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At some point, Luna decided to start chattering and Brand…woke up.

More accurately, she thought it was a good idea to tell him about the things she’d been up to in the background. The things he had no way of knowing or remembering. Things he would’ve pinked her arse over if he’d been aware of them.

Brand supposed outrage was as good a thing as any to snap him out of it.

“That’s when I asked Faldir to start training me with scarier weapons. The scythe was absolutely a mistake. One I won’t be making ever again. Even Fern didn’t like it.” She looked up from her weaving, tilting her head. “Though, I suppose that was as much about the wielder as anything. As Magnus likes to say, ‘there’s a gleam in the eye there,’ and Faldir most certainly possesses it. Chilling bastard when he gets going.” Shrugging, Luna went back to what she was doing, her wooden hook dancing as she pulled the moonlight down and spun it together. “Anyway, I only did it because I thought it might help condition me for when I went into the chasms to find more Forgotten. You see, I had to go alone and⁠—”

“You what?”

Luna actually jolted, a squeak and gasp caught together, as if she forgot he was there.

Oh, no. No way her brilliant, shining smile was deterring him.

Not when he still saw the blood dripping from the ends of a Forgotten’s claws, skewered straight through her middle, the light and life draining from her before his eyes. Not when he still heard himself fucking begging her not to die, chastising her for being a rash, stubborn fool. For never thinking of herself.

She was leaning towards him, expectant. Waiting. He was not the one who needed to start talking.

Her face fell, brows dropping together. The blush that spread across her skin was pretty as anything, her fluster doing its best to make him forget why he was bloody furious, but he refused to give in.

“Go on.” Brand’s voice was a shell of itself, but there was no mistaking the challenge in it. The blatant invitation for her to build her own funeral pyre.

Luna swallowed. “Well, I had this plan. I knew it was a bit harebrained, and that everyone would try to stop me. Especially Fern. You know how she is. She never let me⁠—”

The rumble in his chest was a warning for her to get on with it.

“Right. Um. Yes.” She stood up, grumbling when her hook hit the floor and rolled. Sending it away into the ether, she started pacing, a curl twisting around her finger. “So, I was doing these experiments…”

Brand sat up as Luna told him about her bloody fucking experiments, his body burning through the ache of his immobility with blind, hot fury. Of how she ventured into the Woodmaia Dread Chasm to conduct them. Of her attempts at isolating the darkness. Learning how it worked. So she could fix him. Heal him. Rid him of the beast.

“Endellion helped me figure it out. Sort of. She’s difficult at the best of times, so I suppose that’s a bit of a grey area. But there was this book in Argoph and⁠—”

“Luna.”

She pulled up short and turned her eyes to him, a shudder in her breath. “Yes?”

Damned if he didn’t feel her burst of joy even through the walls he built around their bond.

“I want us to be crystal clear.” Brand stood, keeping the bed between them. “You mean to say that, after almost being murdered by one of them, you chose to go back into the depths alone to find more Forgotten.”

“Well, I⁠—”

“It’s a yes or no.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“It seems simple enough to me. Did you or did you not choose to go alone into a Dread Chasm.”

“I…did. Yes.”

“I see.” Weeping sisters, his throat felt like a block of rusted kitchen knives. “And, at any point, did you stop to ask yourself whether that was a good idea, or did you run headlong into it without a single care for yourself, like you do everything else?”

Her eyes flashed silver and she arched a brow. “There was no such thing as good or bad ideas, Brand. I tried a plethora of things because I had no understanding of what I was dealing with. So, I sought understanding. I also spent fifty-two years only caring about myself, and”—she gestured to everything—“it didn’t work out very well for me, did it?”

His heart flipped into a furious rhythm. Fuck, it felt good to be angry, even if she had to be daft to pull it out of him. “You spent fifty-two years alone.” He bent and picked up half a wrinkled pile of linens, random other shite in the handful. “You were clearly not taking care of yourself.”

Luna gaped at him. “Right. So, if I kept every little thing in perfect little boxes and drawers in my perfect little tower, like you do, that would’ve been acceptable? That would’ve cured me?” She scoffed, fiery as fucking anything. “And for the record, I know literally every single thing you’re holding right now. Just because it isn’t neat, according to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t organized!”

“Oh?” He chucked the mass and walked over to the windowsill, drawing his finger across the surface. “Tell me, do the dust mites have names, or…?”