Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

In Hesperas Honor

IN HESPERA”S HONOR

Lio’s thoughts hung suspended,trying to make sense of the blood on Mak’s chest, the pain in their Union. Cassia stood frozen at his side, both hands clapped over her mouth.

How deep was the wound? Had the wolf hit Mak’s heart?

Lyros’s gaze never left his opponent. His face was cold, his knuckles white on the branch he had snatched up to use as a crutch. The female wolf snapped at his bad leg, but he swung the branch with perfect aim, and her bite sank into wood instead.

With a battle cry, Mak barreled to his feet an instant before the alpha wolf crushed him under its weight. He threw himself on the alpha’s back, his arms locking around the beast’s neck. The name of that fighting move flitted through Lio’s mind, a memory foreign to this brutal contest. Mortal Vice, the headlock that could choke a mortal or decapitate a Hesperine.

Mak held the wolf, the heartbeats ticking by. The alpha’s mate howled with fury. Lyros gripped her ears with both hands, exploiting another sensitive point. With a frenzy of paws, she flicked blood and mud into his eyes.

No use against his immortal senses. He didn’t release her. She retreated, but he held on, letting her drag him along with her.

They inched closer to the nearest magefire torch. This time Lio tried to yell a warning.

No sound came out of his mouth. The Lustra had truly disqualified him and Cassia from this duel.

The wolf crouched, then with a heave of her shoulders, made to hurl Lyros at the fire. He let go just in time to spare his face from the flames. His back hit the shaft of the torch. Wood splintered.

The top half of the torch landed in the reeds. Magefire began to lick at the wet plants.

Lyros fumbled for his crutch, which had fallen to the side of the path, but not into the water. While the wolf gave her tortured ears a shake, Lyros scrambled to his feet, leaning heavily on his crutch, and limped away.

Her eyes filled with triumph. Her pack howled with hunger. And she pounced to down the weakest prey in the herd.

Lyros dropped to the ground. An ember of light flashed in the night. The wolf’s leap took her too high, while Lyros rolled onto his back under her and brought up his crutch to strike her belly.

The end of the branch was alight with magefire. The flames ate through the wood in a breath, and Lyros dropped the crumbling branch just before the deadly element reached his hand. But not before the wolf’s fur caught fire.

The king’s flames scoured his queen’s wolf. She landed on all fours and lifted her face to the sky of this otherworld like some burning specter. She and her pack sang in one voice that sounded of ancient fire and older hunts. An ember flew from her fur to land on Lyros’s brow, and he hissed in pain, flicking the spark away with one hand.

Her mate slumped in Mak’s hold at last. He released the alpha wolf’s body and fell back, bracing a hand on his chest wound again.

The burning queen wolf streaked past Lio and Cassia to the side of her fallen mate. She licked the alpha’s throat, and the magefire danced across his fur.

His chest lifted. Breath filled his lifeless body. He got to his feet and rested his open jaws lightly on her jugular. Flames spilled into his mouth. As he drank the fire from her fur, the burning glow faded and went out.

Each wolf turned, facing Mak and Lyros, and went down on their bellies in an unmistakable gesture of submission to the victors.

The pack surged around their leaders, and the nine wolves raced away, disappearing back into the fog. Their howls sounded through the marsh, and Knight called after them, his voice blending with theirs as if they were one pack. The mist followed the wolves, peeling back to reveal nine standing stones in a ring around them.

Lyros’s calm broke, and he made the first sound he’d uttered the entire battle. He let out his own howl of rage and staggered toward Mak.

Cassia fell to her knees beside Mak and helped him apply pressure to his wound. Pushing through his own pain, Lio slung Lyros’s arm over his shoulders. He helped Lyros hobble over to their Graces and eased him down at Mak’s side.

“Let me,” Lyros ground out.

Cassia nodded and took Lyros’s hand, pressing it over Mak’s in her place. Then she scrambled away to give them more room.

She shook her head. No natural wolf can do that—I’ve never seen a wound like this—

Lio sank down beside her and pulled her close with his good arm.

Mak was trembling. The sight of his powerful cousin shaking frightened Lio in a way he had never felt before.

Lyros took one look at the blood spilling from between his fingers, then put his other hand behind Mak’s head to support him. Lyros held Mak’s lips to his throat. But Mak’s eyelids drooped, the color draining from his face.

“Don’t you dare!” Lyros massaged his Grace’s jaw with desperate motions.

Finally, Mak’s fangs locked onto his offered vein. Lyros released a sharp sigh.

Lio let his face fall to rest on Cassia hair. Mak is conscious enough to bite. That’s what matters.

I can’t bear this.

Lyros will heal him,Lio said, as much to reassure himself as her.

After a moment that seemed to last forever, Mak dug his fingers into Lyros’s hair, holding on. With a soft groan, he pressed his face closer against Lyros’s neck, his throat working.

Where their joined hands rested on Mak’s chest, the flow of blood slowed, then ceased. But how deep did the damage go?

At last, Lyros eased Mak’s jaw open and rested his Grace’s head on his lap. Mak caressed his face, then let his hand drop and felt his chest.

“Are you all right?” Lio asked.

“That beast tried to rip out my heart,” Mak answered hoarsely, “but trying isn’t enough to best a Hesperine warrior.”

Lyros gripped Mak’s hand. “I would take you to a healer if I could.”

“Your blood and my Gift are all I need. Who knows if a healer’s affinity even works on doddering wolf wounds? Help me sit up.”

“You should lie still,” Lyros insisted.

“I can rest when we’re out of here.”

Lyros narrowed his eyes, but he helped Mak into a sitting position. Gently, Lyros parted the torn front of Mak’s robe. A scar was all that remained of what might have been his death wound. Four neat slashes crossed Mak’s heart, the unmistakable marks of a beast’s claws.

“How can this be?” Cassia shook her head. “I thought nothing could scar a Hesperine.”

“Only anti-haimatic magic can,” said Lio. “Magefire. Lustra magic.”

With a bemused look, Mak pushed the hair back from Lyros’s forehead. “You’ve got a handsome new scar, too. Does that burn mark hurt still?”

“No,” Lyros said tightly.

Mak looked from Lyros’s brow to his own chest. “Well, it seems the Lustra gave us tokens of approval, too. I like these better than fancy necklaces.”

Lyros didn’t laugh. Saying nothing, he pulled Mak’s face against his neck and held him for a moment longer.

When they were sure Mak was hale enough to stand, Lio and Cassia helped him and Lyros up. Lio supported Mak while Cassia handed Lyros his fallen spear to use as a crutch. The four of them made their weary way over to a pair of standing stones with a broad gap between them. Knight already sat there waiting for them. Beyond the gate, more magefire torches lined the path.

“This looks like the way forward,” said Lio.

“I expect the next trap to require soothsaying,” Cassia warned.

“You two are the diplomats,” Mak said. “I dare say you can talk our way out of it, with or without an affinity for soothsaying.”

Cassia glanced back the way they had come, but Lyros shook his head. “The only way out is forward.”

Lio took Cassia’s hand. We’ll find a way.

They walked between the stones to face the next challenge.

Cassia took one stepforward, and the marsh was gone as if they had left it behind inside the standing stones. But those had disappeared, too.

They were back in the top chamber of the tower. Only it wasn’t a dismal storage room any longer.

The room was empty and dark save for the nonagram, which now glowed with verdant green light. The symbol was drawn on the floor in a luminescent powder that smelled of ash trees and bone. The complex, interlocking pattern formed a sort of nine-pointed star, and at its center rose a small standing stone.

“Why does that look more dangerous than Hesperine-eating ivy and unkillable wolves?” Mak asked.

“Because we understand it even less,” Lio answered.

Lyros eyed Knight, who was keeping his distance from the glowing lines. “No one set foot inside it.”

Lio nodded in agreement. “Not until Cassia has a chance to examine it with her power.”

She circled the symbol, studying the standing stone from every angle, and consulted the letting site again. As if the Lustra’s power amplified her hearing, she was able to make out a sound in the quiet room. A murmur that seemed to echo along the twists and points of the nonagram.

“Do you all hear that?” she asked.

Lio frowned, shaking his head. “What?”

“The tower has a voice,” she said.

The murmur grew more urgent, and she drifted closer to the outer edge of the symbol.

Lio caught her hand, holding her back. “What is the voice saying?”

“I don’t know.” The fleeting words seemed to hold a revelation just beyond her understanding.

She couldn’t help remembering the whispers that had permeated Btana Ayal, the voices of all the ancestors who had walked in that once-great city. She hadn’t been able to understand them until one of her own ancestors had manifested and briefly gifted her the power of soothsaying.

She would never have that ability again.

“This is definitely a soothsaying test,” she said.

“May I listen with you?” Lio asked.

“Please.” She opened her senses to him.

He drew nearer through their bond, and their Grace Union heightened. She felt him behind her eyes, under her skin. His voice echoed silently in her ears. Is this what it sounds like to go through a spirit gate when you’re human?

Yes. And what I heard at the shattered gate. But that’s impossible. The ancestors can’t speak in Tenebra.

He leaned nearer with a puzzled frown. It must be some manifestation of soothsaying magic we’ve never seen before.

If I make the wrong move, the consequences could be far worse than the other traps. The ivy and the wolves threatened us physically, but soothsaying could affect our minds.

“All we can do is face this challenge as we did the others.” Lio moved behind her and wrapped one hand around hers over her pendant, holding her dagger with her in the other. The motion had to cause him pain in his healing arm, but he didn’t hesitate.

“Wait.” Lyros held up a hand. “Our wards are working.”

Mak nodded, his face still pale.

“Let me manage the spell alone,” Lyros told him.

“Not a chance, my Grace.” Mak’s magic rose to join Lyros’s, and the dark steadiness of their wards wrapped around everyone.

“Does this mean we’re really back in the tower?” Cassia wondered.

Lio’s thelemancy touched her mind, adding new dimension to their Union. “I believe so. My magic is working, too. We must have left the Lustra’s creation and re-entered the world.”

“How is that possible? The tower looks completely different.”

“We still can’t step, so this place is clearly under the influence of Lustra magic, as well.”

“Yes. Yes, I can feel it. I could be wrong…” She gave a humorless laugh. “I could always be wrong about any of this. But I don’t think this is the final trap guarding the tower’s secrets. I think this might be the secret itself.”

Lio’s power filled her mind ward. “If this soothsaying enchantment affects our Wills, I’ll try to protect us.”

“Our wards are ready,” said Lyros.

Cassia channeled magic up from the letting site, directing it into her incomplete foci. Her dagger and pendant stemmed the measureless flow. The whispers grew louder.

They called her forward. She stepped into the symbol, and Lio moved with her so they both stood inside one point of the star.

“The spell feels off-balance,” she said. “Mak…Lyros…would you be willing to join us inside the symbol?”

“Anything you need,” Mak replied.

“Where shall we stand?” asked Lyros.

“Each of you take one point of the star to form a triangle with us.”

Mak stepped into one section of the nonagram, and Lyros limped into the other, his staff tapping on the floor. She could feel their auras pass over the border of the symbol. The magic grew stronger, but it felt like an erratic heartbeat to her.

Cassia drew her brows together. The uneven magic was forming a headache behind her eyes. “No, this isn’t right either. Why doesn’t it feel right?”

Lio’s magic reached through her senses again. “I’m not sure. I’ve never encountered anything like this nonagram. No other magical paradigm has spell patterns based on threes.”

The enchantment demanded she use three affinities. Was there any hope of answering the voices with only one?

No, Cassia had more than a single Lustra affinity. She had blood magic, too.

“Hesperine spell patterns are based on unions,” she murmured. “Unions so powerful, they can even bind together opposing forces…”

“Flesh and spirit,” Lio said. “Thorns and roses. Hulaia and haima.”

Haima, the paradigm of blood magic. Cassia’s fangs slid down. “We shall do this the Hesperine way, and if the Changing Queen doesn’t like it, she can keep her secrets.”

She felt Lio’s fierce smile in their Union. “If you think committing heresy in the symbol of your ancestors is the answer, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“With you all the way,” said Mak, although he was barely on his feet.

Lyros was a ball of worry for his Grace, but he didn’t hesitate either. “Let’s give the Lustra a taste of Hespera’s thorns.”

Cassia motioned for her Trial brothers to move closer together. “You two stand inside the same point across from Lio and me.”

They did ask she asked, sliding a supportive arm around each other.

Cassia lifted Rosethorn and made a slash on both her hands. Droplets of her blood flew from the cuts and hung suspended in the air, caught between the pull of the enchantment and the push of her Will.

Her new ability for levitation won the contest. Her blood obeyed her, sweeping through the air and down to the floor. She traced over the glowing green lines of her choosing, forming her own symbol out of the nonagram. Five petals and five thorns, Hespera’s Rose imprinted in crimson over her ancestor’s tracings. She looped one petal around Mak and Lyros, pointed a thorn at her and Lio, and drew the center of the rose around the standing stone.

“Yes,” Lio said, “this could work!”

She pressed one bleeding hand to her pendant, the other dripping blood down Rosethorn. The letting site’s power split and funneled into her foci. A wild, chaotic third current of power sought for her missing focus.

“I have a unified duality and two foci,” she told the Lustra through gitted teeth. “Take them or leave them.”

She braced herself and drew on the blood magic flowing in her veins.

Her Hesperine power flowed into the lines of the rose, and the rightness of it, the relief made tears prick her eyes. The current of her blood magic pulled her plant magic along with it. The letting site’s power shuddered and built, a raging river trying to crash through the narrowest ravine. Lio folded himself around her, holding her against the onslaught.

She felt small. The vast Lustra threatened to roll over her and return her to dust.

No. She was immortal. Recreated by Hespera, she had nothing to fear from the power of creation.

The unanchored third current snapped into place, melding with the two channels pouring through her artifacts. The force of nature pouring from the letting site followed her blood magic into the thorns and petals of Hespera’s rose.

Lio gasped. “Goddess bless. It’s working. You can do this, Cassia.”

Flecks of blood floated around her. She caught their scent and realized they were Lio’s blood. Every stain their battle had left on him rose from his skin and hair and robes to fall, wet and bright, into the center of the rose. Mak made a surprised noise, watching the gore on his chest lift away and stream into the center, mingling with the blood the spell pulled from Lyros.

The green lines of the nonagram faded to darkness. The spell wrenched itself out of Ebah’s ancient pattern and reformed along every petal and thorn of Hespera’s Rose. It sang, with two nodes keeping the whole chaos in balance—one concentration of power swirling around her and Lio, the other encircling Mak and Lyros.

She heard her pendant and the stone speaking to each other in that language she couldn’t understand. This enchantment was created by soothsaying, the wisdom of people. The magic of words. She grasped at the few words of the old tongue she knew.

“Ebah,” she said, the name of ivy, of the sorceress who had crafted this spell. An invocation of her matriarch. Then she said in Divine, the mother tongue of Hesperines, “I am your daughter in this epoch. Your past is mine by right.”

The pendant was warm, almost too hot against her hand. Lio ran his thumb over hers and didn’t let go.

“Ebah,” Cassia demanded a second time. “I am your immortal daughter. Trust me with your secrets, and they shall live forever with me.”

The whispers grew to a cacophony. They spilled forth from the stone and rushed toward Cassia. The channeling hit her pendant and sent her staggering back against Lio. He held her tightly as magic poured into her chest.

Light raced along the patterns of the nonagram, erasing the symbol line by line. The standing stone crumbled to dust before their eyes.

“No, no—” she began.

But the whispers interrupted her. Now they were coming from her pendant.

The current of magic faded and left her feeling light and unsteady. The whispers quieted, as if going to sleep. But the feel of the magic inside her pendant had changed. Grown.

Slowly, Mak and Lyros lowered their wards. Lyros was the first to speak. “What just happened?”

“Incredible.” Lio, immortal as he was, sounded breathless. “The enchantment in the stone was designed to be transferred to another artifact. It merged with the spells inside Cassia’s pendant.”

She flicked her hand and left one more emphatic splash of blood where the stone had stood. “And we did it on Hespera’s terms.”

The floorboards creaked, then the wood under the fresh bloodstain cracked, and a vine of black roses blossomed in the center of their defiant Ritual circle. Magic echoed in the vines, in the bloodied lines of their spell, and in the Union between the four of them, which battle had only strengthened.

“I know this isn’t how any of us expected to spend Winter Solstice,” Cassia said, “but let this be our Ritual in Hespera’s honor.”