Page 175

Lunara had forgotten how impossible it was to tell the time of day in the Evesong.

She truly fucking hated it.

Add in that she was lost to the world for half a week, again, and it was even more difficult to guess. It could’ve been lunchtime, or the wee hours. The moons’ placement might have helped her, but she was tucked too far away from the wall of windows to see them.

She was in a tower in the Upper Block, that much was obvious. They all felt the same.

Bloated, stuffy things. As lofty in manner as they are in height.

Exactly. Why she ever wanted one, Lunara didn’t know.

Fortunately, her anger gave rise to the determination to do something. She was better than wallowing and staring at the ceiling, and she had somewhere else to be.

Lunara tried to call the moonlight to herself again, but the well was…nonexistent. Whether it was merely wounded or obliterated beyond repair, she didn’t yet know. If the condition was permanent⁠—

No. She refused to go there. Nothing was certain, and she didn’t have time for what ifs.

Blood gift first, spiral later.

Araxis either left the goblet for a reason, or was too distracted to realize his mistake. Regardless of why, she needed to get her hands on it.

She already tried to summon the cup to her hand. Repeatedly. To no avail.

Illamiata refused to work.

Lunara originally thought the pressure in her ears was a result of her battle and injuries, but the more she focused on it, the more it seemed to be coming from the room itself.

Probably whichever spells Araxis set to keep her from leaving. Allegedly. And yet another reason she tamped down the blooming panic, rather than succumbing to it.

Easy to forget how powerful a creature he really is when he’s being an arse and you’re in the middle of being absolutely bleeding infuriated with him.

True. Curse and damn him.

Worse still when she threw herself from the bed and onto the floor, swallowing a scream, and his earlier taunts about crawling to the Montrealm came back to her.

It’s fine. You’re fine. Facing Night was far worse, and you lived through it. This pain is nothing.

Especially if it got her to Brand.

Lunara stretched one arm out, then the other, dragging and pulling her broken body along. She may as well have been scraping herself over a carpet of broken glass, rather than the plush silk it was.

She made it about three feet before she passed out the first time.

Araxis said the Occurrence was tomorrow, but Lunara swore it had already been a week.

Shite, two weeks.

She couldn’t keep herself conscious for more than a few feet. Every time she woke up, her bones were settled as if hours had passed, those traitorous parts of her convinced they’d never be able to move again for the rest of forever.

Well, she showed them.

Until she passed out again, of course.

It was insulting, really, for Lunara to face such monumental trials in her life, just to end up crawling across the floor inch-by-inch for a goblet of old blood because Araxis decided to be a complete and utter arsehole.

There was one bright side. Distracted by the indignity, it was easier to ignore that the very thing she’d been running from all her life—the thing Brand promised over and over again to protect her from—was coming true.

In no way was it his fault, and she didn’t blame him for a second.