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Fucking filth.

With a cry, Lunara loosed both whips at once, aimed at Okthana’s face.

She lifted blackened palms, the talons stopping dead inches from their destination. “You think to use my beloveds against me?” The talons followed when Okthana flung her arms wide. “I made them, you witless creature. They are mine.”

Okthana clenched her fists and the talons vibrated, cracking, the tremors burrowing into Lunara’s aching bones. With a curse, she cast her whips back into the ether, lest they be destroyed.

Another of Okthana’s legs lashed out and slammed into her head, her gut, and she hit the chasm floor, gasping against the pain.

Which was nothing compared to when it stabbed through Lunara’s shoulder to pin her down.

She choked out a retching wail as it seared into her, body rebelling against the intrusion. Against the halted flow of her remaining power. Illamiata ceased to exist. The moons abandoned her. She was so utterly empty that her mind was convinced it had died. Hopeless. Helpless. No point. No⁠—

Stop it. Do you feel that?

Lunara felt absolutely nothing except despair and the boiling venom being pumped into her flesh.

Exactly. It’s bleeding Night, eejit. Snap out of it!

“You’re being a stubborn fool, Sorcerit,” Okthana spat. “But I know a way I can force you to listen. And this time, I’ll make absolutely fucking sure you can’t find him unless I say so.”

“I have another option, you insufferable cunt.” The spiked tip of Fern’s mace exploded from the center of Okthana’s chest, black ooze spraying.

Almost bored, Okthana looked down at it with a sigh. She raised a brow and slid forward, the damage knitting back together as if it never happened.

“Catch me if you can, Lunara.”

A jerk and the claw embedded in Lunara was gone—Okthana and her misery with it.

No.

“Brand.”

He failed.

No matter how desperately Brand tried to keep Thodelebor from falling apart, no matter how he chased the shadows through the deepest reaches of the land to drive them out, it was a lost cause. The darkness had planted itself too completely, hammering against the Westrealm’s foundations as it fought back. Worse, it was bad enough that the only solution was to close the fucking chasm again to hold it all together.

The only reason he hadn’t lost his stars-damned mind as Lunara’s earlier torment raked across his body was that her heart was still beating within his own.

Whatever came next, they would face it together.

Sisters save them.

Tamping down the near crippling disgust, Brand rearranged his power and went against every shrieking particle in his being to rejoin the two lands. The earth quaked and crashed, threatening to topple him as he roared. As he pulled and pulled the rock closer. As he⁠—

A crack to his skull silenced him. Another to the gut, knocking the wind from his lungs, and he faltered.

No. Not him. Luna.

There was no stopping the buckling of his knees when his—her—shoulder was torn in two.

“Brand.” Her voice whispered through his mind, but it hit like a scream.

Something was very, very wrong.

“To me!” he bellowed above the cacophony, fists clawing into the dirt and shoving more power into the Ghostbor. To haul it back as quickly as he could. “Now! To me!”

Brand knew without a shadow of doubt that it was the right thing to do. Knew she was coming. Any second…