Chapter 60 #2
His lips peeled back as he fought the temptation to go after it and see for himself whether it was as all-powerful as his brother’s mate had depicted—or if it bled and screamed like anything else that took air into its lungs.
Fuck. No. They didn’t need another one of them missing because he’d misjudged.
Lyriat’s wings beat a steady rhythm as he bellowed another command at his legions from the air, regathering them near a grouping of dreadbeasts screeching their way past the blaze.
A pack of Wolflords raced by him, one nipping out at his shoulder as the others howled to the sky. Thaddeus. Or Sorcha, technically.
Araxis misted his way alongside her as they moved to join the Demon front, gathering himself for another round of mayhem. He was beginning to flag. He’d never expended this much of his power at once—not without a gift to temper the aftermath.
He needed night, if nothing else.
A blink and he was through the ether and perched atop the crystal peak of the Elder Halls, the cosmos stretching above him.
One breath. Two. The stars and galaxies reached down with a welcome caress, embedding their magic—their life—into his skin. Not enough, but it would have to do.
Another blink and he was once again within the chaos of battle, Demons towering above him as they swung their steel and battered their horns and fists in every direction.
“Araxis! To me!”
He dodged a hurtling talon and misted into the sky, the matter in the air holding him aloft as he searched the seething mass of bodies for Amunkar.
There, back-to-back with Amal, a ring of Forgotten around them. With a thought, he was in the circle, his power blasting outwards to latch onto some of their enemy.
“Get us to Lunara!” Amun shouted, his fiery spear jabbing out.
His fog popped the head off of a Forgotten as Araxis fought not to roll his eyes. “How do you propose I do that? I don’t know where she fucking is.”
A blinding flash of light overtook the southern horizon, rising up like a thousand sunstars to blot out the sky and turn the world white.
“What the—”
Araxis was thrown to the ground along with every other creature in the vicinity by a shockwave of searing heat, the grass and soil overturning in its wake.
What he did not expect was the absolute power that welded itself right onto his bones.
“That’s where she is.” Amun stood above him, his brow furrowed as he bent to pull Araxis to his feet. “We need to go now.”
Someday, he would convince his brother to admit how the fuck he always knew shite.
Araxis spared a single glance back to the Ghostwood—to the empty space where the darkness used to be—and cursed.
“Where is she?”
Magnus looked up and blinked, still trying to find his way back into his useless body. Even Pet was content to remain quiet within, curled in on himself and too stunned to comment.
He wasn’t the least surprised to find Amun and Araxis standing above them, his oldest brother demanding answers he didn’t really have. Shite, he’d probably never be surprised by anything ever again for the rest of his damned life.
Lunara had made fucking sure of that.
The witchling had become something else. The stuff of myth and legend.
Somehow, she’d protected them. Leveled their group to the ground and tried to turn them into flattened hotcakes, aye, but she’d kept them from harm.
Saved their fucking lives.
Amun pounced, gripping his robe to shake him. “Where, Magnus?”
Only then did he spot Fern hieing away over his brother’s shoulder, her wings a blur behind her, and followed her path to its logical conclusion.
“My guess would be there.” He pointed past her to the hole in the chasm side, his voice little more than a burnt husk.
“We have to go.” Amun hefted a muttering Vann from the ground, then the dazed twins. “Quickly.”
“What’s the fucking rush, Amun? Give a lad a moment to breathe, aye?”
“No. Not aye.” Golden scales rippled to the surface of his skin, eyes shimmering with amber and jade before his irises lengthened vertically.
The Serpent.
Shite. He was pissed if he was losing control of himself.
“Where’s Amal?”
Amun ignored him as he gathered everyone close. A bad sign.
Most didn’t realize that her place as his ajma wasn’t only for his protection—it was to protect others from him, if necessary.
Smoke curled from Amun’s nostrils, lips peeling back as his teeth sharpened to lethal points. “You get us there now, Araxis, or Lunara dies.”
The witchling’s scream echoed across the empty chasm.
Weeping fuck.
When Lunara finally did hit the dirt, it was on the floor of their cave.
She felt hollowed out as she stumbled her way upright, the place foreign to her now. Their haven had been reduced to a torture chamber. A dungeon for her mate.
Black smudges lined the walls, and torches made of bone flickered with a sinister light. It reeked of the dreadbeasts’ venom and that same hateful, cloying scent of burnt fucking roses.
None of it mattered. Not when she finally spotted Brand, and the rest of the world dropped away.
She misted to the platform, a cry breaking free when she beheld him up close. It was the nightmare from Argoph, every detail exactly the same.
His eyes were closed and swollen. Barbed chains had been wrapped around his beaten body, holding him down. They’d carved through flesh and bone, and rivers of blood had caked over him in layers, seeping from the uneven wounds. One of his hands was almost completely severed, his wrist broken.
It was the tears, though—the ones that had dried along his temples and still dampened his hair—that splintered something deep within her.
“I’m here. I’m here, Brand.”
She was already moving as she sent out a thread of power, her fingers barely brushing over his shoulder when—
“No.”
His skin was so cold, his heart barely beating. She tried to tell herself his breaths were just slow, her mind playing tricks, but the sound that tore out of her was pure agony.
“Sisters, no.” She scrambled onto the platform. “Please, no!”
She gripped the chains and willed them apart, chucking the shattered pieces to the ground and ignoring the puncture wounds they left behind as she laid her palms to his ravaged chest.
“Please, please, please.” Lunara had no other words as his pain became hers.
She dumped power into him and bore every wretched second of his torture. Gladly. Willingly. Flooded him with everything she had left to give.
Anything. Anything to have him back. He could have all of it.
She never let go of the dying beat as choked, anguished utterances finally pushed themselves past the ache in her throat.
“Please, Brand. This heart is mine, remember? You gave it to me right here. You gave it to me again and again.” Agony of a different sort twisted within her.
“I was so scared—so hopelessly scared—but I took it anyway. I took it for myself and I never said it could stop. Please, I’m here. I’m here now. Don’t let it stop.”
Ever so slowly, Brand’s wounds knitted themselves together. Bones cracked and blood flowed backwards. Color rose in his cheeks and his muscles thickened. All the while, she clung to the resonant thump, thump, thump in her ears as it grew stronger. Steadier.
Lunara could hardly see him through the sheet of her tears. Hardly trusted the hope she felt building.
When his body was as healed as it could possibly be, she commanded the filth of his captivity to fall in dusty flakes, until his hair shone and his skin glowed. She plucked a tunic and a pair of his trousers from the ether to cover his nakedness and keep him warm.
And then she collapsed, spent. So utterly spent and in more pain than she’d ever been.
It was worth it to be able to press her ear to his chest and feel him moving beneath her. To know he was alive.
She was weeping freely when a strong, familiar hand landed on her back and pressed into her, dragging up her spine and tangling in the wild, matted mass of her curls.
“Shhh.”
Sweet Sisters, to hear his voice again, even saying so little…
Lunara fisted his tunic, pressing her face into his chest and gasping out a sobbed, “I thought I’d lost you.”
His other arm came up around her, squeezing. “No more crying. Please. Shhh.”
Her nerves sparked with the added pressure, breath hissing through her clenched teeth. “Brand?”
“We don’t need to cry anymore. I was good.”
She didn’t have it in her to make sense of his words. He was still squeezing.
“Brand, that h-hurts.”
And squeezing.
“Please. Please, stop.” She started thrashing, as much as she was able in her feeble state. “Brand, stop!”
“No. No screaming,” he growled. “Can’t listen to any more screaming. I was good.”
Even when her ribs snapped beneath the force of his violent embrace, and she couldn’t drag air into her own lungs, she didn’t believe it was really happening.
It couldn’t be happening.
Probably why she didn’t notice his hand wrapping around the back of her neck and digging into the base of her skull, or the scream he tore from her lips, even as he begged her to be quiet.
As he crushed the life right out of her.
“Shhh.”
Shouts and hands and chaos reigned between one slow blink and the next.
Lunara found herself being wrenched away and thrown into Hedda’s waiting arms, Fern’s breaths heaving as she turned a seething glare at Brand, still murmuring on the slab.
All of his brothers were there, somehow. Faldir too, but so what?
She was numb to it. Didn’t actually care.
Because Lunara found absolutely nothing when she stared across the short distance and into his stunning, hazel eyes.
Brandir aht Bordoroth, her blessed, perfect mate, didn’t know her at all.