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Mag’s brows punched up. “You want all of us to descend on them without warning?”

“I don’t want to do any of this shite, but…” He shared a look with Luna and she gave the barest nod. “We have to.”

It must’ve been the day he had.

After supper and a short, fraught meeting with his brothers and Lyriat to discuss details, Brand finally collapsed into bed beside Luna—where he jumped from nightmare to nightmare, sleep warping his memories into worse monsters.

With Luna’s iridescent magic wrapped around him, he traveled through himself like that very first time, mere hours after their mating. Even then, she’d been pushing the darkness back and allowing him to see, though neither of them knew it at the time.

In the cave Brand made in the chasm—a place of love turned to one of abject misery—he watched from above as Okthana pressed a hand to his chest, tears flowing down her face as she begged him to remember her. To remember his promises and their plans. The love and friendship they shared.

It was strange to see himself like that, cringing back from her crazed frustration when it didn’t work. To feel the bone-deep certainty again that he knew her, even as both of his bodies rejected the very idea. Still, there was something about Okthana that went beyond the memories. A familiarity that spoke of deeper things than visits in his childhood.

Over and over, he tasted the bile on his tongue anew from all the times he vomited at her touch. Her words. He dashed away the tears on his own face as he watched himself end most days weeping, so confused, incapable of anything but begging for freedom and his little moon.

Burning Solyrian, she’d hated that.

When she snapped, her anger came as lashing shadows and hammering blows, burning and aching—his punishment for offending her. For prioritizing a mate over his own honor.

He wanted to rail when Okthana sank both hands into his hair, pulling at the strands, but he was helpless to stop or change the memory.

“I know how you feel. I understand,” she hissed, claws raking over his scalp and drawing blood in her twisted and violent version of comfort. “But you can’t give in to those inclinations, my darling boy. What do we have if we break our promises? What do we have if we betray the ones who really love us? We can’t let one person matter more than another. Than thousands.”

Too bad Brand had no fucking clue what promises he’d allegedly made. He might’ve better understood how to manipulate her. How to escape before such catastrophic damage was done to Thodelebor by his hand. Before he was fucking possessed.

But at no point, in any of their dealings, did Okthana actually describe her future plans. The ones she needed so much help with. She sought only his assurances that they were friends and he was loyal. Devoted. That he returned her “love.”

And if those were the promises she meant, they were nothing more than the thin and ignorant vows of a literal child. Okthana was actually out of her mind to put such faith in them. To let them hold so much weight that she truly, fully counted on them for something more specific.

The nightmare spun and warped until he was on the slab the second to last day he’d seen her, when she brought a new horror to violate him.

Fuck. No.

Being a bystander was bad enough—he didn’t want to live this over firsthand. Not this fucking moment. There was nothing he could do as his past self thrashed, fighting against the chains holding him down. Above, Okthana’s eyes glowed with gleeful, violet hatred, the power in the room thick enough to choke him.

Resigned, Brand shored himself and tried to see the things he missed while out of his mind, readying himself for what came next.

A creature formed in increments beside Okthana, until it was dense and black as pure onyx stone. It was impossible to tell whether the void was consuming or repelling the light—only that its surface, its body, was fathomless. Primordial as the Unknown.

The beast.

Together, their voices rose, chanting in a language Brand had never heard. Harsh and flowing at once, it raised every hair on his body twice over. Ruptured his eardrums. Made his flesh crawl inward.

Weeping shite. Worse than he remembered, the worst still yet to come.

Gritting his teeth, Brand searched for his calm. Those weren’t really his own breaths turning to shallow pants. That wasn’t his skin breaking out in a blazing flush. It wasn’t real. Wasn’t real. Just a memory. A⁠—

The shadows descended and Night took possession anew, and Brand wasn’t sure he’d ever get the feel of those screams out of his throat. Like swallowing razor blades, the poisonous edges rent him from the inside out. Remade him to fit its wretched and ancient form. Crawled through vein and sinew. Burrowed in. Made him its unwilling home.

Okthana danced all the while, spinning and spinning, her visage warping into those he loved. His mind was playing tricks, surely. This…hadn’t happened. Had it? Shite, it was impossible to tell between truth and lie when his brothers each cackled over him in turn. As Lyriat and the twins whispered their disgust one by one, Caius and Thaddeus next, then his parents.

Until, at last, it was Luna sneering there.

So beautiful and awful as she pressed a searing palm to the mating marks she’d left behind, trying to tear them from his flesh. To take back the gift she’d given, even as she taunted his impotence with cruel words and⁠—

Brand shot upright, body unable to decide between roaring and retching, fully in his rage.

Red seeped across his vision, staining the walls and furniture like so many shades of blood. Above, the wee hours stared back as a sky of dimming stars, the moons already disappeared from sight.