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The floor rumbled and the Hollow parted down the middle before her, a staircase of pure diamond shining and winding its way upwards.
Lunara felt their expectancy, heavy in the pulse of their quiet, shared breaths, because it mirrored her own. She’d never wanted anything more than to take that first step and ascend.
A bright giggle echoed in the recesses of her mind. “Go on then, moth. What are you waiting for? This is the moment they planned for. It’s time.”
Yes.
Time to take up her bright place in the sky.
“Come, quick. She ascends.”
Brand’s head snapped up and he was on his feet, following Araxis from the hiding place his brother left him in.
“She’ll be in a trance and won’t recognize anything but her purpose by the time she reaches the spire top. Whatever you do, Brand, don’t touch her. Don’t speak to her. Don’t even clear the last of the stairwell until the light dies if you think the temptation will be too much.”
“I swore to be beside her when she faced this,” Brand said, his heart aching.
“You made that vow in ignorance of what you were promising.”
“No, little brother. I didn’t. For her…” He swallowed. “I could be walking into the Veil itself and it would stand.”
“Good.” Araxis nodded. “Remember that.”
He gestured for Brand to follow, guiding him through a series of tight halls until they reached the balconies again—far smaller and closer together all the way up here. Up and up, around and around, to the culmination of the Elder Halls’ heights, where all that was left was the dark, spiral staircase Brand climbed as a child.
“Thank you.”
Araxis grabbed Brand. “There’s one more thing.”
His brother’s low voice was approaching breathless, which sent alarm bells pealing through Brand’s mind. “What is it?”
“She might be too far gone to remember by the end, even though we tried. The incantations…” There were fucking tears in Araxis’s crystalline eyes when he looked up. “When her feet touch down, no matter what you have to do, don’t let her use the blade she holds on herself. Please. Everything depends on it. As soon as you have hold of her, just…move.”
It would be no struggle whatsoever to stop Luna from harming herself, regardless of whether Araxis asked it of him, but everything about his brother’s demeanor scared him. “Araxis—”
“You need to go, and so do I.”
With that, he raced back the way they’d come, not looking back.
“Shite.”
Brand practically flew up the stairs, climbing as fast as his size allowed. Fern wasn’t joking. It was endless, like covering miles instead of the few stories it was—far longer than he remembered it taking when he was young, though his excitement now was greater.
He cleared the top as she appeared on the other side and the world stopped turning.
Burning. Fucking. Solyrian.
There was no creature in all of Bordoroth who rivaled Lunara the Moonweaver.
And she was looking right bloody through him as she made for the center, Starkeep stretched out in every direction around them.
His heart stopped when he saw the dagger clutched in her hand, and it took everything to root himself to the spot. Not to touch. Not to speak.
Someone draped her in the thinnest silk, so blue it was almost black, dotted with stars of golden thread. Transparent, almost, her silhouette on full display. It barely held on to her, the plummeting vee made all the more jarring against her opal skin when the air stirred and she underwent a sweeping transformation. Her hair and eyes went wholly silver, fucking Illamiata shining from…
Oh, sweet Sisters save him.
From her mangled chest.
