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No matter how hard she heaved, they wouldn’t come loose. Wouldn’t leave the creature. She’d seen them flee of their own volition, so why were they refusing to—
“Burn, sister. Shine. Unleash fire on Night.”
The full force of Endellion hit like a comet landing, pummeling her with the same damned advice. But there was no way for Lunara to burn these shadows like the ones in the chasm. Not without obliterating the creature she was trying to bleeding help.
“This creature’s fate is sealed. What’s done is done. There is no changing it.”
You mean like how my bond with Brand was severed, except it bleeding wasn’t?
Only silence greeted her.
Damn you, Endellion.
If the creature was doomed to die no matter what she did, if she wasn’t able to eradicate the shadows and save them, what hope was there for Brand?
“You know what? Fuck fate.”
Illamiata erupted at her command, enveloping the creature in white-hot light. It danced over their skin, sweeping in through every orifice as if it were little more than iridescent air, the Forgotten arching up from the ground.
Lunara gritted her teeth, hissing when she felt the celestial fire twining along the mental hands she’d made. It took everything she had to keep control. To stop her magic from running away and devouring the creature’s flesh alongside the blight.
The shadows shrieked, the creature with them, and she shared in their agony as the pain transferred—traded for power, just like healing. Her very marrow was on fire, boiling and bubbling, and Lunara’s screams joined theirs.
A shrill whistling, a pop and release. The sudden silence was deafening as she trembled, her breaths heaving. She fell backwards onto her arse, detaching herself, and gasped at the two perfect handprints of smooth flesh left behind. The edges glowed, spreading out like rippling waves, the bark-like body of the Forgotten disappearing in its wake.
Before she knew it, Lunara was staring at a Fae with cropped, lapis hair and pink diamond dust in their lavender skin. Shitting stars and arses, she did it.
“Ah!” She lurched forward, ignoring the protests from her aching body. “Sweet Sisters, help me. Please, please, please.”
Skimming her touch over them, she sent out threads to pick up their heartbeat, nearly weeping when its weak thumping came back to her. The Fae blinked their eyes open, revealing scarred, glinting irises. Lunara swallowed, resolving to heal them as soon as she had a chance to feed.
“Can you hear me? You did so well, my friend. So very well.”
The Fae, blind though they must be, met her gaze directly and rasped, “Thank you.”
Ha! Take that, Endellion. You and fate can eat my ar—
Their heart stuttered. Beat, beat…beat…
“No. No!” She threw the dregs of her power at them, trying to hold on.
They were gone on their next exhale. Dead, after all that.
“Why?” Tears rolled down her cheeks, as much from fury as devastation. “Why?!”
Those shadows weren’t even the worst she faced. The thing in Brand was leagues stronger and more embedded.
Will Brand die no matter what I do? Will he suffer this same fate? Give me another prophetic fucking poem if you have to, Endellion. I don’t care. Just don’t make me do this without something to go on. Anything!
No giggle. No sigh. Nothing.
Answer me. I’m begging you.
When Endellion finally spoke, her words lanced through Lunara’s entire being.
“Starlight splintered the Night that the sun might rise, but what is dawn if not daybreak?” A breath tumbled across her mind like soothing strokes through her hair. “And now for your truth, Lunara the Moonweaver—you will know one way or the other before evening descends on the Montrealm again.”
Lunara materialized on the mountaintop, the Fae’s body cradled in her arms.
