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Magnus didn’t have time to blink after that stunning statement from his oldest brother to his youngest before the witchling’s scream echoed across the chasm.

Weeping fuck.

—Time to go, Maggie⁠—

Aye.

He gave Pet a tad more freedom, the wolf boosting his senses, and accepted a hand up from Araxis. With one eye locked on Fern—a verdant blur in the distance as she flew for a solitary hole in the chasm wall—Mag rushed to help Araxis and Amun gather everyone together and keep them steady.

Not easy to do when two of their party were towering Demons in their rage.

“That’s it,” Magnus said, reaching up to smack a swaying Faldir on the abdomen. “Easy now.”

Hedda’s stupor wore off quickest, Brand’s Second Commander brandishing her axe and supporting Vann at the same time. His Fae brother blinked mismatched eyes up at her, skin swirling a sickly, mottled grey, rather than his usual stark black or white, and Mag was sure he was about to lose his breakfast.

“Go, Your Highness,” Hedda breathed.

Mag shared a heavy look with her as Araxis pulled them into the ether, and he knew this was the last breath, the last blink, of being able to pretend it was over.

—Nay, though we may have wished for it⁠—

With all my damned heart, Pet.

The six of them whipped through the oily space between, misting into a stifling cave. Magnus coughed into his arm, tears springing forth against the stench, but no one else seemed to notice how filthy the air was. How rotten.

Awash in a crimson glow, with black streaks painting death upon the walls, the earthen chamber became the backdrop of a new sort of nightmare.

Aye. He was so, so wrong.

Forget villages and dreadbeasts. Finding Brand crushing the life out of his beloved mate took the wretched prize.

Time slowed to nothing, Mag frozen with the rest of them, their feet rooted right where they’d landed. None of them knew how to reconcile the scene. How to join the gentle murmurs on Brand’s lips with his clawed grip on Lunara’s skull. The lover’s embrace with the peal of her cracking bones.

Two things happened at once, but Magnus would never know which of them broke the spell.

Brand nuzzled against the witchling’s hair with a tearful shhh that splintered the stillness, just as Fern finally caught up and barreled through the cave entrance with a piercing battle cry.

All chaos broke loose.

Fern reached them first, no hesitation as the warrior Fae brought her mace down on the slab beside Brand’s head to stun him.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she shrieked, tearing Lunara from his grasp.

“To me,” Hedda shouted, the words barely out of her mouth before Fern was tossing the witchling’s limp body into her waiting arms. “Araxis!”

Araxis blinked out and reappeared beside Hedda, healing hands already planted on either side of Lunara’s face as Magnus reached Brand.

Magnus pounced when Brand flung himself after her, clamping an arm around his brother’s throat and heaving backwards. “Calm, lad, I’ve got you. It’s us. It’s Mag. You’re alright.”

It was not alright.

“You will taste my wrath for your lies, half-breed!” Brand roared with enough fury to bring the chasm down, swinging blindly. “Torment, for your broken promises.”

“Help me,” Mag ground out as Brand bowed, flattening him against the slab

Faldir grabbed Brand’s thrashing legs, Vann and Amun each pinning an arm.

Fern dropped from above and straddled his chest. “Does he always look like that?”