Heart pounding, Brand raised his sword and put himself between it and Luna.
He spared a glance back at her, at the crooked, almost lifeless heap of her, just to be sure?—
With a blast of fetid air, a great screech rent the room and the shadows sprang at him, whipping his flesh and leaving oozing gashes in their wake. On a savage bellow, he swung his sword in a downward arc, his blade landing with a booming thud that shook the high tower.
Light poured from him as his muscles bulged, cutting, slashing, stabbing, his biceps burning with the effort.
It was like attacking a valley mist—pointless, hopeless. The infinite darkness of it dodged and dissipated, reaching out in lightning-fast wisps to rip at his flesh, wholly unaffected by his labors.
Sweat and blood poured from his brow, breaths ragged.
A pale flash of movement caught his attention. “Luna, don’t?—”
He was too late to avoid the single, thick tendril that snaked out from the center of the mass, wrapping around his neck and lifting him from the floor.
Luna loosed a guttural shriek, the sound a battle cry even as it ripped his heart from his chest. He was meant to protecther.Meant to shield her from all harm. Instead, his legs flailed uselessly beneath him as the shadow pulled him closer.
It loomed over him, wafting a rotten stench of burnt flowers that promised only despair. He drained as it squeezed, his light abandoning him as the rage left his body and he reverted to his lesser self.
The involuntary transformation was agonizing. Horns and fangs forcibly shoved back into his flesh. Skin tightening and clamping down on his muscles as they spasmed.
His sword slipped from his impotent grasp, disappearing back to the ether before it could clatter to the ground, too much of his hope with it.
Luna vaulted from the bed, white-hot threads at her fingertips. Her long tresses spun into the air as an orb formed in her hands, a perfect match to the silver swirl in her vengeful eyes. She was magnificent in that moment, landing with preternatural grace as she unleashed her colossal power, blinding him and washing the room in pounding light.
The shadows shrieked and cowered beneath her onslaught, blast after blast slicing through its inky depths. Hemorrhaging magic as it poured and poured from her in defense of him.
He wanted to scream when he saw the first stumble. The first gasp and her pallid skin. The signs of her weakening.
But, by burning fucking Solyrian, how she’d fought.
Brand strained with everything he had left, trying to get free—until the shadow began leaking itself into him, filling his body with lifeless weight.
With the sound of Luna’s labored breath in his ears, a crooning note sounded, laced with a chorus of countless wails as it grated and echoed through the chamber.
“Shhh, Brandir. Calm,” a voice of the same whispered. “Rest. This was a hard day for you.”
Shock tore an unwilling whimper from his burning lungs.
“You’re surprised, but you shouldn’t be. I promised I would never leave you.” With blinding speed, a second arm of shadow branched into massive talons and latched onto Luna’s torso, wrapping over her shoulders and around her waist. “Not likeshedid.”
“Please,” Brand wheezed, hardly a sound at all.
“I’m so sorry. I know what she means to you, but I need your help, remember?”
He couldn’t. He couldn’t fucking remember—not what she was implying, not why that voice was familiar beneath its layers—and that was the problem.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to do that if you’re worried about her.”
“No, no, no.”He felt his lips move, but there was nothing to hear.
Luna gasped as the talons squeezed, followed by the worst sound he’d ever heard in his fucking life—the tell-talepopof his mate’s spine snapping in half.
As the crack shot through the room, he tried to cry out—he fucking tried—but the shadows were choking him. Forcing their way down his throat.
The darkness lifted Luna upwards, her body bowing like a marionette until she was thrust towards him in a dizzying blur and jerked to a stop mere inches away. The force of it flung her arms and legs forward, a single, perfect finger sliding against his cheek before a series of deafening snaps told him her limbs had just been wrenched from their sockets.
Tears flowed down her cheeks, and he would have given anything to be able to comfort her. To wipe those tears away and whisper in her ear. To not have that violent brush of her hand be the last time he felt the bliss of her moonlight skin.
