Page 263

Gritting his teeth, Brand sent all of his sorrow, his regret, down the bond.

“It wasn’t you.” Luna laid her hand over his, stilling it, and huffed. “Besides, it was partially my own foolishness that did it. Some of that rash and reckless behavior you suddenly seem to think I don’t possess.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked away, thumb absentmindedly stroking his. “It was my first time using the raw moonbeams for violence, instead of creation, and I was perhaps a tad overconfident. But Illamiata had a mind of its own, too, and I didn’t care what it was doing to me because I thought I was freeing you. I didn’t even notice how bad it was until later when I…when I looked in the mirror.”

Her heart wrenching sorrow and self-loathing—so much disgust—filtered in. An exact, visceral match for how Brand felt the next morning, so ashamed of his reflection that he shaved his bloody face and head.

Weeping shite.

Brand did his slow breathing—holding, counting, exhaling, counting—and tried to stave off the hammering pound of his heart. The first prickles of pending numbness. “For what it’s worth,” he murmured, “they almost look like your mating marks made permanent. They’re stunning. You are stunning.”

“Thank you.” She sniffled but smiled. “That means a great deal to me.”

He wasn’t sure if it would make her feel better or worse to know that the bond was working between them, even then. That it was influencing their actions in its twisted, broken way.

It didn’t really matter though, did it? Not when he promised to never withhold from her again.

“Luna…I think the bond was⁠—”

A shrill yowl cut him off. Stirling hopped onto the lounge and crawled up to rest his chin on Brand’s chest, blinking slowly at him.

“Would you mind returning our clothes before I introduce you?” he asked. “I’m not fond of the idea of this one’s claws anywhere near certain parts of me. Or you, for that matter.”

She giggled and flicked her wrist, his trousers and a new shirt appearing around his body.

Brand scrubbed a hand down his face and said, “Luna, meet Stirling the fox. Stirling, meet your mummy.”

The adorable shite only side-eyed her, not moving from his spot.

“Hmm. I think our little Stirling is very protective of you, Brand.” She stroked Stirling’s nose and head. “Do you feel better since he settled down there?”

“I know it sounds silly”—Brand let his head flop back—“but yes. Just like Pet when I was young. I’m not a boy anymore, though, so it feels a bit…I don’t know. Silly.”

“No, it’s lovely.” She moved her attentions to him, smoothing the furrow that dug its way in without him knowing and combing through his hair. “I’m afraid that animals aren’t particularly drawn to me, for all I adore them. I had to make my own in the end, but I understand completely. Axanderus kept me company and kept me sane, even though he’s only a figment of my imagination.”

“That owl remains one of the most incredible things I’ve seen in my life—as real as it gets. And your imagination is a beautiful place, little moon.”

The smile she gifted him was even more beautiful.

“Want to know what’s sillier than being eased by a fox that fits in my tankard?” He hiked Stirling up under his chin, nuzzling his silky fur. “I named him for his coloring. Turns out he’s bloody brown, though.”

Luna laughed outright at that, throwing her head back. “Much of the Evesong does not appear how it really is. Look at my own hair!” She sifted through the strands, almost black in this light, and fanned them out. “See? I thought it was so dark, and then I got to the Montrealm. I think I stared in the mirror there for a whole hour the first night after healing Baldrir. Hardly recognized myself.”

His stomach plummeted. “Fuck. Nyri and Bal.”

“I know.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “About that…”

Luna told him of her visit with the Oracle during and after the Occurrence. All the things that confusing creature told her, the secrets she shared. Every detail of the memory she was shown. And Endellion’s short and wretched prophecy. Her repetition.

One he recognized to his very bones.

“First, I already knew you were a goddess, even if I was the only one worshipping you. We can unpack the rest of that later, though, because I had my own encounter with Endellion.” She gaped while he recounted the harrowing tale of his inner imprisonment by the Oracle, but it was the very end that mattered the most. “The last thing she did was offer me a truth. She said, ‘It’s not for you, the sun and the moon. That doesn’t mean others won’t know what to do,’ and then she disappeared. Next I can recall, I was waking up in the chasm w-with you.”

There was a beat of silence, two…

“She severed our bond?!” Her righteous fury slammed into him. “That unbelievable, absolutely impossible⁠—”