Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

Forgotten Rituals

Cassia watched Lio straightenhis robes. The same festival robes they had danced in hours ago. She interrupted his precise, efficient movements to do up the fasteners over his chest for him. Or rather, she tried to. She had broken some of them.

He left his collar open in a deep vee and tied his hair back at the nape of his neck. “Now that you’re well fed, do you feel ready to search the area with your magical senses?”

She shook her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have tried any spells after what happened with the weapons. When I opened the portal, I may as well have raised a banner over our location.”

“Not necessarily. Aunt Lyta was on watch for your roses at the border. That doesn’t mean Hesperines errant will always notice you casting any spell anywhere in Tenebra.”

“And what of Gift Collectors with a bounty on us?”

Lio’s gaze hardened. “Whoever may be waiting for us when we leave the passages, we’ll be ready. The more you practice before that confrontation, the better. This is a safe place for you to work on your spellcasting.”

“If the Lustra alerts me to anything, I shall tell you.”

He paused, a furrow between his brows. Not the answer he wanted, she knew.

Before her refusal could turn into another debate against the wall, the scratching of Knight’s paws interrupted them. She turned to see him digging in the corner of the chamber.

Lio sighed at the hound. “Are you and Freckles both determined to turn history into chew toys?”

Knight ignored him, nose in the dirt. Then he lifted his head, his prize in his jaws, and offered it to Cassia.

“Oedann,” she praised him. “My good sir, what have you found?”

When she took the dirt-covered object from him, she assumed it was a stick. But the instant she touched it, she knew. A shiver moved through her.

She was holding a bone. A piece of something…someone…that had once lived. She could feel the emptiness in it. The whiff of minerals and decay should not remind her of the smell of blood in the snow in Martyr’s Pass, but it did.

The heart hunter she had killed would one day be bones, too.

“Cassia? What is it?” Lio drew nearer to her, then went still. “Oh. I see.”

He held out his hands, but she did not surrender her burden to him. “I used things made from bone all the time as a mortal. I combed my hair with pieces of dead creatures. It feels so different now.”

“Yes.”

The long, yellowed bone was about the size of her own forearm. “Lio, am I imagining it, or…is this human?”

“I feel that too,” he confirmed.

Who had this person been? How had this piece of their existence come to rest here for her to find all these years later? “Is this place a tomb?”

“No…” He turned the bone in her hands, gently smudging away some of the dirt. “Look at these markings.”

She squinted at the carvings and gasped. “These look like the runes on my pendant.”

“This appears to be a ritual object used in spellcasting.”

She released it into his hands and took a step back. “Hespera’s Mercy. I think you’re right. Kalos mentioned that bones and such are sometimes used in Lustra rites. I didn’t realize that included human bones.”

“This sheds light on the purpose of these Lustra passages,” Lio said. “They were some kind of ritual site for your ancestors.”

That fragment of death weighed on her Hesperine senses. How could her ancestors’ magic and the Blood Union run in her veins at the same time?

“What should we do for this person?” she wondered. “Should we perform the Mercy for what is left of their remains? Or would that have unintended magical consequences?”

Lio looked to her. “I think you are the best one to make that decision. What does your intuition tell you?”

She could feel the kinship between the bone and the earth under their feet, a rightness that appalled her Hesperine senses. But the Lustra’s answer was clear. “I think we should return the bone to its resting place as a sign of respect.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

After Cassia put the dirt back in place over the bone, she brushed her hands off on her robes, but they still felt dirty. “We should see if Knight uncovers other artifacts.”

Lio did not protest, but he also said nothing in agreement. As they left the chamber, she was glad he didn’t push her to cast any more spells, at least. She felt his magic stretch through the halls while they explored the honeycomb of rooms off the main chamber. He tried using his own pendant to reveal more portals, but each room appeared to be a dead end. Knight sniffed his way along, pausing to dig in nearly every alcove. He uncovered more bones—animal this time, thank the Goddess—as well as feathers, broken pottery, and wooden talismans so smoothed by time that their symbols had worn away.

In every fragment, Cassia sensed an aching weight. Could the Lustra feel sadness?

“It’s all gone,” she said. “No one remembers. I barely know anything.”

“But you will,” Lio told her. “You have the rest of eternity to rescue these mysteries from where they lay forgotten.”

“Perhaps. But we don’t have forever to find out how any of this relates to the door—if it does at all.”

“Let’s go tell Mak and Lyros what we found. Perhaps they’ll have some ideas.”

She nodded, and they made their way back toward the main chamber. Before they left the privacy of the hallway, Lio pulled her against him one more time. He kissed her, the deep, firm strokes of his tongue a declaration that echoed through their Union. She was in his arms again, and here she would stay.

She opened to him, letting him take the reassurance he needed and chase the taste of death from her mouth.

Lio kept his handon Cassia’s lower back as they returned to the main chamber. He needed to be touching her, no matter the unresolved words pulling their Union taut. Those few hours with a warded door between them had been too much.

They found Mak and Lyros hanging a map on the wall, carefully avoiding the magefire sconces. Mak looked flushed and as contrite as Lio had ever seen him.

Lyros turned, looking from Cassia’s face to Lio’s collar. “Everyone’s fangs polished? Good. In hostile territory, we need our magic at full strength, and that means no abstinence over foolish differences of opinion. Understood?”

Cassia held herself with great decorum, despite her blush. “That won’t be a concern.”

“No, it won’t.” Lio made one more attempt to straighten his collar.

“Right.” Mak rubbed his jaw. “Now that we’ve all thoroughly crossed each other’s veils, did you two find anything?”

Cassia patted her hound. “It seems Knight has a knack for unearthing Lustra artifacts. This place is riddled with them.”

Lio scratched the dog’s back. “My partner in historical research, after all.”

“We found evidence of magic, too,” Lyros confirmed.

Mak pointed toward one of the side passages. “There’s some kind of casting area marked on the ground in there.”

“Wait.” Lio searched his packs. Bless Tuura. Of course she had packed his scroll case. “I’ll record our findings.”

While they told each other of their discoveries, Lio hung more scrolls on the wall beside the map, making notes and a diagram of the passages. He stared at the sketch, waiting for a pattern to emerge. But he didn’t see it. Yet.

“Does any of this make sense to you, based on your lessons with Kalos?” he asked Cassia.

She shook her head. “Since we found no evidence of a letting site, I’m not sure what sort of rituals Silvicultrixes might have held here or why the Mage King would cast an everlasting flame over it.”

Lyros faced the map of Tenebra on the wall and held up a stick of charcoal. “We should mark all the Lustra portals we know of.”

Cassia pointed to the capital. “The first ones I discovered are inside Solorum Palace. I thought I had fully explored the passages, but there must be more I couldn’t open before my magic woke. I never came across anything like the hidden door.”

Lio tapped on Solia’s fortress. “There are also the portals at Castra Patria, of course. We suspect they run all the way to Paradum, where the letting site is.”

Lyros scrawled a few marks on the map.

Mak’s serious expression didn’t change. “What are those symbols supposed to represent?”

Lyros looked over his shoulder. “A door and a well. Isn’t that what a letting site is? A well of magic?”

“That’s accurate,” Lio confirmed, biting his lip.

“But your drawing sure isn’t,” Mak said. “It looks like a war mage’s nose after you punched him in the face.”

Lyros’s brows drew down. “What? How do you see a nose in that?”

Mak shrugged. “You tell me. You’re the son of Orthros’s greatest artists.”

“I know I can’t draw to save my life, but I have thoroughly studied military cartography.”

“Oh, no one reads maps as well as you do.” Mak snatched the charcoal from Lyros’s hand. “But let me mark this one before someone bleeds to death out of their eyes.”

Lyros’s scowl deepened. Mak’s lips twitched, his eyes glinting. Then Lyros appeared to realize Mak was on the verge of a smile and back to his usual sport of teasing his Grace. Lyros laughed, and he and Mak both relaxed a measure.

That was Mak. Quickest to anger, soonest to forgive. Except, perhaps, himself. Lio realized he and Mak might be more alike in that way than he had known.

Mak drew a door symbol over Solorum Palace, Castra Patria, and the Hadrian lighthouse. Then he added a well-shaped mark to Paradum.

“Are we certain of the locations of any other letting sites?” Lyros asked.

Cassia touched a fingertip to Corona, the Divine City, the seat of the Mage Orders’ power. “We know of one in the Magelands, under the temple where my mother was a mage of Kyria.”

Mak marked that with another well symbol. “Kalos said there are a few in heart hunter territory, right?”

Cassia nodded. “Jealously guarded by the warbands.”

Mak added a well and a question mark in the forests and mountains near Tenebra’s northern border.

After a pause, Lio said, “And one letting site in Orthros.”

Mak marked Selas, his aura dimming again at the reminder of home.

They all stood back, looking at the map.

“Every location that might hold clues is heavily guarded,” Lyros observed. “With Lucis still firmly in control of Solorum, going directly to the door is an unwise course of action.”

“I’ve sneaked into Solorum Palace before,” Lio said, “under a war mage’s nose.”

Mak snickered. “Not to research Lustra portals.”

“On the contrary,” Cassia said, with her most courtly expression, “he was researching a Silvicultrix’s portals.”

Mak laughed harder, and Lio couldn’t help joining in, sliding an arm around Cassia’s waist.

Lyros grinned, too. “Fair enough. But there are many more Aithourian war mages there now, and Lucis is on the alert for an invasion by Solia and her Hesperine allies.”

“Cassia could sneak us in through Lustra portals,” Lio proposed.

“Still too much risk,” Lyros said. “The Collector is sure to have laid his own traps in the area to prevent us from beating him to his ultimate goal.”

Cassia nodded. “I agree. If we approach Solorum blind, it could be a disaster. When we go in search of the door, we cannot afford to miscalculate. We must learn more about it before we attempt to reach it.”

“Shouldn’t we go directly there to try to stop the Collector?” Mak protested. “He could be trying to open it right now.”

“This is why we require more information,” Cassia replied. “We need to know how he’s planning to open it now that he cannot use me. That is our only hope of outsmarting him.”

“Lyros and Cassia are right,” Lio admitted with reluctance. “Our lack of knowledge is our greatest weakness against the Collector.”

“He always has more ancient tricks up his sleeve,” Lyros agreed. “One more surprise like that might be our last. We scout first, and we don’t attack until we’re confident that we’re ready.”

Mak rubbed his brow, leaving a smudge of charcoal there. “In that case, where do you suggest we scout first, Cassia?”

All eyes turned on her, and Lio felt her tension between his own shoulder blades.

She slid her hand along Knight’s ruff. “I will open Lustra portals for us everywhere we travel, to give us shelter. But roaming the countryside digging through these ruins is a shot in the dark. We don’t have time to piece history together bit by bit.”

“No.” A grim certainty settled over Lio. “No need to hunt for lost secrets when we could ask someone who knows them already.”

Mak eyes widened. “You mean Miranda.”

“We need to find her.” Lio searched Cassia’s gaze. “Don’t you think so?”

Her conflicting emotions rippled through their Union, but she nodded. “You need to finish the mind duel you started at Paradum. This time, you won’t have to interrupt it to save me.”

Lyros crossed his arms. “You’re suggesting we go looking for a Gift Collector while the Order of Hypnos has a bounty on your heads.”

Cassia arched a brow at him. “Can you deny it’s the wisest strategy?”

“Wise?” Lyros returned. “Certainly not. But strategic and necessary? Yes.”

“No objections,” Mak said. “Let’s turn the hunter into the hunted.”

Their weapons, leaning against the wall nearby, were pearlescent in the magefire’s light. Lyros picked up Night’s Aim. “It’s time for us to finish enchanting these.”

Mak’s face clouded. “Our fists are good enough.”

“No.” Lyros’s tone brooked no argument. “Of all Hesperines’ many enemies, Gift Collectors are the most deadly and difficult to kill. No matter our training, experience, or magic, we’re walking into the greatest danger we have ever faced. We need every advantage.”

“I’d be happy to leave these weapons buried down here and never look at them again,” Mak bit out.

Lyros’s hands tightened on the spear. “We’ve come this far. There’s no sense in turning back now.”

Mak turned away, fists clenched. Cassia stood silent, her arms crossed.

Lio fingered the moonstone in his staff. “These are intended to be Union Stones, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Lyros said. “I cut them and planned to enchant them so we can use them to signal each other.”

“That spell requires a mind mage, as well.”

“I hoped you’d be willing.”

“Of course.” Lio took a step nearer his cousin. “Mak, you began this endeavor with conviction—”

“I was wrong.”

“I’m not convinced you were.”

Mak rounded on him. “You and Lyros still can’t be charged with the same crimes as Cassia and me! I don’t want either of you adding your magic to the weapons.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Lyros said.

Lio shook his head. “The elders can charge me with whatever they like.”

Mak’s jaw clenched.

Cassia touched Mak’s arm and finally spoke. “I know. But after all the damage we’ve caused, if we don’t even use the weapons to protect our people, it really was all for nothing.”

That, at last, got a sigh of resignation out of Mak. He turned to them again and picked up the Star of Orthros. Cassia belted Rosethorn around her waist.

Lio took a firmer hold on Final Word and shut his eyes. He let his thelemancy rise within him to meet Lyros’s casting. Four points of their power swelled within the moonstones.

He slashed his fangs across his palm and closed his hand around his staff’s moonstone. The gem heated against his skin. Opening his eyes, he saw all four white stones turn red and began to pulse with a liquid glow. The crimson light reflected on an angry tear sliding down Cassia’s cheek.

If this made him even more of a criminal in Orthros’s eyes, so be it. He would never again find himself outmatched by an army of Gift Collectors with his Grace’s life slipping away in his arms.

When the glow faded from the Union Stones, he reached out to her and ran his braid through his fingers. “There’s one more spell we need to cast. We must have our Grace braids warded, like all Hesperines errant.”

Her face lost some of its color. Mere nights after he had sealed his braid into her hair, he hated that she must confront this. If they died out here, their warded Grace braids would be the only thing left for the survivors to take home to their families.

“The warding of your braids is a time-honored tradition.” Mak was clearly trying to soften the blow. “Everyone does it when they join the Stand or the Charge. You don’t want a fire mage singing the mementos from your avowal.”

“Mak and I would consider it an honor to do it for you,” Lyros offered.

“We were planning to ask you,” Cassia said, “when we thought we would be going errant with the Charge.”

Lio and Cassia had envisioned a gallant braid-warding ceremony at Castra Justa with the Charge all around them. That was what Lio had wanted for his newgift. Not for her to stand here in this tomb, robbed of their people’s protection.

But she had his protection, and they had their Trial brothers.

“The ceremony will require a blade.” Lio knew the steps of the spell, having attended Mak and Lyros’s braid warding with the Stand. “Shall we use Rosethorn?”

Cassia drew her dagger in grim silence, and Mak accepted it. Lio stood across from her, while their Trial brothers gathered on either side so the four of them stood in a ring.

Mak took hold of Lio’s hand. “Redblood, will you sustain any wound for your Grace?”

“I Will,” Lio answered.

Mak cut into Lio’s hand, deeper than any common spell libation. But the pain was nothing compared to what he had endured for Cassia before. The magic of her artifact tingled in the wound as his blood spilled into Mak and Lyros’s open palms.

Lyros turned to Cassia. “Whiteblood, will you sustain any wound for your Grace?”

Her face was set with grim determination. “I Will.”

She didn’t flinch when Lyros sliced her palm. He and Mak painted their other hands with her libation, then Lyros laid the bloodied blade in the center of their ring. Lustra magic throbbed faintly through the chamber.

Mak and Lyros each put a hand on Lio’s Grace braid, anointing him with Cassia’s blood. They extended their other hands to her and touched his blood to her braid. Warding magic darkened the Blood Union, binding the four of them in an unbroken circle. Their Trial brothers sealed the symbols of their love within the most powerful wards known to Hesperine kind.

Lio would keep this vow to Cassia, as surely as their avowal promises. Whether an injury to his body or his standing among their people, he would sustain any wound for his Grace.