Luna’s manic laughter had died when the first shadows had poured by them to fill their sanctuary, tainting it. Now, her breaths were shallow as she wove her magic, the darkness recoiling before she’d even sent out her power.
Interesting.
With a shaky exhale, she pushed her arms out. Instead of a gentle sweeping, a luminescent wind battered the shadows away with a vengeance, the surrounding area cleared in an instant.
Her head jerked back as she lifted her hands, staring at her palms like she’d never seen them before, and her skin was glowing.
Brand squeezed her closer, a swell of pride washing over him, and he vowed to himself that—whatever her secrets—he would protect her from their consequences. His mate was as lost as she was powerful, confused even by herself. They’d find answers together.
Provided they made it the fuck out in one piece.
“I—”
Stones clattered in the near distance, their fumbling descent echoing in the heavy air and stealing whatever she’d been about to say.
Brand pressed his back to the cliffside and scanned their surroundings, lit warmly by Luna’s starry, hovering orbs. There was nothing to see, butsomethingwas close, hovering just out of sight. He could feel it in the prickle down the back of his neck.
Luna’s nails bit into his shoulder as her head tilted, gaze going distant for a moment before she blinked. Swallowing, she locked eyes with his and pointed over the edge of the step they stood on.
Much as he wanted to get her to safety, he had to know what it was. Not just to assuage his own morbid curiosity, but for the protection of Bordoroth, as was his sworn duty. The Forgotten were bad enough. If there were more…
With a reluctant—silent—sigh, he spun and set her down, caging her against the rock with his massive body.
“I’m going to look,” he said, barely making a sound. “When I turn back around, you’d better be right where I fucking left you, Luna.”
Her eyes flashed silver, a biting retort no doubt perched on her tongue, but he shoved a finger against her lips to silence it. “Please.” There. He’dasked.
She slumped against the wall when he released her—brow raised and displeasure clear—but at least she didn’t move.
Satisfied, Brand turned and slowly made for the ledge. He allowed himself a deep, fortifying breath before he leaned over and…
Weeping fucking Sisters.
A dreadbeast. It had to be.
Clinging to the rock, Luna’s star lights hovered around a creature almost beyond description, illuminating waxy skin and a massive torso that put his own to shame, even in his greater form.
Where a neck and head should be, there was instead a lump of flesh that hung over a bloodied maw large enough to devour a grown adult in a single bite. Multiple rows of needlepoint fangs jutted from the gaping opening as a tongue like tar-coated rope whipped out to taste the air.
Two sets of stacked shoulders terminated in jointed arms, packed with grotesque muscle and tipped with lethal spikes of black bone instead of hands, each as long as his sword. Four legs of the same were attached to an almost dragon-like body, though it was all wrong. Bulbous at the joints and shrunken in between, like an insect without its outer shell.
It had no ears or nose that he could discern, no eyes, and yet it was searching. Seeing, somehow.
He understood the clicking noise earlier when it shifted side to side, its body undulating and adjusting as it struck those taloned appendages into new footholds, sending more dust to the chasm floor.
The beast reared back with another lash of its tongue, revealing a glowing hole in its chest, not entirely unlike the eyes of the dead below. It pulsed rhythmically from within, a deep red where the gazes of the Forgotten had been a burning orange.
Fuck. He’d never seen anything like it. Not face-to-face, or within the pages of books. Not even in the worst of his nightmares.
It was death incarnate—and far more than they could handle alone. Looking at it, he knew to his marrow they either escaped or they died, and there was no fucking way he was allowing the latter.
He turned back to Luna, finger pressed to his lips to keep her from making any sound. He still wasn’t sure whether it would be better to sneak away or run for all he was worth but, either way, he needed her in his arms.
Luna leaned sideways to peer around him just as he knelt before her, that foolhardy curiosity of hers right at the fore.
A reckless streak that might’ve saved them both, in the end.
Her eyes widened a split-second before he felt the looming presence behind, the world slowing around him. Apparently—for all it’s shrieking and clacking movements—the beast did, in fact, possess the ability to move silently.
