Images from the past barraged her, laying themselves over reality. The forest twisted until she was crouched on a ravaged street in the Upper Block of Starkeep. Suddenly, it wasn’t the dried blood of innocents that covered them, but their own, flowing freely. Stone crumbled around her, a familiar screamechoing. A clawed hand was poised in the air above Brand, holding his still-beating heart. Death by the name of Malachyr?—
“Lunara?” Brand’s even voice cut through the recollections.
Her legs had turned to jelly, face and fingers numb. All she could do was reach out, hands fumbling for something solid to save her from herself.
Real. He was real. Not the one dying. That was another time. Another night. Other people.
The bastard can’t hurt you anymore. Cordelia promised.
Her eyes were glued to the pulse jumping in Brand’s corded neck, to the proof of life pumping steadily there.
Real. Real. Real.
It wasn’t enough to distract her from the sensation crawling over her skin, the past mixing with the present like a putrid film. Hadn’t Brand said that knowledge wasn’t always helpful? She should’ve shut her mouth and let him take her to the river.
The river.
Yes. There, roaring in the near distance. The instant her ears locked onto the sound, her body was no longer her own.
Lunara shoved past Brand, desperate. For the second time that day, she was sprinting away from him, the rush of water pulling her faster and faster through the trees. She ignored his shouts, heedless of the low branches stretching out like hands to grab her, smack her, claw her.
If she’d been in her right mind, she might’ve just commanded the dead particles away from them and eaten the cost, but she wasn’t and she didn’t.
Because this time, she was running from herself.
From the stain of remembering. From agony that had nothing to do with the price of her power. From facing him in this state and having to explain.
When she broke through the tree line and reached a small clearing, saw the river before her, Lunara had only enough senseleft to summon a pile of clean linens to the bank and a bar of soap to her hand before throwing herself into the water—boots and all.
She didn’t notice the iciness of it as she plunged into the pulling current. Nothing mattered but making the stars-forsaken soap lather and raking her nails over every exposed inch.
Get it off. Get it off.
More than anything, she wanted to scrub the memories away.
“Let me.” Her frantic movements were stopped when a pair of hands landed on hers. Brand’s presence loomed behind her, his warmth seeping through the water to comfort her. “Let me help you.”
When he squeezed her shoulders, it grounded her somewhat. Loosed her tongue and had her confessing, “I can’t… I can’t do it. I can’t get it off.”
Lunara swayed, black spots swimming in her vision as that last burst of power and pain caught up.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Next she knew, his fingers were landing in her hair to massage her scalp.
Slowly, soslowly, her lungs unclenched. Feeling came back. Combined with the shock of the cold water and the soothing tone of his rumbling bass…
This blood was not her parents’ blood. Brand was well and the monster was gone. The Elders had counted her among the dead. It was fifty-two years later, and she was in the Westrealm, not the Evesong. Not Starkeep.
Safe. She was safe.
Lunara tumbled back into her body, into sanity, on a ragged sigh. Her bones turned to putty beneath Brand’s ministrations, muscles unwinding as he worked to remove the filth coating herand she finally relaxed—until her foot slipped from the mossy stone she’d been perched on and she fell into his waiting arms.
She was incapable of thought after that.
Lunara was unraveling.
Tearing at the ruined sleeves of her dress, clawing at the buttons on her bodice.
