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Only to find an unfamiliar Sorcerit where one of her tormentors should be. The next dozen were the same. Young and vibrant. Unknown. Until⁠—

Astra the Mindcleaver.

As ever, her eyes were covered with a black blindfold, the core of her power laying in her unseeing stare. She didn’t need her sight to see to the very core of who someone was before she broke them. Her once-golden hair was mostly silver now, shoulders beginning to hunch. Aging and less menacing, despite what she was capable if that scrap of cloth was removed from her face.

Farther down the line, Obernal the Rootsinger and his sister, Estelle the Blightbringer—twins like Hedda and Faldir, though one wouldn’t know it by looking at them. While Obernal had slowly lost all the dark color from his skin through the years, Estelle was as black as the poison she wrought in her brother’s flora, sparkling like a faraway galaxy. Their eyes were the same though, so pale it seemed like they only possessed pupils from this distance. But they were older and slighter, too, and it bolstered Lunara.

More and more she didn’t know, turning in place⁠—

Driana the Orespinner. A master of battle and strategy, her bulk was still strong and telling of the weaponry she shaped with bare hands. Only a few years older than Lunara, she always had a knack for piling that spectacular mane of copper curls onto her head with carefree perfection, the opalescent freckles in her skin putting Lunara’s to shame. Still, Driana was gentle when they were younger, especially for the magic she wielded. Right up until she joined the others and voted not to cull Malachyr, betraying whatever friendship there might’ve been.

Next, Runex the Breathbane. Another closer to her own age. Tall, lithe, with dark brown hair so sleek, it could be used as a looking glass in a pinch. They’d particularly terrified Lunara as a child, every coy smile promising suffocation, head tilting sweetly in warning when someone irritated them—enough that Lunara only once saw their power at work, Runex snatching air and word from a belligerent arsehole who hadn’t picked up on their usual cues. He’d deserved the Breathbane’s ire, but Lunara knew then and there never to cross them.

Before she found the rest, an invisible claw whispered up the side of her neck, dragging along her pulse, and Lunara swallowed. She skipped over a swath of Council members to find the source, and only just stopped her knees from buckling.

Sunestra the Arcsmith. Malachyr’s blessed mate.

A face Lunara would never forget for the rest of her life, simply because of the last time she saw it—drawn and damp, chin trembling as Stellan and Almaura were laid in their funeral shrouds beneath glowing flowers, Lunara unable to show herself as her own parents were sung to the Veil because she was supposed to be as fucking dead as they were.

None of the others looked back while Lunara perused them.

The Arcsmith was so utterly fixated on her that it reduced the rest of the world to nothing. In that moment, they were the only two creatures in the room. Shite, the world.

She’d shorn one side of her black hair away—homage to the old ways, like Araxis himself paid. As so many of them did eventually. Her face was gaunt, brown skin ashen, and her bones jutted at shoulder and collarbone beneath the gauze of her billowing sheath dress.

The stark flash of Sunestra’s golden eyes in the soft light, her clawed grip on the banister as electricity jumped between her fingers, held Lunara rapt. Not for fear, no. It was the sheer fucking agony in her deadened look, the unutterable suffering, that sucked the life from Lunara’s lungs as surely as Runex could have.

Her mother’s voice echoed in the recesses of Lunara’s mind. “Do you think his mate will agree based on hearsay?”

Did Sunestra know Malachyr was a monster? Was she aware that he was tainted by his service to Illamiata? Did she try to stop him, or was she blinded by a bond so deep that nothing was capable overshadowing it? Was she even still alive, or did the Mistwarden’s death mean hers as well, her body functioning without need for her soul to occupy it?

It hit Lunara like a comet and she knew.

There was no part of her that would agree to cull Brand based on hearsay either. She’d need to see him commit those atrocities with her own two eyes before she believed a single word someone else said about it. Even then, she might never vote Yea, no matter what the truth was, when it meant losing him forever.

In an instant, Lunara understood Sunestra, and that was unsettling.

Please say you aren’t choosing now to succumb to the stone and go mad yourself.

She didn’t think so, but who knew anymore.

A hand landed on her lower back, breaking her connection to the Arcsmith, and Lunara jolted on a gasp.

“Cordelia,” she breathed, the relief at seeing a friendly face nigh overwhelming.

Apparently, not even a gaggle of undoubtedly incensed Imperials were capable of stopping the Firebane from being here.

“Is he⁠—”

“Fine,” Cordelia huffed. “Currently looking everywhere except where you are because I am smarter than him. Don’t tell them that, though.”

She hiked a thumb towards the closing doors. The twins stood just beyond, Hedda blowing her a tearful kiss and Faldir jangling a set of shackles in place of a wave as the Hollow was sealed.

Lunara was tempted to laugh, but her nerves won. “Please, for the love of the Sisters, tell me you didn’t disfigure or deform my Demon.”

“He did that well enough on his own by hacking off that gorgeous flame of hair.”

“That does not answer my question.”