His mind blanked.
He didn’t understand how his hands had gone from clutching Lunara mere moments ago, to being buried in the open chest cavity of a Wolflord. How he’djustbeen looking into her impossibly blue eyes and trying to figure out how to heal whatever rift he’d accidentally formed between them, but now he was being met with glazed, golden ones that lifelessly pleaded with him from a face that had been peeled away.
Eyes so similar to Mag’s.
He blinked and jerked back, just for his sight to snag on a female’s mangled body, black streaks marring the skin that had been left behind. On twisted limbs that battled for space amongst a sea of internal organs. On contorted mouths locked eternally in their silent screams. Everywhere he looked, piles of hair and bone and teeth and blood.
Brand couldn’t breathe.
This wasn’t the cost of warfare—an unfortunate brutality he was well used to. Even when violence was needed, when he was required to use fist and sword alongside his brethren, it wasn’tthis.
This was unspeakable.
Innocents, ripped away from their laundry and harvesting. Cut down in the midst of flirtation and laughter. Children in pieces, their ball still on the ground from the game they’d beenplaying. Mates slaughtered side-by-side, unable to protect their families.
Baldrir’s message came into focus—all too clear, too dreadful. The threat it was meant to be.
Glynmor thinks she’s safe and well, tucked tight in her field of green. But what do you and her flesh have in common? I know what I hope it will be.
Brand gagged as he righted himself, willing his limbs to work and his lungs to stop gasping.
He would’ve thought an eternity had passed, but Lunara’s feet were only just leaving the top rung of the ladder.
Fuck the message, he could deal with it later.
His greater half thrashed when she disappeared from view, clamoring to reach her. Ignoring the cold sweat that had broken over his brow, he stumbled through the mess, reaching the tower as Magnus tore into the village square.
Brand had never seen that look on his brother’s face before. Had never witnessed him freeze in utter disbelief, shock stilling his limbs.
“Help me!” Lunara’s voice was breathless above, harried.
It jolted Brand into action, and he threw himself up the ladder and onto the tower platform. It was dim beneath the roof, but he spotted her in the corner instantly, crouched over something.
Someone.
Weeping, fucking Sisters.
Here, in the frontier lands of Thodelebor, was a Fae. It was too hard to tell which species the female was under the carnage caking her skin. The Tempusrealm of Kohamaia was home to so many different types, he might struggle to know even if she were freshly clean.
Still, a single, spiraled curl had avoided the mess, its honeyed color shifting to lavender in a ray of sun that broke past the eaves.
A prismatic glow gathered in Lunara’s hands. “Tear the roof down. Now,” she said, voice curt. “I need the sunlight.Sheneeds it.”
The tower rattled as Brand moved to obey, something in him incapable of ignoring her commanding tone. His teeming questions could be answered later.
Magnus pulled himself onto the platform and pushed past Brand before he could climb out, hopping up onto the low wall with grace that shouldn’t be possible for a male his size. “I’ll do it.” His brother’s rumbling voice was a shell of itself. “You stay with her.”
Solyrian crept through in bits and pieces as shingles fell to the ground, revealing just how horrible a state the Fae was in. Her face was ruined and at least one arm was broken. Gouges were raked across her flesh, her short dress in tatters. Even with the light pouring in, Brand couldn’t accurately place the color of her skin. She was little more than a heartbreaking splash of red and black and grey.
“What can I do?”
As soon as Magnus finished clearing the roof away, Lunara moved to lay her hands on the female’s chest. “Nothing. Unless you?—”
Her words were cut off by her own tortured screams the second she made contact.
Brand fell to his knees beside her, shouts sounding from the ground. He had no words to spare for Hedda and Faldir, no voice to reassure them as he grabbed onto Lunara’s shoulders and was consumed by such searing agony that his body seized.
His teeth clamped down, right through his own tongue, eyes rolling back in his head. He couldn’t make his lungs work. Couldn’t let go. Couldn’t?—
