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He forced air into his clenching lungs. Above all else, he was Straelon’s High Ambassador. They deserved his respect and attention, whether he was trapped in a nightmare or not.

His voice was far calmer when he spoke again. “I’m fine. Truly.”

“It will be good for everyone, I think, to see you here.” Lyriat gave his shoulder a squeeze, not quite meeting his eye. “The second it’s too much, you tell me.”

Weeping fuck, he hated the pity.

Just as the doors on the far end of the hall closed, fire licked over his skin. Not the transformative burn he’d been hoping for since waking, but a subtle dance of torment that always accompanied her.

Every bit of his self-control went towards sitting still instead of leaping up. To find her or run, he didn’t know.

The hall was packed, Demons grouped on either side of an aisle, more and more finding their way to the line forming down its center—the longest he’d ever seen in all his years as their Son. Even so, it wasn’t hard to spot her.

Pressed against a window, her profile glowed in Solyrian’s morning light. It gilded the wild, chestnut curls that fell well past her rounded hips and highlighted the lilac dress that clung to her. Nachthellians were meant to be creatures of night, but he swore the sunstar’s rays bent out of their way to caress her.

She was serenity in a sea of chaos. While others scrambled, she stood still. Silent. Unmoving. Focused wholly outside instead of what was going on around her.

The Sorcerit was easily the most beautiful creature Brand had ever seen, and she sickened him to his marrow for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Before he’d been taken, tortured, mutilated, or manipulated, he’d supposedly been…mated. To her.

The sudden loss of feeling in his lips and limbs was a blessing from the Sisters themselves. The detachment of his mind and body made it harder to hear the screams sounding in the deepest parts of him—the ones that never fully went away.

Prickles concentrated at his nape, condensing into a sharp stabbing that crept down his spine. Like insects, the feeling skittered and burrowed, deeper and deeper, and all he could think was that she was doing this to him. Somehow.

A muscle twitched under his eye as he leaned towards Lyriat. “That Sorcerit⁠—”

“Lunara. Her name is Lunara. Or Luna.”

“Yes. So everyone keeps reminding me,” Brand growled under his breath. “But she makes my fucking skin crawl. I don’t trust her.”

That sensation on the back of his neck released, as if to validate his suspicion, even as the abrupt disappearance left him feeling more ill than before.

It was fine. The cold sweat was familiar. The tremble was normal.

Normal. Normal. Normal.

“You know…” Lyriat raised an imperious brow at him, the slightest smirk pulling at one side of his lips. “I can’t wait for the day you regret saying that.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

He snapped the question, but couldn’t deny the slightest thrill at the look on his friend’s face. At the spark of how it used to be between them.

“You’ll know when you know, and the world will be bloody right again.” Lyriat tossed his long, copper hair behind one shoulder and settled back into his throne, every inch the stoic king when he faced their brethren again. “You will be right again.”

A lump formed in Brand’s throat, choking him.

He absentmindedly ran the knuckles of his first finger up and down, side to side over his lips, the motion soothing him somewhat.

Being right again was all he wanted, but this wasn’t the first time someone implied the only way he’d get it was through her. If that was true, why did she hurt so much? Mates were supposed to be a balm. But his mind and body thrashed at the sight of her, begging to get away. He crumpled inward when she got too near, endured agony at the sound of her voice, blacked out if she dared a touch.

Forbidding her from coming within a few yards of him had been an act of desperate self-preservation. He couldn’t lose himself just to regain consciousness and discover that he’d mauled someone because of her.

Again.

His family and Lyriat were strong enough to take it, but what if he had a fit when someone more helpless was nearby? He’d never survive it. Probably why they hadn’t let Nyri come anywhere near him.

“Step forward, Gaulnir, and air your grievance,” Lyriat called out, his amplified voice wrenching Brand’s attention to those gathered.