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It just means you have to save yourself this time.

Right. Exactly.

Eventually. Probably. Maybe.

Shite.

Most of Lunara’s fingernails had cracked off, and her borrowed robe was dragged halfway off her body and in complete tatters. Her hair kept getting caught beneath her limbs, her fangs had sliced into her lips and gums so many times she’d lost count, and she was fairly certain she was already losing sight in one eye again.

Still, it was nothing.

Nothing compared to losing Brand. Nothing compared to finding him so changed. Nothing compared to battling Night. Nothing compared to watching her parents be murdered. Nothing to the weeks, and months, and years she’d spent terrified and underfed, alone and barely sane in the Nachthellian wilds.

This pain was nothing.

Maybe if she kept repeating it, it would be true.

She cranked one knee up, using it for leverage to propel her forward, gasping when her torso landed again. A blink, two. Her lids closing…

Damn it.

Awash in a prismatic glow, Brand dreamed of opals and heat. Of Solyrian dawning on his skin and laughter spilling from the very heart of himself. Of happiness, as he’d never known before.

This time, he didn’t forget.

Through fields and flowers, over mountains and under sunsets, into rock and shadow, Brand rewatched every last millisecond of falling in love with Lunara. He obsessed over every twitch of her sassing brow and swing of her hips. Every laugh and tear. Every arch and moan, scoff and curse.

Luna, his little moon, was perfection.

All over again, he reveled in the blissful crack of his ribs as he ripped out his heart and gave it to her completely. The healing blaze of receiving hers in return. The wholeness of being welded to his other half.

They were all the more beautiful for their shared wounds and scars.

Then, he watched her die. Watched that spike of Okthana’s shadows skewer her, back its way out, and repeat the motion. Over and over and over. Felt the utter loss of hope. Of life. Felt his soul shatter into so many pieces, there was no such thing as finding all of them or putting them back together.

In that moment, Brand thought her gone from him forever.

Even in his captivity, hearing her cries and calls above the unending torture, he hadn’t known what to believe. Part of him clung with fisted hands to the hope those wretched sounds offered, while the other knew them to be a trick. Knew there was no way she survived.

Until there’d been no point in living anymore. Not without her.

And that was when Brand the Greater met Endellion.

Just before the closing of the Ghostbor Dread Chasm, continued…

“I need you to be a good Demon and just do this one, little thing.”

Brand the Greater eyed the thrashing darkness in Endellion’s grip and tried to scramble back, but she had some kind of hold over him. “What the fuck are you doing with that?”

Outside the grotto, the cove rumbled with a menacing note, his mind twisting further. Cracks formed in the craggy ceiling above, and rocks fell to strike a golden barrier he didn’t notice before. The pressure worsened, urgent and unrelenting—a weight on his bones he couldn’t shake.

“We’re going to think of it like medicine.” Endellion gripped his jaw and forced him to look at her. “Don’t worry, this half of you holds the last of Lunara’s light. It will burn this away once you do what you must, and you’ll eventually come back to yourself and be able to help her finish it. Hopefully.”

As if in answer, the opalescent striations in the walls dimmed, winking out one by one. Shadows eked in through the damage—just a trickle, but steady and gaining. They pooled in the corners and crevices, and crawled across the crimson sand. More and more and…

“What I must?” he rasped, eyes darting between her and their surroundings.

“A complicated series of events are about to take place, are taking place, even as we speak. Okthana is coming to make her grand request, the start of what she’s been planning all along, but unaware she’s being betrayed. This”—she wiggled the shard of shadow—“will help me numb you, the Greater, just enough that the Lesser will lose all hope and give in.”