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What she found curdled the blood in her veins.

The Greater was free.

The shadows didn’t seem to know it yet, or that her enclosure lay in golden tatters—the roiling chaos was too busy screaming under a beacon of prismatic light.

Because there, on the mountaintop with him, was the damned Moonweaver.

The lumbering bastard had forgotten his role, his moth was where she shouldn’t be, and all Endellion could do was hope she wasn’t too late.

Lunara’s feet dangled from the mountaintop, the Serpent Sea glittering beneath a setting Solyrian as she looked on. All of the Horned City was as it used to be, spilling down to the shoreline with glorious, carefree abandon. Healed and whole.

Her favorite place, perhaps, in the entire world.

A shadow loomed and shifted, its owner hesitating. When she tried to turn her head, Lunara was stuck, goosebumps skittering across her skin. It wasn’t until the scent of salt and fresh pine reached down to her that the fear dissipated, and she melted.

“I miss you so much it hurts,” she murmured, finally looking at him. “You’re here, but you’re not. Right there, and still so far away. Not that it matters. I’ll take feeling the memory of you in my dreams to the nothingness of these past weeks.”

Brand sat beside her, resplendent in his rage. He towered, sienna skin stained with the remnants of his power, strength radiating in waves. A god in his own right with that crown of horns sparkling in the twilight—obsidian in a bed of auburn fire. It was his eyes that wrecked her, though.

Lunara turned back to the sunset, dashing a tear away. His hazel stare was a torment, so adoring. It only reminded her of all she’d lost and had yet to recover.

“Look at me, little moon.”

A sob tore its way from her lips. “You sound so real. I almost believe it. Not fair, Demon, for you to torture me on all sides.”

“I would never. Look at me.”

Denying the command in his tone was like trying to deny her love for him. Impossible.

Lunara gave in and Brand cupped her face. The simple touch was a gift she thought to never feel again and she leaned into it, taking him in more closely as he ran a trembling thumb over her cheekbone. They sat like that for a sweet eternity, until he placed her hand over the puckered scars of her blooding, his heart thumping beneath her palm.

Her own matched its rhythm, then bloomed.

It was like every millisecond of the last few months were pressed into the next beat, their bond exploding. All of the happiness and heartbreak, the heat and the cold. The love. The disconnect. The fear and finding. The things she’d felt and experienced—and things she most certainly hadn’t.

Lunara’s lungs fought her, hardly drawing air against the overwhelm. Weeping Sisters, it was agony.

“Is this actually happening?”

“Yes, somehow. And I’ve never been more grateful for anything.” There was a wild look in his eyes as they darted a glance over her shoulder. “He’s weak, but I don’t have much time.”

“He? The shadows, you mean. Like Fern.”

“No. He. Someone. Conscious. Intelligent. Plotting and planning.”

The world tunneled, her ears ringing. “The voice from the chasm,” she whispered, “is a person inside of you?”

“I’m still here,” he rasped. “I see you every time you face him. I feel you. Hear you. Taste you.” A rumble sounded in the distance but Brand tightened his hold on her chin when she tried to look, keeping her fixed on him. “She wasn’t able to fully sever our bond, and holding on to the last of its fibers has been my only purpose, but you have to help us.”

Whoever she was would have to wait. “H-how?”

“It’s…beyond anything I comprehend. The battle for dominance is endless. Sometimes the Lesser wins control on his own, and there’s nothing it—he—can do. Sometimes he lets the Lesser win, slinking back until he finds reason to pounce. I can’t find the rhyme or reason, but this half…” He released a shaky exhale. “I’m trapped, but I can’t remember why. Or, I was. The cage lies in pieces, and the darkness comes for me.”

“The monolith,” she whispered. So much explained, but Lunara still didn’t understand. “What was different about today?”

She needed to be able to repeat the steps exactly. To figure out how to heal him and banish it.

“Your light rained down upon me, life in every glittering drop, hour after hour, until the beast fell into a lazy sort of slumber. Not weak, exactly, but…satiated.”