“Aye, someone had to keep the wee shite out of trouble. You’ve never seen a beast like a Straelani toddler, throwing a fit. Talk about a rage, aye? He would grow and shrink, grow and shrink, big wobbly tears in his eyes as his horns caught on everything and the stone of the castle went all sorts of wonky around him.”
Alwyn sighed. “Brandir used to have these bouts of overwhelm. All he wanted was to be alone. His powers fluctuated with his emotion, so the worse he felt, well… Let’s just say, when he didn’t want someone following after him, the stone took care of the problem for him.”
“The floor would rise up and grip our ankles.” Vann stared into the middle distance, his voice soft. “Once, everyone in the castle found themselves up to the knees in stone vices. Brand quit Argoph with his trusty hound at his side, intent on using the opportunity to escape. He never once trapped Magnus, you see.”
“That was the day I shifted back,” Magnus murmured. “Didn’t want the wee lad getting lost or hurt. He about shat his pants when I finally did it. Who could blame him? One second I was his pet, the next I was naked and stumbling on two legsbeside him, begging him to go back and free our mam, if no one else.”
“Your wolf’s name…”
“Aye, lass.Pet,” he whispered, eyes welling anew.
Oh, sweet Sisters. She couldn’t take it.
The somber silence in the room wrapped its fingers around Lunara’s throat and choked her.
These were the kind of stories people told when someone left for the Veil and they wanted to keep their memory alive for a little while longer.
She refused for that to be the case. “We have to find him.”
“Aye, witchling,” Magnus answered, swiping a tear away from his cheek. “We do. But first…” He looked at the others, head shaking. “We need to know what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
He couldn’t seem to look at her. “None of us who were here that night can remember, like it’s been erased. Blocked? I don’t fucking know. I was walking towards Brand while you healed Thad, and then I was laying in a pile of rock as the tower was falling, everyone else still out cold around me. Except, I couldn’t smell you or Brand, and knew you had to be up there somehow.”
A whole city of creatures couldn’t recall? Hadn’t seen? It didn’t make sense.
A problem for another day. Too much at once and you’ll never get through it.
Right. One thing at a time. Brand needed her even more than before, because she remembered all too well.
Her lids slid closed. “It was a shadow. A female? I don’t know. Hard to tell beneath the layers of their voice. I’ve never seen anything like it, except in the chasm. It spoke to Brand as if it knew him.”
She told them everything, from the moment she’d awoken to Brand battling the creature, to when he was whisked away and the dome crashed down.
“There’s something else, too,” she admitted, sitting up a little straighter. “It won’t make much sense, but you have to believe me. I… I only realized that night that a voice I’ve heard in my head for most of my life istheOracle, and that the Shadow Prophecy is upon us.”
She’d expected gasps or flying looks, not total silence.
“Explain.”
Alwyn’s tone nearly killed her, sounding exactly like his son when he demanded the same. Her breath hiccuped, so fucking tight in her chest.
She told them her history, of the Voice’s many visits and clues. “Some of her words have been identical, some different, but I see it all so clearly now. I am the moth it speaks of. The twilight. Brand is stone’s crowned dawn, and… and a most precious thing now suddenly gone.”
Fuck, he was gone.
Alwyn scrubbed a hand down his face. “We’d already come to that conclusion. The old warnings are finally in play.”
That accounted for their nonchalance.
“Aye,” Magnus said. “How could we not? After all our joking around, Brand’s tower falling was a bitter pill to swallow. Could have knocked me over with a feather when Vann pointed it out and we put our pieces together.”
Vann nodded. “Luna’s claims give us a key to the words, though.”
“True.” Alwyn chewed his lip, eyes going distant. “If the Oracle was naming creatures, people we know, I might be able to crack it finally.”
“Alwyn…” Fionerys gave her mate a wary look.
