Dangerous Experiments
When they found Makand Lyros in the practice room, Cassia cast a questioning glance at Lio. He gave his head a slight shake. She agreed with him. The warriors didn’t seem in the mood for interruptions.
Mak and Lyros danced around each other in complete silence, their feet barely making a sound on the mats. Then every muscle in Lyros’s body seemed to engage. He rolled forward and sprang to his feet to launch a close attack on Mak, so fast that Cassia’s eyes could barely track him.
Lyros froze with his heart a hair’s breadth from Mak’s outstretched palms.
“Again,” Lyros said.
“Lyros—” Mak began.
“Again,” he insisted.
They returned to their positions and repeated the drill. Cassia didn’t understand the advanced move they were practicing, only that it took astonishing strength and skill to be so precise at such speed. She and Lio watched Lyros repeat the attack over and over, each time ending up with Mak’s hands nearly striking his heart.
Lyros rolled and lunged again. At the last instant, Mak opened his arms and caught Lyros against his chest. “That’s enough.”
Lyros’s hands curled into fists against Mak’s back. “Martyr’s Heart is the only way to confront a mage head-on when we’re out of options. We’ll need it.”
“No one has ever mastered it before the age of one hundred and sixty. You aren’t going to learn it tonight.”
Lyros pulled away. “You can stop me from training tonight. But I will never give up the battle arts. Don’t you dare suggest it again.”
Lyros stepped out of sight.
Cassia looked at Mak in confusion and tried to keep her tone tactful. “You’ve never told him to give up being a warrior. Have you?”
Mak slumped onto a bench. “That’s not what I meant.”
Lio sat down beside his cousin. “I think that’s how Lyros interpreted what Mak said in front of Rudhira tonight.”
She supposed she couldn’t avoid that topic any longer. “What did Rudhira say?”
“You didn’t hear him?”
She shook her head. “I was too absorbed in my spell.”
“Good.” Lio’s gaze fell. “None of it bears repeating.”
She had a flash of understanding, finally. How right he had been to caution her that their Grace Union didn’t always reveal the reason behind his emotions.
So she spoke through their bond. That’s why you were so affected by what happened tonight. I thought you were angry and hurt because of how he reacted to my spell.
I was, he insisted. I still am.
But Rudhira said something that hurt you, too.
“Don’t be close-lipped about it, Lio,” Mak said. “You can see how much trouble secrets have gotten me into lately.”
Cassia crossed her arms. “Did you two learn nothing from Lio waiting too long to tell me I’m his Grace?”
“The things I’ve been keeping from Lyros aren’t as important as Grace,” Mak said defensively.
“And I had good reasons for waiting to tell you about our bond,” Lio protested.
She gave them both a pointed look. “‘For their own good’ is never a good reason.”
Mak groaned. “You’re right.”
Lio sighed and gave in. “It’s just as we feared. Rudhira wants us to turn ourselves in so he can to take us back to Orthros to face trial.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “He really tried to arrest us, then.”
Lio and Mak relayed the rest of their standoff with Rudhira. By the time they finished, Cassia was fighting tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I.” Lio sounded tired.
She sent him her warmth through their bond. “I never imagined Rudhira would be so hard on us. He’s the one who heals wounds, not someone who rubs salt in them.”
“We made this hard on him,” Mak said.
“I’m still surprised he wasn’t gentler with us,” Cassia replied.
Mak snorted. “The Blood-Red prince doesn’t have a reputation for being gentle.”
“Not with his enemies. But with the people he loves…” She thought of how, without judgment, he had helped her tame her spell at her first Ritual. Then of how he had fought against her magic tonight. It seemed all wrong. “That was so unlike him.”
Lio nodded. “I expected him to have more sympathy for our choice to carry weapons, even if it does put him in a difficult position.”
“We didn’t exactly handle it as well as the Blood Errant did,” Mak said, his gaze downcast.
“I truly thought he would understand.” Cassia swiped at her eyes, wondering where the armor over her heart was now.
I cannot bear this, Lio told her privately. A Hesperine has made you cry. Our Ritual father, no less!
The Gift makes us good, but not perfect. I can point fingers least of all.
“I didn’t mean Lyros should give up the battle arts,” Mak said. “I just want to protect him from what I’ve done.”
Cassia rested a hand on his shoulder. “I know.”
She had lost her own battle to make her Grace put himself first the night they had gotten arrested. Looking at Lio, knowing she would do anything to protect him, she thought she finally knew what to say to Lyros.
“I’ll try to talk to him, if that’s all right with you,” Cassia said.
“Thank you,” Mak replied. “Goddess knows I can’t say the right thing to him tonight.”
I’ll talk to Mak, Lio promised.
Knight is still napping by the fire. I’ll let him sleep. Would you veil me?
Yes, I agree an ambush may be necessary.
Concealed by Lio’s spells, Cassia headed out of the practice room. She levitated up through the tower and found Lyros out on a parapet. He had his fists propped on the stone as he stared out over the bailey and front gates of the fort.
This tower was too small for three brooding immortal males. Cassia smiled with affection for all of them.
I’m not brooding, Lio protested.
She couldn’t keep her amusement from filling their Union. You are the most brooding of all, my mind mage.You can drop the veils now.
Done, he grumbled.
Lyros actually started, and Cassia bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“Hespera’s Mercy,” Lyros said. “You were a sneaky mortal. I should have known no one would stand a chance against you as a Hesperine.”
“I was afraid you’d storm off again before I had a chance to tell you that I know where to find Miranda.”
Lyros stood up straighter. “How?”
“The Lustra showed me her trail.” Cassia waved a hand. “It has decided she’s its prey, and it is all too happy to help us hunt her down.”
Lyros leaned against the parapet and crossed his arms. “Is this like Kalos’s tracking methods?”
“No. This is a Silvicultrix’s method.”
Lyros gave her a nod, respect in his gaze. That look meant more to her than she could say. Despite all her mistakes, he trusted her to make this right. No matter what the elders thought, her Trial brothers and her Grace had faith in her.
She drifted forward, looking out over the fort with Lyros. “Being fugitives like this…it’s different for you and me than it is for Mak and Lio. You and I remember when we were human.”
Lyros shook his head. “I was Gifted as a child.”
She touched his arm. Seeing her olive skin against his, she was struck again by how much they had in common, two bastards of Tenebra and Cordium’s conflicted couplings over the centuries. “You were old enough to have some memories of your human life in Namenti. Those early years leave powerful marks on us. Surviving as an abandoned child on the streets of a border city must have hurt you as much as losing my mother and Solia hurt me.”
Lyros crossed his arms. “I’ve had decades of growing up as a Hesperine to leave all that behind.”
“There is no shame in remembering that pain, Lyros. It makes us fight harder.”
His green eyes slid toward her again. He gave a short sigh. “You’re right.”
“Both of us remember when we were truly alone, treated like castoffs by someone who should have nurtured us.”
“All my human parents did was birth me onto the streets and walk away. I’ve always thought I was better off never knowing them. You went through much worse with your sire.”
“Would you stop trying to be a stoic warrior for a moment? I know we can both recall the first time Hesperines made us feel like we mattered. I dare say you could tell me the exact night you stopped fighting for your own survival and started fighting out of love for them instead.”
He didn’t tell her, but she could feel it in his aura. A powerful memory of when he, young and vulnerable, had discovered his cause for the rest of eternity.
Cassia poked him in the arm. “I bet it was when Mak made those matching heart pendants when you two were sucklings.”
“It was not,” Lyros protested with indignation, dodging her next poke. But now he was laughing more and brooding less.
He caught her around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “You don’t have to play mind healer for me, Cassia. The theramancers already went through all of this with me when I was a suspicious little brat, unwilling to trust my Hesperine parents.”
“And prone to thieving their valuables to hide in a treasure stash in your room.”
Lyros flushed. “Lio told you that story?”
Cassia tried not to chuckle. “I’m impressed. You managed to snatch a small fortune before Timarete and Astrapas found out. You could have run away and become a very wealthy child-king of your own ring of thieves. But you didn’t. Because you loved your new parents already.”
“Of course I did. And like all angry sucklings, I eventually realized they love me, even if they don’t love all the worry I’ve caused them over the years.”
“That’s the only reason your parents offered you a way out of the battle arts,” Cassia said. “And the only reason Mak suggested you take it. They love you.”
“I know that.”
She nodded. “Of course you do. But it still hurt.”
“I’m not hurt. I’m offended.”
“It wasn’t an insult to your skills as a warrior.”
“It was an insult to my honor. I may be a failed artist and a derelict Steward, but I will not desert my Grace.”
“Lyros, it wasn’t failure that turned you into a Steward. The battle arts are your calling. We all know you belong in speires. Mak wasn’t questioning that.”
“I know that,” Lyros insisted.
She suspected he knew it but didn’t feel it. When Timarete and Astrapas had chosen him as their son, he had gained a family at last, only for his talents to be incompatible with their hopes for him. She knew from spending time around Lyros and his family that he still didn’t feel like he belonged in his own bloodline.
He hadn’t found his place as a Hesperine until he’d taken up the battle arts and become one of the few in Orthros’s history to join the Stand from outside Hippolyta’s family.
And now he felt as if the people he loved the most were telling him he didn’t belong there, either.
He was right—she was no mind healer who could talk him out of years of lies he told himself. Not when she was still so prone to lying to herself. But she was family, and she could listen and give him the gift of her new empathy.
He turned away, bracing his fists on the parapet again, hanging his head. “How could Mak imagine I would abandon him?”
His hurt filled the Blood Union, squeezing Cassia’s heart. “All I can tell you is what went through my mind when I told Lio to let me get arrested without him. Nothing. I wasn’t thinking at all, Lyros. With my whole heart, I was feeling the need to protect him at any cost.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And here I thought you were being strategic.”
“Well, ensuring you and Lio went free did prove to be a good plan, but my point still stands. I’ll be the first to admit it’s difficult to be rational when the protective Grace instincts come over you. Mak wasn’t thinking either, I suspect. Only feeling. Even though he should have thought before he spoke.”
“Yes. He should have.” Lyros grimaced. “But I…could have taken it as he intended it.”
“It’s difficult to do that, too, when his words hit a sore point. Lio frustrates me so much when it seems he won’t let me protect him the way he protects me. He was born to protect our people. But I chose to, and that is no less powerful.”
If Lyros realized she was talking about him and Mak, too, he gave no sign. She hoped her words had gotten through to his analytical mind, even if they hadn’t yet reached his heart.
Lyros drew himself up. “I’m sorry I let my temper get the best of me when we have work to do. Get some rest. We’ll start tracking Miranda tomorrow night.”
She arched a brow at him. “No more brutal training sessions before our next excursion, General Lyros?”
“You and Lio are dismissed,” he said. “Mak and I need the practice room until dawn.”
The glint in his eye reassured her that sparring was not what he intended to do with Mak for the rest of the night.
At the top ofthe tower, Cassia stood in the center of the ritual markings. The Rose of Hespera she had created from her ancestors’ nonagram glowed red in the dark room. She let her dual magic flow along the lines of the rose and down through the spell patterns of the tower to touch the letting site.
“I know I should look for Miranda first,” she said, “but there’s something else I want to try. Need to try.”
Lio spoke from just outside the ritual circle. “You want to infuse this letting site with your blood magic, too.”
“How did you know?”
Her senses were so alive with power that his voice seemed to fill the shadows. “I can feel your thirst to know what’s possible. I understand it, Cassia.”
“Experimenting with a letting site is like baiting a wild animal.”
His fanged smile flashed at her. “Then show it you bite back.”
That made her smile. His excitement for their magical experiment was infectious. “Thank you for being willing to try my dangerous idea.”
“You know I will take any risk in this world to help you become more powerful.”
She didn’t miss the implication in his words. He was thinking of her other affinities, as well. She let that debate lie and hoped it would not wake anytime soon.
She probed the letting site, and the Lustra rose, ready to come to her. “It feels like plant roots, made for pulling nourishment out of the soil. The channeling only goes in one direction.”
“But you know it can be reversed. Your experience at Paradum proved that.”
This time, she reached deep within herself. Her Gift was everpresent, permeating her bones and veins and skin, sustaining the plant magic within her. She pushed her dual magic down toward the letting site with all her might. Her feet left the ground, and she hovered on the outpouring of power.
She felt as if she dissolved into the wave of her magic and crashed down into the letting site. When she struck the Lustra, the impact slammed through her. Her blood magic rebounded, chased by a massive wave of Lustra magic.
Her back and head struck something solid, bringing her back to her body. Stars exploded on her vision, and her dagger flew from her hand. Then she was in free fall.
She landed in Lio’s arms, numb all over. As feeling returned, she felt pain. Everywhere. Where he cradled her head, her skin and hair were wet with blood.
His calm was like a sure grip on their Union, holding fear at bay. “Cassia, can you hear me? Try to answer aloud.”
She wasn’t human anymore. A blow to the head couldn’t kill a Hesperine. “I can hear you.”
He lifted her eyelids. “Can you see me?”
“Yes, you handsome creature.”
He grinned. “You’re going to be all right, I can tell. Have a drink so that nasty bump heals faster.”
She reached for his wrist, then hissed in pain. “I think my dagger hand is as broken as my head.”
He caressed her cheek, putting his wrist to her mouth. “Hesperine magical experiments can be rather damaging, but fortunately, we are very hard-headed.”
As his blood flowed into her, she let out a sigh. She could do much worse than lay broken in his arms with him gently feeding her till she healed.
His blood drove away every trace of pain and left her body feeling warm. She wondered what the magical results would be of pushing him onto his back and mating him right here on the ritual markings.
Thorns, she was definitely an immortal if she could go from concussed to lustful within minutes.
He arched a brow at her. “I do think that might confuse the results of our current test. But we can certainly make that a future experiment.”
She licked the last drops from his wrist and her lips, gazing up at him. She could see the little betrayals of tension around his eyes and mouth, although they were hidden deep in their Union.
“I know it’s hard for you to see me get hurt,” she said, “even when you know I’ll be all right.”
He helped her sit up and ran a cleaning spell over the matted blood in her hair. “Nothing is harder for me. But there is always pain on the path to power. Accepting your pain is part of my promise to help you become as powerful as you can.”
“Thank you for never treating me like I’m fragile.”
“How could I, when you are so unbreakable?”
She kissed him, and she tasted his anger at the Lustra on his tongue. But also his admiration for her.
“I want to try again,” she said.
“Then we will.”
She retrieved her fallen dagger. Lio joined her in the center of the rose this time and put his arms around her.
“I won’t let the sunbound Lustra toss you against the ceiling a second time,” he grumbled.
She poured her power into the Ritual rose again, joining with the tower and the letting site once more. She fingered the myriad arcane paths of the tower’s enchantments. They came easily to her hand now, willing to do as their Silvicultrix bade.
They all drew from the letting site as well, but…
“What if I can transform the tower enchantments?” she said. “I was able to redraw the nonagram into Hespera’s Rose. Could I subvert the spells on the tower to work with my magic, too, and use them to siphon my power back into the letting site?”
“That’s brilliant. I don’t know if it will work, but we have evidence that it could. So we should test it.”
She thought aloud with Lio. “Last time, casting with two avowed pairs of Hesperines in Union, using blood from all four of us, made the hulaia here conform to the paradigm of haima.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But what we’re trying to do now is more like when you Gifted me and we opened a letting site fed by our combined power. So I think only you and I should be necessary for this casting. What do you think?”
“I agree we should try it that way first.” He gave her waist a squeeze. “Let’s shed our blood, and if that doesn’t produce results, I’m happy to try mating rituals.”
“I like this plan.”
She slashed her hand with her dagger, then made the same cut on his hand. They twined their fingers together, squeezing their mingled blood onto the rose. The current of her Gift, flowing through the markings, strengthened and spread through the tower’s enchantments.
She grasped the whole tangle of spells and Willed her magic into them.
Her power set the tower alight. The enchantments glowed in her mind’s eye, a delicate but powerful web strung between her and the letting site.
She pushed until the strands of the web vibrated with her power. The letting site pushed back, and the spells shook. Her dagger grew hot in her hands. She had that feeling again that the spell was unstable, unbalanced. Something was missing. Two somethings.
She released her hold on the casting before the straining tower broke. The Lustra’s natural patterns took over again, channeling magic into her. With it came an awareness of Miranda and a sense of direction.
She released the channeling and opened her eyes, swearing.
“What happened?” Lio asked.
“I can’t manipulate the connection between the tower spells and the letting site. Not yet.” She gritted her teeth.
He brushed her lips with a finger. “What’s wrong?”
She looked away. “I need all three of my foci. But I was a fool and lost one. And I don’t even know how to make the third.”
“You’ll learn.”
She lifted her gaze to his again. “But can I learn in time?”
“I have faith in you.”
She wouldn’t fail him. She couldn’t. Not after everything he had sacrificed to stand here with her, pushing the limits of forces they didn’t understand.
“Hopefully Miranda’s secrets will yield some answers,” she said.
“Did the Lustra show you which way to go?”
“Yes. But none of us will like the answer. We need to travel west. To the warfront.”