His brother was right. She’d be safer above the beast and battle.
He commanded a chunk of the ground to lift beneath him, raising them upwards. When they reached the top, he ran his fingers over and beneath her head, shoulders, sides, legs… No wounds anywhere he could see or feel, but that meant nothing. Some injuries were held inside, seeping insidiously until the body succumbed.
She needed blood.
Brand lifted his arm to pierce his skin, but stopped when he noticed the layer of black ooze congealing on his skin. He wipedand wiped his arm against a fairly clean part of her skirt, but it wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t risk it.
Thaddeus.
His cousin hadn’t engaged the beast directly. He could give her a gift.
Brand lunged sideways to peer over the edge of the incline and cursed. There was so much of the dreadbeast’s blood on the ground that the overturned dirt had turned to mud and puddles.
His damned cousin was bounding around in front of the monster, splashing through the loathsome stuff as he yipped and snarled, luring it towards himself. The beast limped and jerked as it stalked Thad, Magnus racing behind it and plucking its severed talons from the ground—naked as the day he was born.
Both of the bastards were as covered in the shite as he was.
“Fuck!” Nothing for it. He’d have to feed her and hope to the Sisters she’d be okay.
Brand shoved the same hand he’d used before into her slack mouth and drove her fangs deep.
What in the weeping fuck?
The beast’s blood began to move against his skin, crawling up his arm as if to escape the touch of her lips. It took all of his willpower to hold still and ensure she had enough, near desperate to yank his arm back and cut the substance off him with his own blade if he had to.
It was just so bloody fuckingwrong.
The second he was satisfied, he pried her mouth away and set to exposing her skin. He swept loose curls away from her face, pushed her sleeves and skirts up—anything to bare as much of her body as he decently could. Though quickly disappearing, the twin moons were to the Sorcerit as Solyrian was to the Demons, and even their dwindling light should bolster her.
More than once, Brand wished he had Luna’s ability to hear the heartbeats around her, to have the reassurance its sound would offer.
Her skin began to glow, the rainbow shards held beneath its surface glittering as she hummed with building power. A ripple pulsed out through the air with her at its center, and she gasped to sitting, eyes wide and silvered.
“There you are, little moon,” he crooned, rubbing her back. “That’s it, just breathe.”
“What’s happening?” she asked, still obviously dazed. “Is it over?”
The shrieks and shouts sounding below them was answer enough, but he didn’t point that out. “Not quite.”
Magnus sprinted up the ramp, hugging the three talons they’d severed against his bare body.
A surprising wave of aggression hit when he caught the crimson blush stealing over Luna’s cheeks. He snarled in Mag’s direction, his battle rage too close to the surface to contain it. His brother’s answering chuckle only served to infuriate him more.
Luna leaned over the drop of the incline, Mag’s wrinkled battle robe in her hand a second later.
“I refuse to apologize for the free show,” Mag said, skidding to a stop and dropping the spikes like bloody, black logs to the ground. He snatched up the wad of cloth and donned it, breaths heavy. “But you have my thanks anyway, witchling.”
“Where the fuck is Thad?” Brand snarled.
“Ach, playing cat and mouse with his new best friend. They should be here any second.”
“They?”
“Aye, but don’t get your pants in a twist. That thing is so close to death already, I don’t know how it’s still standing. Just get your arse up and help me finish it.” Mag picked up one of the spikes and leapt off the edge to the battlefield below.
“What? Magnus!” Brand shouted.
“Come on, you wee shite! Thad is coming!”
