Doing an excellent job of matching Lunara’s description of the one who’d taken Brand.
His lips peeled back as he fought the temptation to go after it and see for himself whether it was as all-powerful as his brother’s mate had depicted—or if it bled and screamed like anything else that took air into its lungs.
Fuck. No. They didn’t need another one of them missing because he’d misjudged.
Lyriat’s wings beat a steady rhythm as he bellowed another command at his legions from the air, regathering them near a grouping of dreadbeasts screeching their way past the blaze.
A pack of Wolflords raced by him, one nipping out at his shoulder as the others howled to the sky. Thaddeus. Or Sorcha, technically.
Araxis misted his way alongside her as they moved to join the Demon front, gathering himself for another round of mayhem. He was beginning to flag. He’d never expended this much of his power at once—not without a gift to temper the aftermath.
He needed night, if nothing else.
A blink and he was through the ether and perched atop the crystal peak of the Elder Halls, the cosmos stretching above him.
One breath. Two. The stars and galaxies reached down with a welcome caress, embedding their magic—their life—into his skin. Not enough, but it would have to do.
Another blink and he was once again within the chaos of battle, Demons towering above him as they swung their steel and battered their horns and fists in every direction.
“Araxis! To me!”
He dodged a hurtling talon and misted into the sky, the matter in the air holding him aloft as he searched the seething mass of bodies for Amunkar.
There, back-to-back with Amal, a ring of Forgotten around them. With a thought, he was in the circle, his power blasting outwards to latch onto some of their enemy.
“Get us to Lunara!” Amun shouted, his fiery spear jabbing out.
His fog popped the head off of a Forgotten as Araxis fought not to roll his eyes. “How do you propose I do that? I don’t know where she fucking is.”
A blinding flash of light overtook the southern horizon, rising up like a thousand sunstars to blot out the sky and turn the world white.
“What the?—”
Araxis was thrown to the ground along with every other creature in the vicinity by a shockwave of searing heat, the grass and soil overturning in its wake.
What he did not expect was the absolute power that welded itself right onto his bones.
“That’swhere she is.” Amun stood above him, his brow furrowed as he bent to pull Araxis to his feet. “We need to go now.”
Someday, he would convince his brother to admit howthe fuckhe alwaysknewshite.
Araxis spared a single glance back to the Ghostwood—to the empty space where the darkness used to be—and cursed.
“Where is she?”
Magnus looked up and blinked, still trying to find his way back into his useless body. Even Pet was content to remain quiet within, curled in on himself and too stunned to comment.
He wasn’t the least surprised to find Amun and Araxis standing above them, his oldest brother demanding answers he didn’t really have. Shite, he’d probably never be surprised by anything ever again for the rest of his damned life.
Lunara had made fucking sure of that.
The witchling had become something else. The stuff of myth and legend.
Somehow, she’d protected them. Leveled their group to the ground and tried to turn them into flattened hotcakes, aye, but she’d kept them from harm.
Saved their fucking lives.
Amun pounced, gripping his robe to shake him. “Where, Magnus?”
