Exhausted to her bones, pain streaking like lightning along her nerve endings, Lunara trudged to the chamber and its renewed mattress. She could worry tomorrow about how she’d distract herself from the horror of recollection now the cleanup was done.
Lunara fell back against the single pillow with a sigh—where she learned to never trust that satisfied, contented feeling again. To forego hope and optimism, because everything was actually complete shite.
Drifting towards sleep, lids like leaded weights, Lunara heard theotherVoice for the first time.
“So it begins, moth. Just you, yourself, and I, against the world. Well, for a little while, at least.”
Its giggles followed Lunara into her nightmares.
“You heartwovoices?”
Lunara almost laughed. Of course that was the thing Brand latched onto—she would, too.The tears streaming down his reddened face stopped her, though.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I used to think I was going mad.” Sisters, she was so wrung out. “Shite, there’s so much more to tell you.”
Brand dashed the backs of his hands across his cheeks. “Truth be told, I’m not sure how much more I can handle, little moon.”
Lunara had ended up on the opposite side of the bed, back propped against the footboard so she could face him and have some distance. She’d been afraid his touch would only wreck her. Make it impossible to continue.
Not once had he interrupted her, or asked questions. He’d sat there, silent, taking every blow she delivered. Strange, to watch the thingsherbody felt manifest in his instead. She hadn’tcried, but he’d sobbed for her. She hadn’t choked on her words, or stumbled over recollections, but he’d buried his head in his hands precisely when she would’ve.
The mating bond was intense, to say the least.
“The rest isn’t nearly as sad, I promise. Just lengthy, and complicated.”
“How so?”
“For one thing, I got so desperately lonely that I finally answered the door around the thousandth time Cordelia knocked on it.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. A good thing, too.” Lunara pictured the Firebane’s weathered face. Her long, white hair and no-nonsense attitude. They’d never been as close as before, but at least she hadn’t been completely solitary. “It wasn’t comfortable, but she gave me a purpose. Without my mother, there were too many creatures who needed advanced healing that weren’t getting it. I took the most extreme of them, with the caveat of drinking a tonic at the end, so they wouldn’t remember me after.”
“Caius and Thad?”
“You try forcing a memory potion onto an Imperial Son—that onein particular. Besides, we’d become close, and their departure was somewhat unconventional.”
“I’d say it worked out in the end.”
“Me too.” She gave him a half smile. “Besides, that was the day she told me Malachyr was dead. It happened almost immediately after the calamity, but it took me a few years to speak with her. It was the most relief I’d felt in a long while.”
Lunara still had days she didn’t believe it, though. Where she was sure he was stalking her, waiting for his chance to finish what he’d started.
“I still can’t believe all of Nachthelliae’s Keepers are…culled,I think you said? We’d always assumed it was an abdication, like an Imperial stepping down for the next Heir.”
She nodded, still having trouble accepting it herself sometimes. “I forced Cordelia to tell me of the others. My father hadn’t exaggerated—they all lose themselves in the end, and there’s no such thing as an oasis on the Isle. Malachyr was just the first to be sopublicabout it.”
“Maybe a good thing, the culling. I’d have had to kill him myself if they hadn’t already done it.” His nostrils flared, horns curling ever-so-slightly. “I think Araxis has some explaining to do.”
“For the love of the Sisters, no!” she shrieked, hands clasped in supplication. A shudder worked its way through her. “Not on my account. The last thing I need is for theBlessed Nightmare of the Endless Darkto be thinking that I’m causinghimtrouble.”
“An overly dramatic name for a genuinely kind male, if a little rough around the edges.” He grabbed hold of her calf, kneading the muscles there as he stared into the middle distance. “How’d you do it, Luna? How’d you survive?”
She might’ve laughed or had some clever response for him a month ago, but the contrast between then and now was so staggering, she no longer had any idea.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
He nodded. “Why were you so afraid to tell me? I see nothing you’ve done wrong.”
