Page 21
Too kind a word, perhaps, for the reality. You know, you won’t get in trouble for thinking it. No one can hear you, remember?
That was true. Yes. Fine. Everything was fucked.
The others caught Lunara up as best they were able once she was done losing her guts, the whirlwind of information still spinning in her head. The things Brand said after she lost consciousness, the way he’d looked, Araxis’s highly inaccurate assessment of his health. So on and so forth, right up to Faldir and Lyriat sweeping in to present a handful of Nyri’s hairpins with wild looks and wilder theories because she and her brother were still missing.
It was all too much when paired with the sight before her.
Lunara’s gaze traveled over the Horned City, stretching out below the castle—the first time she was actually seeing it since the attack.
Dusk painted the stone structures and winding streets in blazing hues of orange and gold, a perfect foil to the purpling, starry sky. From her vantage on the tower balcony, she could almost impose her memories of how it used to be over the remaining pockets of wreckage.
The black, explosive scars cutting through the sienna scenery were erased if she glanced over quickly enough. She squinted and crumbled walls stood high again. Roofs were replaced. Dreadwyrms had never been raised from the Serpent Sea by a monster and lives were whole.
A blink and the ruin was restored, both inside and out.
Just like the farmland-turned-battlefield at Glynmor in the Westrealm of Thodelebor, the surrounding land seemed intent on ignoring its own trauma. Solyrian and the twin moons hung at opposite ends of the horizon, their mixed light casting an ethereal glow over everything it touched. The salty breeze was too gentle, its scent too pleasant. Birds flitted and chirped in the massive evergreens, ignoring the shroud of solemn silence that hung ill around her.
None of it had any right to be so beautiful. Did they not know what happened here? How much it fucking hurt?
The balustrade cracked beneath her clenching fingers, wrenching her focus from the writhing heartbreak to the prismatic power eking out of her.
Deep breaths. You can do it. Rein it in.
She followed the coaxing of her inner self, the Tear Stone pulsating in her chest as she drew the magic back little by little.
It was still so new, that responsibility. There hadn’t been a moment to process the reality of it before she whisked an entire hoard of Demons in their rage to Glynmor and descended into the Thodelemaia Dread chasm, nothing but a whisper of Brand’s whereabouts, a spark of hope, and a newfound family at her side.
Lunara the Moonweaver, Keeper of Illamiata, the Evesong’s Cursed Blessing.
That last part was her own addition, argued by nearly everyone when she said it earlier. They didn’t want to hear it? Fine. She’d chant it internally. Over and over, to remind herself that she didn’t want to become like the other Keepers before her. That her power was capable of awful, world-shattering things if she lost control as they had
Or little things, like crushing vaeragate stone with her bare hands because she was so fucking devastated she could hardly breathe.
A flutter of the air signaled Fern’s arrival on the balcony. “Have you decided to stop being stubborn yet?”
Lunara huffed. “I’m not being stubborn.”
“Oh?” Fern hoisted herself onto the railing and leaned in. “Refusing to feed because the gift ‘should be his’—even though you’re suffering and he can’t currently offer said gift due to being out like a fucking light—is the absolute height of stubbornness.”
Lunara swallowed, her heart turning over. If only she and Brand had more time before he was taken and the world turned upside down. The Rite would’ve rendered their arguments moot, but she wasn’t allowed to even tell him about it, let alone ask to perform it.
“It feels too much like giving up on him,” she admitted quietly, picking at the embroidery on Magnus’s robe sleeve. “I’ve only just come to, and I’ve felt infinitely worse than I do now on many occasions. I don’t understand why everyone is pushing so hard for this.” Lunara finally met Fern’s eyes. “Please, just let me be until I’m ready or there’s no other choice.”
It felt like five minutes ago that Lunara was falling to her knees, looking up just in time to notice her and Brand’s cave in the chasm wall, and the faint glow within. Two minutes ago that she was fighting for her life while he tried…to…
Damn it, she was incapable of thinking the words.
Then don’t.
Yes. Perfect. Especially when she was barely ready to even be standing there, let alone acting as if everything was normal. They’d understand.
Fern narrowed her gaze, sat back, and said, “Nah.”
“I’m with her,” Hedda declared, butting into the conversation with crossed arms and a stance that dared Lunara to argue. “You’re sad, which is understandable, but we can’t wait for you to be done grieving. Too many creatures are counting on you. On all of us. Especially Brand.”
When she puts it like that…
Wonderful, now even she was against herself.
