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“Ah, there it is. That’s the look we were waiting for,” he heard Faldir say. “Go on, Highness. Don’t fight it. Just let the horror sink in so you can go about shoving it down like the rest of us.”

“Could you possibly be more of an arse? Honestly.” Lunara stood beside Brand, her husky voice strained. “I’m so sorry, Brand, but we have to keep moving.”

He barely noticed her there, too absorbed in the wasteland before him. “How did this happen?”

Was this what the Horned City looked like, a mere stone’s throw from his own bedroom window? Was this what he’d been ignoring back home?

“That’s not important.” She raised pleading hands. “Right now, finding Nyri and Baldrir is all that matters. Please. We have to go.”

“But—”

“The witchling is right, lad.” Magnus shoved him. “Ruminate later. We’ve got company coming.”

A piercing shriek rent the air as Mag finished his sentence, a clattering thump in its wake, and Brand spun towards the sound. “What the fuck?”

The creature defied description. Nearly two stories tall and balanced on four multi-jointed, blackened legs that struck the ground like stabbing blades. Waxy skin clung to jagged bones, the muscles beneath undulating with every grotesque movement. Its razored teeth dripped with gore, but there was no real head. No…eyes.

Sisters save him, he’d seen long-dead cadavers with more life in their flesh. More color.

“Dreadbeast,” Magnus spat.

A buzzing started in Brand’s skin, his lips and limbs going numb. He was wrong—he wasn’t at all ready. This wasn’t like any battle he’d been in before.

From over a nearby rise, a pack of Wolflords descended on the creature. Their yips and howls drowned out its screams, their murderous efficiency staggering. Practiced. Seasoned.

Fucking shite, they were used to this.

“See? Nothing to worry about. Now, snap out of it and fucking move before I’m forced to carry you. One foot, then the other. That’s it.”

Mag’s no-nonsense attitude recentered him before the anxiety fully took hold. His brother was right. Brand had never frozen up in battle before, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Thoughts racing, he blocked it all out. Instead, he focused on the flow of Lunara’s chestnut hair in front of him as they ran—the way it streamed and swayed, the way it caught the light—and let it hypnotize him into a semblance of calm.

Damn it all. How’d he gone from loathing to curiosity in the span of a day? To being tempted to reach out and touch the wild curls, just to know for sure that something so stunning still existed in this cursed place?

A high-pitched whistling preceded a quaking boom as they crossed the remnants of a grazing field, shaking the ground. He was so distracted by it that he nearly plowed right into Lunara as she skidded to a stop.

That was when he made the mistake of looking ahead.

Brand’s knees hit the dirt, a visceral shame engulfing his body, and he knew.

This.

This was what they hadn’t told him.

Barely half a mile away lay the Ghostbor Dread Chasm—at least, that was what should have been there.

Instead, the Ghostwood and its bony trees were butted right up against Thodelebor’s land, a scar of overturned rock and soil marking their joining, and the truth sank in.

Taken. Tortured. Mutilated.

Manipulated.

Brand doubled over, hands clenched in his hair, unable to take his eyes from the devastation.

“You’ve done so very well, my darling boy.”

No, no, no.