Brand sucked air into his lungs—willing his body to obey and the red to seep from his vision, to resist the clawing desire to change—and unleashed it with a bellowed, “Fuck!”
Lunara was still stroking Hedda’s forehead. “Something in her tonic wasn’t right. I tried to say so.” Her eyes scrunched closed. “I can feel whatever it is evading me while her body burns it away. Until then, there’s no telling what her state will be.”
“You think we should leave her like that?” Thad seemed so young voicing the question, so trusting.
“I believe it would be the safest thing for her, yes, but it’s not my decision to make. Excuse me.” Lunara stood and strode away, running a shaking hand over her face.
“How did all this happen without us knowing? Without us hearing it?” Magnus began to pace, his gait predatory, fixed on the depths stretching out beyond the cliff.
“I don’t know.”
“First Faldir, and now she’s trying to say Hedda was drugged? Poisoned?” Mag threw his hands up. “A few hours ago I was waking him up and trading insults, and Hedda was grumbling at us to shut our fucking traps. None of this was here, she was fine. Shite, forget the rest of it. How can the land be overturned for nearly a mile and it didn’t make asound?”
Weariness hit Brand like a wave. “I don’t fucking know.”
“I assume we aren’t really sending for help or waiting to go after him?”
Brand shook his head, relieved that he wouldn’t have to fight his brother as well.
“And Hedda?”
“Leaving her like that feels so wrong, on so many levels.” Brand let his head fall back. “But you heard Lunara. She knows more about this than the rest of us. Unless I can be assured of Hedda’s state, this solves the problem—poorly—and we’re wasting precious time debating it.”
“How will we go down? Come back?” Thad asked. “N-no one returns once they go in.”
Brand’s found Lunara a few yards away, bent and examining the divots. “No one else was an Imperial Son, Blessed of Straelon,” he said. “I’ll make steps for us to descend and come back again.”
“What of the shadows?” Mag asked. “They’re not fucking right.”
Lunara went preternaturally still at that. He wasn’t even sure she was breathing… but shewaslistening.
He strode to the drop and knelt in the dirt, hyper-aware of her following his movements.
It was a gamble to test her, to see what she was thinking or if she would stop him again with a gaze that said sheknewsomething.
One hand planted and gripping a tuft of long grass, he reached out, stretching for the writhing obsidian darkness.
“Wait.”
He stopped shy of touching it—them—his satisfaction at the urgency in her tone curiously dim. Maybe because it only proved there was more to fear from the chasm than they’d realized.
“I…” There was that curl, tangled in her fingers again. “I can protect you from the shadows. I can shield you.”
There was something monumental about that small admission. Her dazed expression would have been comical any other time, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d done it.
Oh, yes. He was starting to understand. What she was, what she might be capable of. There was no longer any doubt she’d been holding herself back. The real question waswhy.
You are quite literallythe most eejit-brained, halfwitted fool in all of Bordoroth. This is the bleeding end of it, you know. All the plans… Poof! Fucking ash on the fucking wind.
Brand lifted a sardonic brow. “Care to explain?”
Lunara ignored that, which did not go unnoticed if the narrowing of his eyes was any indication. “I can shieldonlyyou.” Her eyes darted to Mag and Thad. “Four is too many.”
Oh well, if it’s only two… Sure! He’s probably rethinking every thought that’s not at allobviouslywhirring through his mind right now.
The well was almost entirely full. With a decent blood gift to release her of the pain she’d gathered since last night, it wasn’t too far-fetched to shield all of them.
But for how long? How far?
