Chapter 54
Alwyn and Fionerys fell upon Lunara, their arms wrapping tight. She’d never thought to see them again. To face them.
Engulfed in their embraces, she searched for any words that would make it bearable. All she could come up with was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I tried.”
“Shh.” Alwyn pulled back and swept her hair away, tucking it behind her ear. “No one understands what you’re feeling right now more than we do,” he said, his voice like summer rain. Clipped, powerful, but no less warm for it. “No one, daughter.”
“Beloved daughter.” Fionerys squeezed even tighter, the frost in her hair soothing against Lunara’s cheek. “We’re so relieved to have you back.”
Confused didn’t even begin to cover it.
She’d met them once, accidentally abused them, tried to end herself, and then disappeared in the night, and they were calling her daughter.
Again.
It helped her regain some composure, the disbelief grounding her—until the empress leaned back with a weighted sigh and the light caught her face.
Damn it all.
Just the other day, she’d finally noticed how starkly Brand and Magnus resembled one another. Now, their parents’ features slammed into her in ways they hadn’t before.
Alwyn’s heavy, bronze-eyed gaze, sitting beneath an arched and furrowed brow exactly like Brand’s. Fionerys’s strong nose, with the same, tiny bump at the bridge. The same regal cheekbones.
Worse when Amunkar stepped forward, his umber stare both devastated and aloof. The loving brother and the future emperor. An expression so like the one Brand had often worn when they’d first met—a male at war with himself—that Lunara had to choke back a whimper creeping up her throat.
“Magnus is right,” he said in that deeply resonant voice of his.
“You must understand, we are Blessed. With the exception of our dearest mama, every person in this room has lost control as they came into their gifted powers. You losing yourself was nothing for us.” His smile was sad.
“I once set fire to the entire top floor of Argoph. The stone floor.”
Before Lunara could respond, Vann chimed in, quiet.
“I got stuck in a loop during suppertime while some of my abilities manifested. Everyone in the palace was trapped, watching their food rot and restore itself again. We all relived the same thirty seconds, over and over, for nearly a week. In the end, it was hilarious.”
She had no idea what he meant by loop, but the square cut of his jaw, the way his head tilted to the side…
For all of her skepticism surrounding the Second Imperial Son, he felt the most like his missing brother.
Like she could squint and Brand would appear in shy shades of silver before her blurry eyes.
“Yes,” Fionerys said, huffing. “Magnus was a babe and had just swallowed a bite. The five of us were rooted at the table watching his food go down and back up again the entire time.”
Lunara couldn’t help the tragic sound that bubbled out of her, somewhere between a giggle and a whine.
“It should be noted I was stuck in my wolf form at the time,” Magnus admitted.
“It was nearly another year after that debacle before I found my way back to my own body. That happened many times. The worst was when I shifted a few months after Brand was born and was stuck until he was five. Five, witchling. Brand didn’t realize I was his brother.
He thought I was nought more than a loyal and steadfast pet. ”
“One that followed him everywhere,” Vann said.
“Aye, someone had to keep the wee shite out of trouble. You’ve never seen a beast like a Straelani toddler, throwing a fit.
Talk about a rage, aye? He would grow and shrink, grow and shrink, big wobbly tears in his eyes as his horns caught on everything and the stone of the castle went all sorts of wonky around him. ”
Alwyn sighed. “Brandir used to have these bouts of overwhelm. All he wanted was to be alone. His powers fluctuated with his emotion, so the worse he felt, well… Let’s just say, when he didn’t want someone following after him, the stone took care of the problem for him.”
“The floor would rise up and grip our ankles.” Vann stared into the middle distance, his voice soft.
“Once, everyone in the castle found themselves up to the knees in stone vices. Brand quit Argoph with his trusty hound at his side, intent on using the opportunity to escape. He never once trapped Magnus, you see.”
“That was the day I shifted back,” Magnus murmured.
“Didn’t want the wee lad getting lost or hurt.
He about shat his pants when I finally did it.
Who could blame him? One second I was his pet, the next I was naked and stumbling on two legs beside him, begging him to go back and free our mam, if no one else. ”
“Your wolf’s name…”
“Aye, lass. Pet,” he whispered, eyes welling anew.
Oh, sweet Sisters. She couldn’t take it.
The somber silence in the room wrapped its fingers around Lunara’s throat and choked her.
These were the kind of stories people told when someone left for the Veil and they wanted to keep their memory alive for a little while longer.
She refused for that to be the case. “We have to find him.”
“Aye, witchling,” Magnus answered, swiping a tear away from his cheek. “We do. But first…” He looked at the others, head shaking. “We need to know what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
He couldn’t seem to look at her. “None of us who were here that night can remember, like it’s been erased.
Blocked? I don’t fucking know. I was walking towards Brand while you healed Thad, and then I was laying in a pile of rock as the tower was falling, everyone else still out cold around me.
Except, I couldn’t smell you or Brand, and knew you had to be up there somehow. ”
A whole city of creatures couldn’t recall? Hadn’t seen? It didn’t make sense.
A problem for another day. Too much at once and you’ll never get through it.
Right. One thing at a time. Brand needed her even more than before, because she remembered all too well.
Her lids slid closed. “It was a shadow. A female? I don’t know. Hard to tell beneath the layers of their voice. I’ve never seen anything like it, except in the chasm. It spoke to Brand as if it knew him.”
She told them everything, from the moment she’d awoken to Brand battling the creature, to when he was whisked away and the dome crashed down.
“There’s something else, too,” she admitted, sitting up a little straighter. “It won’t make much sense, but you have to believe me. I… I only realized that night that a voice I’ve heard in my head for most of my life is the Oracle, and that the Shadow Prophecy is upon us.”
She’d expected gasps or flying looks, not total silence.
“Explain.”
Alwyn’s tone nearly killed her, sounding exactly like his son when he demanded the same. Her breath hiccuped, so fucking tight in her chest.
She told them her history, of the Voice’s many visits and clues. “Some of her words have been identical, some different, but I see it all so clearly now. I am the moth it speaks of. The twilight. Brand is stone’s crowned dawn, and… and a most precious thing now suddenly gone.”
Fuck, he was gone.
Alwyn scrubbed a hand down his face. “We’d already come to that conclusion. The old warnings are finally in play.”
That accounted for their nonchalance.
“Aye,” Magnus said. “How could we not? After all our joking around, Brand’s tower falling was a bitter pill to swallow. Could have knocked me over with a feather when Vann pointed it out and we put our pieces together.”
Vann nodded. “Luna’s claims give us a key to the words, though.”
“True.” Alwyn chewed his lip, eyes going distant. “If the Oracle was naming creatures, people we know, I might be able to crack it finally.”
“Alwyn…” Fionerys gave her mate a wary look.
“Not to worry, love.” He wrapped an arm around her, laying a kiss on the top of her head. “I won’t go the way of my father. Not when so much is at stake, and I have you to pull me from the edge.”
His father. Emperor Stennyx, driven mad by the very words that held her destiny.
Words that might hold the answer to locating Brand.
“I don’t know how, but I’ll bring him back.” She pressed a fist to her chest, to the spot where she should be feeling him. “I swear it.”
“We will help.” Araxis stepped from his pocket of shadow, surprising her with his presence and promise.
She would’ve laughed if anyone had compared him to Brand.
Would’ve argued any claim they were alike.
Now, she clearly saw the way their lips bowed the same, the way the top one was slightly larger than the bottom.
Noted the shallow cleft in his chin, a twin to the one she knew hid beneath Brand’s short, fiery beard.
But it was his look—one of righteous indignation, promising suffering to any who’d harm one of his own—that set her heart to pounding.
The same look Brand had worn on his bruised and bleeding face before he was taken.
Lunara ignored the gnawing emptiness building, the ache in her throat trying to suffocate her as she realized that—regardless of the features their realms had Blessed them with, or the striking differences on the surface—her mate was right there, staring back at her from six different creatures in lines and shapes, features and tendencies.
Right there, and yet—
Gone. Gone. Gone.
“Aye, that’s enough then, I think.” Magnus moved to settle her into the bed. “We’d best let the witchling rest.”
She didn’t want to rest. She didn’t want to sleep anymore. She’d already been lost for—
“How long, Magnus?” Her voice was like rusted knives, both needing and fearing the answer. “How long did he hold me under?”
He swallowed, the sound cracking through a room that had become unbearably silent. “Lunara…”
“How long?” Sisters, was that her snarling?
“A month.” Fionerys’s voice was thick, and Lunara snapped her eyes to the empress. “It’s been a month.”