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“Lunara.”
Her name on Brand’s lips for the second time in as many hours had Lunara wrenching from Faldir’s hold, turning to face her mate. She watched the dawning panic play across his features in real time. The inward search through every sentence and action. And the awful moment realization hit him.
There were no words to describe the devastation in his voice when he asked, “Did I do this?”
He’d been with her. But they spent the better part of an hour convincing Gaulnir it was time to lay down his tools, despite his hesitation to do so. And that icy, draining void—undeniably sinister—happened while Brand had hold of the Demon during his healing. Now, whether by choice or force, Gaulnir lay impaled and gone to the Veil.
Sisters curse it and damn it.
It was impossible for Lunara to say with complete certainty that Brand had absolutely nothing to do with the scene in front of them, and they both knew it.
“Cage me,” he murmured, blank of all emotion. Empty. “Now.”
“Are—” Lunara stopped herself before she made the mistake of asking if he was sure. “Okay. Yes. Alright.”
“Our arrangement is at an end.”
Lunara blinked at Brand’s back, his dark silhouette limned in a combination of moonlight and the prismatic glow of her cage. He stood at the balcony doors in their tower chamber, facing outward. There was something finite in that rigid stance. Beautiful and awful at once, such power and majesty in his towering body, but he radiated a raw misery that sucked all the air from the room. As broken as she’d ever seen him.
“What arrangement?”
“No more freeing me in the morning.” He clenched his hands into trembling fists. “Until I am rid of this filth, or the worst should happen and I, Brandir aht Bordoroth, am no more, this is where I stay.”
“Brand, that’s not—”
“What? Necessary?” He spun, pinning her with a blazing stare. “I thought I finally turned a corner. I thought I was helping. And now a creature I’ve known nearly my entire life, one I adored, is fucking dead, and we have no idea whether I’m the one who unwittingly caused it. Until you can be sure to the marrow in your bones, this is where I stay.”
Hard to argue with that.
But weeping moons, how she wanted to. Wanted to ease his roiling spirit and wipe the crease from between his brows.
There’s something you can do that’s far more helpful.
And it needed to be soon. Now.
“I’m exhausted.” The dismissal was clear as Brand scrubbed both hands over his face and into his hair, mussing the short waves. “I would be most grateful if you and the others continued to join me here for supper. I understand, though, if they—you—do not feel safe doing so, but…” He turned away again, gaze fixed on the rising moons. “It might help me keep my sanity, I think, having those fleeting moments of joy while I still can.”
She wanted to rage against the resignation in his tone. “Please, Brand. You can’t give up yet.”
“Don’t worry. There are still one or two things I’d like to do before the Veil greets me,” he murmured. “And it’s less that I’m giving up, and more…being pragmatic. I’d rather plan for the worst while hoping for the best.”
Lunara recoiled, unable to help slinging her next words. “Then you’ve forgotten yet another part of yourself. My Brand would never.”
She instantly regretted it when his gaze shuttered. Shite, it wasn’t even entirely true.
The likelihood that he was somehow responsible for Gaulnir was beyond low. In fact, it being a terrible coincidence was far more plausible. But Brand taking on the responsibility anyway, without a second thought? That was exactly like him. He just…tended to do it with more optimism before.
He didn’t respond for an unbearable handful of minutes, the silence crawling over her until she couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t have time for this dismal shite. It did them no good. Got them nowhere.
When he finally spoke, his words were a knife to her soul. “And if your Brand is already dead?”
She begged the Sisters for the slight deepening of his voice to be another trick of their setting. For the goosebumps racing across her skin to be a response to his strong emotion, to the fucking tragedy of it all, and not the more sinister likelihood.
“Then I am but half of myself,” she answered honestly as she moved to leave, “and I’ll have to live with that reality for a revoltingly long time. I sincerely hope we aren’t there yet.”
Anger blistered beneath her skin, the furious wave surprising her as she stomped towards the door. Then again, she preferred being fucking pissed to the useless misery of tears.
“Lunara?”
