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Faldir waited until she straightened and fixed her with a cool stare, even more intimidating for his towering above her. “Because you’ll be no good to Brand if you’re bloody dead,” he snapped.

She swallowed, heart pounding. He wasn’t wrong, per se, but…

They aren’t there at night to see that you can’t sleep, anyway.

Exactly. For all her joking, Fern was the only one who witnessed her tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling while her mind raced. And only because they were back to sharing a room and the Fae refused to leave her side. Ever. She at least understood why Lunara didn’t bother, even if she gave her a hard time about it on occasion.

Faldir’s voice was gentler when he spoke again. “Find your bed and take a fucking nap. Hedda and I will keep an eye on him—a job we’ve practically been doing since before you were born. He’ll still be the same arsehole when you wake up.”

Lunara shook her head. That, right there, was the problem no one else seemed to understand. The very thing driving her.

The truth was that, by the time she got back to him in the morning, Brand wasn’t the same arsehole she’d left the night before. She felt him in ways they couldn’t. Sensed the sickness in him. It seeped into her skin from afar. Twisted her gut. Raised the hair on the back of her neck.

It was worse, every day. Just a little bit. Just enough. And not only the violence of his physical attacks, but her ability to manage the brutal toll on her mind. To remember that he loved her and this wasn’t him. That the endless hemorrhage was purely emotional, and she wasn’t actually bleeding to death from the involuntary blows he dealt her battered heart over and over again.

Hence the hours spent in the Imperial Archives. If she could just decipher the prophecy and⁠—

Enough. You have another plan.

Right. Yes. The whole reason she was here getting her arse beat.

And the Forgotten won’t force you to hold back for training purposes.

No. They wouldn’t. She’d leveled one chasm’s shadows, she could face another and its inhabitants for Brand’s sake.

Just smile and agree and move on. They’ll stop you if they put it together too soon.

They would try. And smiling would be way too suspicious.

Decided, Lunara threw her hands up with a put-upon sigh. “Fine, but I already had a nap at Argoph thanks to Fern. I’ll sleep tomorrow after training, and only for a few hours. Deal?”

The lie didn’t sit particularly well, but she could ask their forgiveness later. If they found out.

Good thing Fern was on the other side of the practice field, distracted by her daily hand-to-hand match with Hedda. The Fae would’ve seen right through her. Even Faldir was staring too intently for her comfort, his eyes narrowed.

“You’ll start now,” he finally said, pushing to his feet. “Take the whole day, no training tomorrow, and you can start fresh after luncheon. We’ll stay with Brand until then.”

Lunara swallowed back a scream. All these Demons and their high-handed, overbearing nonsense. When would they realize she wasn’t the same weak and timid creature they’d met in the beginning?

You can hardly blame them. It’s only been a couple weeks since you claimed Illamiata and came into your full power.

Still.

“I don’t need to be coddled, Faldir.” Her fangs lengthened, anger getting the best of her. “What I need is for you to stick that domineering attitude right up your⁠—”

A howl rent the air, birds exploding from the trees. Thaddeus—or rather, his wolf, Sorcha—was racing towards them at a furious clip. Lunara was almost happy for the distraction, even confused as she was by their presence. That was, until she saw the blood on Sorcha’s muzzle, staining her argent fur, and realized that something was very, very wrong.

Again.

Brand blinked awake, something pulling both from the center of him and from afar, a furrow already carved into his brow. He sat up and found the sheets damp with sweat, tangled around his legs. He’d been…dreaming? Maybe. There was something…

There, in his chest. A pulse, or…perhaps the pound of fear and relief in turns. His and not, at the same time. Familiar as it was foreign. If he turned towards it slowly⁠—

Damn it. Gone, like mist beneath the sunstar.

He stifled a curse and dug his fingertips into closed lids, flopping back on the mattress. Little sparks of light still flashed in his vision when he opened his eyes again, like the stars twinkling down through the glass dome above. Still night, then. Or the wee hours of morning, more likely.

This was the second time in a row he’d woken up with that feeling, like he’d just lost something beyond his memories.