative when she said, “I like flying with you.”
The thread snapped and melted away with her words, edginess gone, leaving him alone with only his own feelings for company.
Damn it.
He was a fool for dwelling on it anyway when his mind should be focused on rescuing his friend. Scouring his senses, he searched for any indication of new threats, beyond the darkness already—
Not a scream, but a garbled cry that time. All the more horrifying for its desperation. It’s distance.
“I’m scared, Brand.”
Her whispered confession cracked right through him. “I know, little moon.”
If only he could reassure her that there was nothing to worry about.
Luna gathered her hair, deftly twining the mass on top of her head and summoning a stick to hold it there. “Then I would have some joy before the Veil, too.”
Who was he to deny her?
She forced the shield out again and they were soaring. His spirit nearly left his body when she leaned forward and spread her arms wide, eyes closed and chin lifted to the wind as it whipped by them.
She was breathtaking. Wild.