Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

The Complication

Lio stood his groundbefore the First Prince. “Cassia and I cannot think only of our own safety. This war was the Collector’s plan all along. This is the second requirement: violence between Hesperines and the Mage Orders on Tenebran soil.”

Rudhira shook his head. “You two will be the targets of his revenge. Step home to Cassia. Now.”

“I can’t, Rudhira. The visions I saw…Lucis and the Collector want a long bloodbath like the Last War.”

Rudhira smiled. His fangs shot down, as threatening as the sword on his back. “Let them try.”

Lio’s eyes widened. “We cannot give them the violence they want.”

“Oh, have no doubt. I will stand between them and everything they want.”

“Let us stand with you.”

“Listen to me. When I was a newblood, Orthros still lived in fear that the Last War would break out again. This is why I felt called to the battle arts. This is what I’ve prepared for since I first set foot in the arena. I always knew that when the next war came, it would be my duty to fight for my people. My duty. Not yours or Cassia’s.”

“And if the Queens had banned you from the arena then? If they called you home now? Would you obey their command?”

Rudhira’s steely eyes narrowed. “You are not me, Deukalion of the Eighth Circle. Give me one reason besides your admirable devotion to our people why I should not order you home this instant to tend to your newgift.”

“None of us are safe until we find out what’s behind that door and how to stop the Collector from getting it.”

“The Charge will hunt down a Gift Collector or two. They can answer our questions in my dungeon.”

“And when they do? Who among your forces has dueled the Collector and freed souls from his possession?”

Rudhira’s jaw tightened.

Lio pressed, “Where will you find a spare Silvicultrix to make sure the Changing Queen’s secrets stay buried?”

A shout came from the center of the village. Rudhira muttered an oath, hesitating for an instant that seemed to last forever. Then he let go of Lio and headed toward the square. When Lio followed him, Rudhira did not order him to turn around and go home.

They had no chance for further debate as they joined the others in the square. Mak and Lyros were guiding the villagers into groups small enough for each Hesperine to step with.

“This is everyone,” Solia announced. “I will stay until all the villagers are safely inside the keep.”

“Two of us will stand guard while two others step,” Rudhira said. “Mak, Lyros, you hold the wards here. Lio, with me.”

Lio didn’t miss the warning in Rudhira’s tone. He was still here on probation.

Lio spotted two villagers he recognized and took charge of their group first. The last time he’d seen the older couple, the woman had wept tears of joy to discover that their beloved princess Solia was alive and had returned to deliver them from Lucis’s tyranny.

The wizened woman clasped her hands. “Ambassador Deukalion. Have you and Princess Cassia heard from Lady Miranda since that night?”

“We fear the rumors,” said her husband. “Is it true the three of you walked into a necromancer’s trap at Castra Paradum?”

They still had no idea Miranda herself was the necromancer. The man on two strong legs, giving no sign the king’s soldiers had once shattered his knee. The knee Miranda had mended with magic she had ripped out of the innocent healer Pakhne.

Had her love for these people been real? Miranda had claimed she felt a responsibility to them because she had once been their liege lady. Perhaps in her twisted mind, taking Pakhne’s magic and using it to save this man was somehow justified. Or had her care for them been another deception to gain Lio and Cassia’s trust?

Lio did not have the heart to rob these people of one of their few symbols of hope. “Lady Miranda escaped. I’m sure we’ll see her again.”

The couple breathed sighs of relief. “She has had to go into hiding before,” the wife said, “but she always returns to us.”

“Ready?” Rudhira asked Lio. “We’re taking them to the great hall inside Castra Patria.”

Lio nodded and gathered his magic around the eight villagers entrusted to him, layering veils over his spell. When Rudhira stepped, Lio followed his powerful aura, and together they slipped through the world bearing the weight of mortal beings.

In that split second between one step and the next, light seared Lio’s vision. Fire tore him out the fabric of reality. He landed hard on rocky ground that dug into his knees.

Lio! Cassia cried in his mind. What’s happening?

I’m all right. He was on his feet again at immortal speed, tightening his veils around the mortals.

Was that a trammeling spell? The kind that halts a Hesperine mid-step?

Light flashed again, and his concealing spells shredded. And a revelatory spell.

“Get down!” he called aloud, remembering Rudhira’s advice. He and the villagers threw themselves behind the only cover, a dip in the uneven ground.

A ball of fire sailed over their heads, sending a wave of heat over Lio’s scalp.

Where is Rudhira?Cassia asked.

I don’t know. Lio flared his senses around him.

Rudhira and his group were nowhere near. Lio was all that stood between that mage and the villagers.

The man in flame-colored robes rotated his hands, gathering another ball of his volatile magic.

Before the core of fire was fully formed, Lio drove his magic toward the mage’s mind. Searing pain lit in his own head as he worked his thelemancy through the fiery battle wards surrounding the mage. He had broken through the dream wards in a Gift Collector’s mind. He would not quail before a pyromagus’s defenses.

The mage let out a grunt of effort. The fire grew brighter.

Lio unleashed more magic. White-gold light glared in his eyes, making the world disappear, and pain drove deeper into his skull. But through the fire, he caught hold of the mage’s thoughts, disciplined structures built around a thirst for violence. Tonight, he would finally experience the thrill of killing a Hesperine.

Or so he thought. Lio, his skin burning, collapsed the mage’s lifetime of training like a house of cards. It took one blow from his full power to reduce the man’s intelligent mind to ruins.

The mage crumpled to the ground, the remnants of his fire fizzling out in the wet grass.

Lio had an instant of relief before alarm hit him in the chest. Cassia’s emotions.

He sucked in a breath. What’s wrong?

Her aura honed into determination. Nothing Uncle Argyros and I cannot take care of.

Where in the Goddess’s name are you?

Martyr’s Pass,she said with far too much grim delight. Helping the Stand teach some possessed heart hunters just how well protected Orthros is.

Lio swore. His blood boiled with the wrongness of it. His Grace was out of his reach and facing the Collector’s pawns. But his rational mind knew he and the villagers were in a more precarious position.

He looked around him through the spots on his vision. They were only halfway to the fortress.

He reached for Rudhira’s aura again, but all he felt were two fiery presences. Bleeding thorns. There were more war mages between them and Castra Patria.

“We must stay calm,” he said to the eight frightened mortals looking to him for guidance. “We’ll return to the village, where the Stewards’ wards can protect us.”

The elderly couple nodded, and their neighbors seemed to take their approval as reassurance. Lio made sure the fall hadn’t harmed them, then stepped them all back toward the village.

His heart seemed to hammer a thousand times in that instant, waiting for a mage to trammel him again. When he set foot on solid ground and saw the village around them, he heaved a sigh of relief.

Until the volley of flaming arrows flew down from the sky. Twelve soldiers in Lucis’s colors stood on the nearest hill, already drawing their bows again.

A dozen points of magefire struck the wards, and a dozen points of darkness flared where they landed. Mak and Lyros bared their fangs, their bleeding hands joined, as shadows rose from their auras to strengthen their spell.

Solia helped the elderly couple up, her aura dangerously warm. Lio feared that if the enemy broke through the defenses, she would draw her sword or even reveal her magic.

He swept out a veiled probe of thelemancy, testing the archers’ minds. What he sensed sent a chill through him.

The Collector’s rage whispered through their thoughts. You’ve returned. I’ve been waiting.

He’s there too? Cassia called.

Throwing taunts through Lucis’s soldiers, Lio said.

We’ll send him our own message.

The Collector gave no sign he had sensed her in Lio’s thoughts. Just like the first time they had dueled him together in a waking dream, their Grace Union was somehow shielded from his mental invasion. That sacred bond held true, beyond the Old Master’s power.

Another wave of arrows rained down, and Lio shuddered at the pain he felt in Mak and Lyros’s auras.

Miranda’s visions rose again in his and Cassia’s joined thoughts. Hesperines dying in flares of light. Mortals caught between them and the mages’ flames. The odors of bloodshed and burning flesh.

Here, now, one of her visions could so easily became reality.

Pick our battles,Cassia said.

Retreat to better ground, Lio agreed. “We have to retreat!”

Still running from me, Deukalion?the Collector hissed. You cannot run far enough. There is nowhere you can hide.

Tell him we’re not hiding,Cassia snarled. We’re coming for him.

We always violate the rules of your game, Lio shouted at him. We are the complication you fail to predict. Cassia and I will keep breaking your grand design—for eternity.

Lio felt the moment when the certainty spread through the Collector’s vast mind. His rage burst forth like a poison, and the archers he inhabited staggered.

It is done,the Collector hissed. She is one of you now.

A laugh tore out of Lio, rife with his and Cassia’s triumph. We won that round, Kallikrates.

My most delicate instrument. You destroyed her. I will destroy you.

The heart hunters, cladin white furs, blended into the snow below the precipice. But Cassia could easily track their movements with her Hesperine eyes. Her ears picked up four dozen distinct heartbeats.

They advanced through the brewing snowstorm, their white liegehounds baying at their sides. Knight let out a warning howl that echoed down into the ravine.

The men and their dogs looked like what they were: playing pieces on a great game board.

Cassia was watching the Collector advance upon the Queens’ ward.

“His name is Kallikrates,” Cassia said.

“Hespera’s blood,” Uncle Argyros murmured. “You have put a name to one of the Old Masters.”

Cassia reached deeper into the mountains, searching for even a hint of the power that came to her so easily from the letting site. “There really are six of them, a hex of necromancers who have existed for thousands upon thousands of years. They were mortal men when the Diviner Queen opened her spirit gate in the Empire and traveled to this side of the world for the first time. When she taught the people here to use magic, the Old Masters began to abuse that power. She managed to protect the Empire by collapsing the gate, but this continent has been their tournament field ever since.”

“Cassia…once again, what you and Lio have learned is turning our understanding of the past and present on its head. These are secrets of the ages. And yet you saw the shattered gate with your own eyes, and you have also beheld the Old Masters’ game.”

She watched the heart hunters reach the top of the pass, powerless to hold them off. Where was her Lustra now? “They control everything, Uncle Argyros. They’re the puppet masters pulling the strings of every king and mage and peasant. It’s all a sick contest to them. Their sport has killed entire civilizations. There are eras of history we never knew existed, because the Old Masters’ past matches erased them.”

“So this is what drives them. These are the inner workings we see when we peer into minds so powerful and ancient they have become inhuman. It is a wonder they have not destroyed each other yet. It seems they will preserve their own existence and the balance of power among them at any cost.”

Cassia nodded. “They have rules. The game in our time is a match of subtlety and strategy. They are to keep their influence a secret from humankind. Kallikrates lives for conspiracy, so he thinks this is his opportunity to win a round.”

“What are the criteria to win? What is the prize for the Old Master who emerges the victor?”

“We don’t know, but the answer may well be hidden behind that sealed door. Lio and I need to find out what’s inside.”

A heart hunter’s horn droned through the air, and Cassia shivered. The last time she’d heard that sound, the avalanche it conjured had nearly killed her. “We have to do something!”

Uncle Argyros held up a hand. “We must wait for the Stand’s signal.”

Down in the pass, five figures in black battle robes materialized out of the billowing snow. The Guardian of Orthros and the four Stewards moved in on the heart hunters.

Crossbow bolts ricocheted off Alkaios and Nephalea’s wards. Kadi drew off the liegehounds with a trail of her blood, levitating and stepping with expert precision to dodge their leaps and bites.

Nike and Lyta swept through the warband in the blink of an eye. But now Cassia could perceive their every graceful blow. They moved in a tandem they must have practiced to perfection over their centuries in the arena. Crossbows broke in their grasp, then bones.

But the heart hunters kept fighting. They dodged the fleet immortals’ attacks with eerie speed. When one of their fists landed on Nike’s jaw, Cassia realized just how much preternatural strength the Collector could give his puppets.

The sight of the Collector laying a hand on Nike filled Cassia with anger.

Why must channeling be so much harder away from the letting site? she fumed.

It feels hard now because it’s new, Lio reassured her, but you will master it. Remember, it comes naturally to you.

Her gaze darted to the few twisted pines that clung to the mountain slopes. There is life in this soil. I will reach it!

Dark shapes swooped over the ravine. Vultures, already circling in anticipation of death.

Cassia’s anger rose higher. She threw her senses as far as she could with all her might, a silent yell into the chasm. It only rebounded back on her, making her sway on her feet.

Easy.Lio’s voice steadied her. Trust the Stand to hold them off. You have time to form your spell. Concentrate on your technique.

She shut her eyes and tried to slow down, to focus.

Her concentration broke at the scratch of claws on stone. Knight growled. Her eyes flew open.

The six vultures had landed in a half circle in front of her and Uncle Argyros. Before Cassia’s eyes, they transformed into men wearing white furs and armed with battle axes.

“Changers,” she spat. How dare he use Lustra magic against me!

He’ll never guess you still have yours. You have the advantage of surprise.

If I can use it!

Six clean strikes of thelemancy arced from Uncle Argyros’s aura and slammed into the heart hunters.

Their heads snapped back, but they did not fall. Their lips parted, and with the same voice, they spoke in unison.

“Cassia,” the Collector lamented. “I crafted you so perfectly. The Hesperines have ruined you.”

“I’ll ruin you,” she snarled.

“Back up until you’re inside the ward.” Uncle Argyros’s fangs showed. “He’s fighting to hold these men. It will take time to drive him out.”

She could see Uncle Argyros’s battle for their Wills in their movements. The men raised their axes, their arms moving slowly, as if pushing against a great force.

Knight leapt for the heart hunter nearest to her. He clamped his jaws on the man’s arm, and the axe dropped. The possessed hunter didn’t even scream as Knight wrestled him to the ground.

The other five heart hunters lifted their leaden feet and managed one stride nearer.

“Cassia,” Uncle Argyros shouted, “get behind the ward!”

She didn’t obey. She didn’t even think. In desperation, she tore her fangs across both her palms and held out her bleeding hands.

When her blood hit the stone at her feet, the power came roaring up to her. A shout of victory left her lips, and Lio echoed it in her mind.

She let the channeling overtake her. The Lustra tasted harsh here, frosty and sharp and determined to survive. She drew deeper. The power took on the metallic tang of blood.

Blood magic saturated these wilds. The Queens’ ward had been anchored in this ground for countless seasons. Cassia drew Lustra magic up through the greatest masterpiece of Hesperine magic.

Stone cracked. Woody vines climbed out of the ground, their curved thorns hooking into the heart hunters’ flesh. Everywhere they drew blood, dark buds sprouted. Magic pounded through Cassia, flowing into her creations, and the black roses unfurled.

“Impossible,” the Collector cried with six voices. “I took your magic. I left you powerless.”

Cassia smiled and ran her tongue over one fang, adding more blood to her spell. In that moment, she felt no fear at all. Her old nemesis was gone. Her new strength was in her veins.

She twisted her hands, and her rose vines twined tighter around the necromancer’s pawns. Feathers drifted on the air as they shrank back into their beast forms, escaping her thorns and Knight’s snapping teeth. The vultures hurled themselves from the precipice.

She curled her hands into fists, squeezing more blood onto the stone. The vines snapped outward over the ledge. One twisted around a vulture’s wing, plucking it from the air.

He flapped madly, at last tearing himself away from the thorns. But on his ruined pinion, he plummeted into the ravine.

Cassia’s heart seemed to stop. The missed beat left a gaping emptiness inside her. She clutched at her chest with her bleeding hands, but she couldn’t hold it. Couldn’t stop it. Life drained out of her grasp.

No. Lio’s presence breathed into her. Your heart is still beating with mine.

At his reminder that she lived, her mind grasped what she had just experienced in the Blood Union. It was the heart hunter’s blood that had stilled in his veins.

She crept forward to the edge of the precipice and looked down.

All through Martyr’s Pass, tangles of black had burst through the white snow. Thickets of the dark roses now fortified the ward like rows of stakes below a castle under siege.

The dead vulture had landed at Nike’s feet. Cassia watched the bird transform back into the remains of a man.

She tried to breathe, then regretted it. Death smelled so much worse as a Hesperine.

In the Collector’s momentof distraction, Lio poured his thelemancy into the archers. Two of their minds sprang free from Kallikrates. With shouts of confusion, the pair dropped their bows and fled.

But the reprieve was over. The Collector’s presence grew stronger in the ten remaining bowmen, and his full attention fixed on Lio.

They nocked two arrows to their bows and fired again at Mak and Lyros’s ward.

His Trial brothers had made the most of the momentary advantage, too. Their spell felt more powerful, fortified against the next volley. As each arrowhead struck their barrier, the magefire hissed out.

Except one. The last bolt tore through the ward, hurtling at Lio’s heart.

He leapt into the air, levitating out of the arrow’s reach. It landed at the feet of the statues in the center of the square. Cassia’s statue. Magefire licked at the offerings the villagers had left there, and the flowers began to burn.

Solia’s hands were curled into fists, her knuckles white. How tempted she must be to put out that fire. Lio met her gaze and shook his head. This was not the moment to betray her secret.

Her eyes flashed, but she answered with a nod.

There was no time for Lio to duel the Collector for ten more minds, nor to wait for Rudhira. Lio had to get everyone out before the village burned—or Tenebra’s new queen used her magic and got herself branded an apostate by her own people.

But with war mages waiting to intercept them, how?

His hand went to the medallion at his neck. Cassia, do you think I can open the secret passageways into Patria now?

The Lustra has accepted you as my mate. Try!

Lio focused his Will on his medallion. The villagers’ fearful voices and Solia’s calm commands faded from his awareness. He didn’t hear the next volley of arrows hit Mak and Lyros’s ward.

But no Lustra magic hummed at him from within his talisman, only blood enchantments.

Of course. He knew what the Lustra wanted of him. He bit his palm and clasped the medallion again in his bleeding hand.

The three ivy leaves warmed at his touch.

A flicker of his light magic shot from his hand. It winked out between two cottages. Then came another pulse, guiding him in the same direction.

“Mak, Lyros,” he called out, “can you maintain the ward just a little longer?”

“If we can’t,” Mak shouted back, “I’ll break the archers’ hands myself.”

Lio eyed the magefire charring the statues. “Watch out for the flames!”

“We’ll ward those off as well, for as long as we can,” Lyros said. “Can you get the villagers away from here?”

“Yes.” Lio prayed that was true. “Everyone, follow me. There’s a hidden passage that will take us to the keep.”

The villagers looked to Solia. Without hesitation, she came to Lio’s side and led her people after him. At last, their disastrous conflicts were behind them, and she trusted him in battle.

He followed his darting spell light through the village. It led him to a familiar gate at the very edge of Mederi. Just outside the village wall, his spell light struck the grass and traced out a symbol. A hawk drawn in the intricate knotwork of Lustri artists.

I found an entrance. He held the sight before him in his thoughts for Cassia to see.

The very spot where Miranda left her undead crow familiar as a taunt? That cannot be a coincidence.

The Collector must know the passages are here.

But the Lustra had deprived him of what it had given to Lio—the blessing of its Silvilcultrix. Lio made a libation of blood on the hawk symbol.

Grass and soil and roots pulled back, opening a portal into the ground. Rough-hewn steps led down into darkness.

It worked!he told Cassia.

Is the Collector trying to follow you inside?

Not a chance. He swept his power through every mind waiting to enter.

“Hurry,” Solia bade the villagers. “Two at a time. Help those who come down behind you.”

As she guided her people into the passage, Lio stood back. He felt the Collector nipping at the villagers’ thoughts, seeking a way in. Lio pushed back, a declaration across the arcane plane. These people were under his protection.

When the last villager was safely inside, Lio scanned the flames engulfing the village. He couldn’t see Mak and Lyros.

Can you sense their auras? Cassia cried.

I don’t know. There’s too much fire magic!

Fear seized him and Cassia together. He took one step forward, on the verge of dashing back into the flames to find them. But he had no wards to keep that fire from destroying him and Cassia’s hope of survival.

Lio shouted their names until he was hoarse. No answer.

Then, at last, a whorl of shadow emerged from the smoke. Mak and Lyros ran toward him, wrapped in the last vestiges of their ward. More arrows arced over the village behind them, setting thatched roofs aflame.

“No harm done,” Mak called over the sound of wooden beams collapsing.

Lyros pushed his sooty hair out of his eyes. “Except to the archers.”

Thank the Goddess, Cassia breathed.

Lio echoed her prayer aloud and threw his arms around Mak and Lyros’s shoulders, urging them into the passage. He levitated down behind them.

You cannot hide,came the Collector’s final whisper, as the earth sealed behind Lio, shutting the necromancer out of the Changing Queen’s hallowed halls.