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Not a comet, but a Fae. One he swore he⁠—

Black spots crowded his vision when the creature wrenched his captor away. More shouts echoed, pure chaos raining down, but his focus was wholly on his own freedom—a freedom he would never have as long as she was alive. He sprang after them, no idea how he even had the strength to do so.

It was too late.

A collar appeared around his throat, choking him as it heaved back to trap him once more.

Someone murmured in his ear, but he didn’t understand the words above the roaring wave of cold sweeping over him.

“You will taste my wrath for your lies, half-breed.” Brand’s mouth moved, but the voice didn’t belong to him. His body thrashed, but he never told it to. “Torment, for your broken promises.”

No. No, no, no.

The desperate denial never had a chance to leave his tongue before Brand’s mind broke, and he fell for the first time to the writhing darkness within.

In the weightless nothing of their mind, Brand the Greater stood over the curled up, weeping form of Brand the Lesser.

Just as the Oracle said, they did actually tried to kill Luna. The reasons she gave, his confusion, were not good enough to assuage the suffocating guilt. It was a wonder he wasn’t down there rocking back and forth with himself.

Burning fucking Solyrian.

The beast used Brand’s body to commit all manner of foul deeds. Had planned and plotted. Manipulated. Had called her names, wounded her body, drained her power, battered her spirit. From the moment it looked her in the eye and called her a celestial cunt, it was scheming. Waiting for that final opportunity on the balcony after being thwarted on the beach.

It didn’t matter that every long look and shared sigh was true. That he poured every ounce of his yearning and adoration into that kiss. That the words and passion came from Brand’s own heart. The beast let it happen, and it sickened him.

And still, none of it was as egregious as that one, single moment in their cave. Not to him.

Because he…chose that torture. Him. Brandir aht Bordoroth. Himself.

So what if the alternative reality was worse? They still had to live through and overcome the consequences of this one. He still had to spend the rest of his days knowing what he’d almost done. That the one who wept over his body, who came to fucking rescue him, was his blessed, perfect mate, and he hadn’t known her at all.

The beast was gone, thank the Sisters. But if he was ever going to be able to look her in the eye, ever going to bloody deserve her again, Brand needed to grovel. Wanted to grovel. To do everything in his power to atone for that most heinous of acts. Prove that he was hers, irrevocably, no matter how spectacularly he’d fucked up.

There was just one glaring issue with his plan. Well, perhaps two.

The Lesser was useless for now. Until she was safe and he had a reckoning with himself and the rest of the shite, such would likely be the case.

More importantly, though, he didn’t sense her. Through all the travels in his memories, all the time he’d lived over again, Luna wasn’t close by. Not for any of it.

That was a fucking problem because he knew her—heart to heart, soul to soul—and his little moon would never leave him to recover alone, regardless of what he’d done. She was bloody damned stubborn like that.

Something was wrong, and that just wouldn’t fucking do.

Yes, deserving Luna again was going to take a stars-damned miracle—of that he had no doubt—but first, he needed to find her.

And destroy whoever dared to keep her away from him.

Brand rose from the depths of his unconsciousness and straight into his rage.

His whorls of power erupted into existence, their light the first thing he saw upon opening his eyes. They spread, burning so sweetly, staining his sienna skin like the striped mountains of Straelon. His horns multiplied and grew, twisting to cage his skull. Fang and claw burst forth, bruising, all the sharpest parts of him shredding the pillows, the sheets.

It was as much self preservation as anything else. The Lesser was hemorrhaging inside, little more than a broken babe. Utterly lost, and understandably so. That half of him carried them through the pitch and the pain. This half could carry them until he was able to see enough luster in life again to survive.

Brand leapt up, leaving the bed in splinters behind him. He barely avoided doing the same to his parents and Mag as they scrambled out of his way. There was too much within him to pay them heed, excess magic roiling in the fibers of his flesh, and it desperately needed out.

He unleashed a roar to the domed glass ceiling, shaking and warping the walls as they absorbed his fury and dispersed it into their particles at his command.

Sweet Sisters, the absolute force of it. The release.