Page 23

It was a wonder she had any tears left to shed.

It was so cold.

Brand hated the cold.

The wracking shivers were a parasite in his bones, sapping away what little energy he had. They took and took, relentless in their gorging, until he was spent. Empty.

Where had the sunstar and its life-giving rays gone? He couldn’t feel them beyond the swirling shadows. Couldn’t feel much of anything, anymore.

Nothing. He was nothing.

How long he moldered in that nonexistence, Brand wasn’t sure—a mere blink and an eternity of eternities at once.

And then, from out of the nightmare, a prick of prismatic light shone in the distance. It grew and grew, slicing through the obscurity of his surroundings. Just enough to snap him out of his utter desolation.

Brand’s gasp filled his lungs with the first rush of air he’d had in an age. The fullness of it stayed there despite his shaky exhalation. Ran familiar in his veins. Gave him the strength he needed to peel himself from the rot.

Sisters, the otherworldly beauty of it was unlike anything he ever remembered seeing.

Brand gritted his teeth and pushed to hands and knees. His limbs trembled as he sank his claws into the crimson sand to steady himself. One breath. And another. He tried to force his body upright, but the weight of the Unknown pressed back at him, determined to keep him down in the dirt for all time.

No. He refused. Nothing was beneath him if it meant reaching that beacon of warmth.

So, Brand the Greater crawled.

Every shuffling surge forward was a trial. Screams echoed and the land vibrated, lifting individual grains of sand to dance across the ground—both lure and warning. He didn’t care.

He stretched a hand out, as if the air could pull him the rest of the way. Instead, his fingers met a barrier of razored shadows, the mass groaning at his touch, and a shockwave of gold rippled out over the seething surface.

Before the glittering sparks faded, Brand glimpsed his home in all its glory—the Horned City spilling down the mountainside at sunset. Another touch, another flash. That time, he saw the waves of the Serpent Sea. The next, a warm and salty breeze carrying a strand of⁠—

“You’re not alone.”

Sweet, burning Solyrian. He knew that voice. Knew the sound of that lilting lullaby. A song imprinted on his very soul.

Brand roared into the void in answer, begging his little moon to hear him.

“Just hold on.”

Only then did he notice the beacon was gone, swallowed up by the darkness.

Only then did the first tears fall as he brushed that barrier again and again and again and…

“You don’t have to do this.”

Okthana eyed Caryx as she grimaced. “Of course I do. It’s been too long already.”

“Just wait for the next full moons. No one will care. Truly.”

He would hate it if Okthana pointed out, again, just how easily she saw through him. That she heard exactly how much he cared and knew what this meant to him.

“That’s what you said last time,” she grumbled, “and I took you up on it because I was about to enact my scheme in the Montrealm. I’m not doing it again.”

Caryx scrubbed a hand through his strawberry hair, only the faintest hint of green left in his sickly skin—such an odd mix of his parents, but she adored it. Especially tonight.

“I’m spent, Caryx.” She laced their fingers together, trying to ignore how boney he’d become. “I would see Ygritte and Aelthys properly to the Veil before I take my rest with the Bore. Things did not go as planned and I need to be ready for whatever comes next.”

Her companion sighed long and deep. “But if you put it off, it isn’t real,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m ready for it to be real.”