Heart lurching, she opened her eyes and met Brand’s. He visibly relaxed, but concern lingered in his gaze. He knelt and brought his other hand up to hold both sides of her face and just stared at her.
She was at a complete loss for words.
“Luna,” Brand whispered.
The first time he’d used that name in this form, and it managed to hit even harder.
Her mate was there, right in front of her.
How? How did this happen? Sisters, what must he think of you?
“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted finally. “Maybe if you told me just how embarrassed I should be, I could better decide where to begin apologizing.”
Brand chuckled, his face lighting up. She adored the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, evidence of his good nature painted there in lines that never fully disappeared. They drifted down and his thumb brushed along her jaw to reach her bottom lip. He rubbed back and forth, wholly focused on her mouth, and liquid heat flooded her veins.
“Perhaps you should be embarrassed about how damned careless you are, running off at every sodding opportunity with no thought for yourself. Or maybe you’d like to apologize for putting yourself in danger, for getting run through by a bloody Forgotten and scaring the ever-living shite out of me when youstopped fucking breathing. Then again…” He looked into her eyes once more. “If you hadn’t done all that, we may have danced around the subject for far too long, waiting to see what would happen and never quite sure of the other. Perhaps it’s fitting I’m on my knees here before you, so I can thank you instead for being a reckless, wonderful fool.”
Tears welled in Lunara’s eyes and spilled over her lashes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean?—“
“Shhh,” he whispered, gently cutting her off.
In one fluid motion, he pulled Lunara to her feet and into his arms, squeezing hard enough to push the air from her lungs. “I thought I’d lost you, and I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”
“I’m still here.”
Somehow. Against her better judgement. Though… it didn’t feel quite as daunting as before.
Weeping moons, you’re a hopeless bleeding eejit.
He let go only long enough to bend and grasp her around the thighs, lifting and wrapping her legs around him.
Lunara squealed, her hands landing on wide shoulders. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me to stop and I stop.”
Blessed moons, the gravel in his voice.
“Stop what, exactly?”
Brand used one hand to brush the tears and loose curls from her face, his eyes following the motion before he reached back and reverently coiled her hair around his arm, grasping her nape. “Walking you over to that slab and finishing what we started.”
She didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to ruin it. “What about—” She cleared her throat, mustering her courage. “What about Faldir?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You saw what it was like. With only the two of us, there’s no way. The risk…” He shook his head. “And for what? An unlikely possibility?”
“You think he’s gone.”
“You were gone,”he pushed through gritted teeth, the agony in his voice choking her. “And I have no idea what awaits us when we leave. I-I can’t… I want…”
Her fingers landed on his lips, silencing him. Lunara knew what he was trying to say. “A moment of joy before the Veil?”
“Yes. Sisters save me, that’s exactly it.”
Eye-to-eye, breath mingling between them, they froze like that, time standing still as they poised for a glorious drop into the unknown.
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
Her back was hitting the platform before she could blink, Brand rising on his knees above her. He grabbed one ankle and brought her booted foot to his chest, eyes on hers as he undid the laces and tossed it aside. Fingers skimming up her calf, behind her knee, to her thigh and the lace on top of the stocking there. It was torture as he hooked his fingers in and dragged it away.
