Page 310 of Of Dusk and Daybreak

Lunara highly doubted any part of it was about to be fun.

Looking at them gathered there, holding onto one another, only a few of their little family missing from the picture…

Shite.

It’s fine. It will be fine.

Brand must’ve felt her hesitation, a pit opening up in her stomach. “Come,” he rumbled, voice like gravel. “Before you lose your moonlight.”

She drew a steadying breath and misted into his arms. Another, and she pulled them all with her. The ether carried them in a blink to the front line, where Lyriat and Araxis were already waiting. The two of them rushed over, the Demon King’s eyes going wide at the sight of Brand looming above him. “Bloody Solyrian. You might actually stand a chance against me, my friend.”

Brand huffed. “How about we find out when this is over?”

“Deal.”

Lunara was practically choking on the tension beneath their banter, so many words unsaid in what appeared to be a lighthearted exchange. The others apparently felt it, too, all of them quiet.

It was the same field where Baldrir’s sword was found. Where Brand fell to his knees upon seeing the former Ghostbor and lifted a sword to her throat, begging for help with the darkness inside him. Where, based on the expression he wore now, he’d stood to close it in the first place.

“Keep your eyes on me,” Araxis said, “but take note. She haunts the woods just to the south of our position, about half a mile off.”

Lyriat nodded. “She’s been there all night. Waiting.”

“Good.” That was all Brand said before he set her down and made his move.

As the others tightened their formation around her, Lunara searched the bony trees of the Ghostwood and froze when she spotted the dark cluster within, right where Araxis said it would be. The writhing mass went utterly still when Brand broke past the waiting warriors, crossing the open space between them and the overturned border. His steps were swift and sure, confident—not at all reflective of the searing wrath boiling in both their veins.

“Steady,” Amun murmured, squeezing her shoulder. “We have to wait and see what she does before we go.”

Brand acting as bait for his own life-long tormentor sat fucking ill, but he’d insisted.

“The second she so much as twitches, I’m going,” she hissed.

“Aye, witchling. Just don’t forget to take us with you.” With that, Mag tossed off his robe and shifted, Pet pressing his flank against her.

Lunara called to the dwindling moonlight, flooding her body with more and more, the new well consuming her until the air shimmered around them. Any second…

Brand planted his feet just shy of the former chasm drop and swallowed his turbulent emotions.

The fury. The fear. The crawling down the left side of his body at feeling her so close by. He didn’t have room for any of it. Not here. Not when the moons were fading and they were out of time. It didn’t matter that he saw his former self walking up to its yawning divide, before and after layering over one another in a wretched tableau. He wasn’t that person anymore. And if he was able to close the chasm while castrated by Okthana’s poison, he could reopen it now while he was whole and free of her.

A breath and his skin went molten. Another, and he reached out to every rock and pebble in Thodelebor, calling on the magic they held. Solyrian’s power condensed and shot across the land like lightning, up and into his very bones, the ground rumbling. Laying all of his trust in the hands of his waiting family, Brand closed his eyes, grabbed hold of the earthen scar, and shoved.

The world shook and chaos erupted. Shouted battlecries joined animalistic shrieks and the pounding of thousands of feet, the din of war gobbled up by the ringing in his ears.

It was sheer force of will that kept Brand’s concentration on his task when he felt Luna lash out, screaming to the others. When Fern’s rain hit and Magnus snarled right beside him. When a wall of Araxis’s power encased his body, Amun and Amal within its confines too. When Vann shouted a warning and the twins responded with their signature violence.

When the first of Okthana’s pleas reached him.

Brand gritted his teeth and sank further into his power to drown it all out. It took everything he had to hold the Westrealm together. To find every connection between it and the Forgotten Lands and sever them one by one.

Until he hit the darkness buried deep within the stone, and it decided to fight back.

“Please, Brandir! Don’t do this!”

Lunara sent her whip flying towards that begging mass of crows, but Okthana was beyond reach. Back and forth she went, pacing just beyond the border, dreadbeasts and Forgotten swarming over the crack Brand was forming as she wailed, like she had any right to utter his name.

No matter what Lunara did, her power refused to cross that invisible line. Her mist, the cage she’d planned to call up—everything fizzled out, like the Forgotten Lands were devoid of magic, unable to support it. She couldn’t even grab hold of Okthana’s particles.