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The beast. Weeping Sisters, hadn’t she just called it the same thing?

Lunara swallowed, no idea what it meant for them. “I’ve tried to purge it, but it’s too strong. There’s something I’m missing.”

Another rumble, more violent that time. Behind him, a flash tumbled across the sky, and that was when she realized how dim the bronze sunset rays really were. How muted the colors were.

“Listen to me.” He kissed her brow, and it took every dwindling scrap of Lunara’s restraint not to crumple and weep for hours. “I don’t understand how or why, but I know to my bones that him finding me, the Greater, means the end of it. Of everything we know and love. If you cannot save us, you have to end us. Do whatever you must, Luna, do you hear me?”

“I understand.” The lie slipped from her tongue as she pressed her hand more firmly against him, refusing to let it come to that. Refusing to even think about such a thing. That it even needed to be considered filled her with such violence, she barely had the strength to breathe past the choke of it. “How did this happen, Brand? Who did this to you?”

“Okthana.” His lids slid closed. “Her name is Okthana.”

The knowledge settled over her, the fury delicious in its embrace. “Tell me where to find this Okthana,” she spat, “so I can slaughter her.”

Gleefully, if it fixed him.

“No.” Brand’s look was pure fire when he returned it. “I would stare into her eyes myself one last time, so I might watch them fade as the life leaves her.”

The searing call of vengeance pulsed between them, a quiet and vicious understanding unfolding in the bond.

They would end her. Together.

“How does she know you? Why did she choose you?”

“There are glimpses of memory, but I can’t make much sense of them.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Only that I was…a child.”

Crimson painted itself across her vision, the blood boiling in her veins.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to set you free. I swear it.” The promise carved itself upon Lunara’s soul as she dug her pointed nails into his skin, determination sealing every cut.

A laugh sounded in the distance, deep and ancient, and Lunara witnessed something that chilled her to the marrow.

Brand the Greater, with true fear in his eyes.

“You need to⁠—”

The sky shattered in a blaze of gold before he finished his sentence. Next she knew, they were tumbling down, down, down. He held her all the way, his massive torso shielding her from the glass-like shards until they hit the ground. There was no pain upon impact, but it threw them apart. Lunara tore her body from the wet sand, shocked to find herself in the Demon’s Cove.

Only herself.

“No, no, no…” She didn’t see him. The darkness was closing in. Not the cool shade of evening, but an inky, consuming blur that dulled her senses.

“Go, Lunara! Get out!”

She spun at the sound of Brand’s voice and finally found him being dragged towards a rift in the cliffside. Without a thought, she was flying across the beach as fast as her feet could take her, but it wasn’t enough.

A barrier went up as she reached the craggy opening—a swirling wall of sunshine crystal. Lunara beat her fists against it, screaming, begging, until his face appeared on the other side.

“You have to go.”

“No,” she whimpered. “Not yet. I’m not ready, Brand. There’s so much still to say. I never even had a chance to tell you that I lo⁠—”

“Not like this. Please, not like this.” He pressed his forehead against the divide, pure anguish twisting his features. “Not because you’re scared there won’t be another opportunity. I want those words when I can follow them with my lips and hands. When I can fall to my knees and whisper them back. When I am whole again, little moon, and can adore you outside of my own heart and mind.”

She choked back a denial, lip trembling. “High-handed, overbearing Demon.”

“Yes. Counting on his reckless, stubborn Sorcerit. Go. Do what you must.” He stepped away, the details of him blurring behind the barrier. “Get her the fuck out of here.”

Before Lunara processed that Brand was speaking to someone else, a pair of hands burst through the wall and shoved her from the dream.