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All through the wee hours, as the moons and stars made their journey across the sky, Lunara sat there and kept her vigil.

When he rose at last and made his way inside, there was a set to his shoulders, a resolve in the lift of his chin, she hadn’t seen since before he was taken. He might’ve lost more of himself, but he gained something, too. That was her mate, even if he didn’t quite remember it.

Her sight blurred as the land lightened to golden pink. As dawn scattered itself over towering trees and sienna stone. As the birds woke and boats left the shore.

Lunara was tempted to stay all the way to sunset. To close her eyes and picture her Demon sitting there beside her. She might’ve done it, too, if Fern’s bellows hadn’t floated in on the wind and snapped her from the trance.

She dashed at her cheeks and stood with a sharp exhale. Wanting wouldn’t fix anything. Only her action, her power, could do that.

If only the tears had cleansed her sorrow.

Okthana waded through the fog of her long slumber, limbs rebelling against their forced awakening.

Something pulled her back too soon. A disturbance. A…

Her umbra whispered, telling their secrets, and she clawed to consciousness with a sneer on her lips.

The Sorcerit bitch was close. Or, at least, she had been.

Okthana’s love for Brandir had clouded her better judgement. She’d held back in his tower, unwilling to sever his hope and lose him completely, and it complicated everything.

Not ensuring his mate perished was one of the greatest mistakes she ever made. She hadn’t spared others who meant far more to her. Why had she been so weak that night?

Dragging the thin air into her lungs, Okthana pushed upright on shaking arms. It was harder every day to ignore the decay of her realm. The slow descent into its death. Every time she was forced to sleep and recuperate, the duration was longer, the Bore refusing to replenish her as it had in the beginning.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She should’ve been reveling in her triumph by now, her land and people legitimized. Fed anew from the Fount.

She’d almost recovered it. Had almost manipulated the outcome in her favor, despite the snags that wrecked her original plan. But Jettus, that dark and ancient creature of the night, that utter arsehole, had betrayed her.

Lying, silver-tongued bastard.

Their deal had been clear, the steps laid out. Rekindle her friendship with the Demon Son and remind him of his promises, close the Ghostbor, carve the new⁠—

“Eira!”

Okthana was instantly alert, knowing what that panicked tone meant. “Where?”

“Edge of the Pass.” Caryx gripped her elbow and helped her out of bed. “The message just arrived from Runa.”

Runa’s son, Dauwyn, then.

Okthana waved him away, calling the umbra to clothe her. The shadows cawed as they spun themselves into whatever garment they saw fit and enveloped her body.

“Water. Please. And move slower, for fuck’s sake. You’re as weak as the rest of them.”

Caryx pointed a finger at her as he lifted the pitcher and poured one-handed, a muscle ticking in his skeletal jaw, so like his father. “I resent that.”

“I don’t care.” She snatched the cup away and threw the dank liquid back, paying no heed to its foul taste. “Try not to die while I’m gone.”

Handling the Sorcerit would have to wait.

The umbra devoured Okthana’s body and swept her away with the wind, carrying her through the night to a decrepit village near the Pass. She spied her quarry and dismissed the obsidian fog, hitting the ground running to close the distance between herself and Runa.

“Thank the Bore you’re here, Mistress,” she cried. “He’ll not last much longer.”

Runa, even aged and decrepit as she was, sped her across a pathetic square to a lopsided cottage on its edge. Ashenwood shingles dangled from the roof in places, and the windows had long since lost their shutters. Practically rotting before her very eyes, just like everything else in this cursed land.

Forgotten, indeed.