Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

The Mage Kings Fires

THE MAGE KING”S FIRES

Lio caught one glimpseof the mages. The war circle of Aithourians dodged flying stones while Skleros leapt away from the table, where roses had cleaved his game board and shattered his wine.

Then gouts of flame shot up from the war mages’ hands, filling Lio’s vision with fire.

He levitated backward as Cassia, Mak, and Lyros all shot away in different directions. Lio flattened his back against the wall.

The fire spells sailed into empty air between the four of them, sending hot prickles over his skin. In the wake of the flames came seven revelatory spells that shredded his veils.

The instant the fire sank, the Black Roses moved. Using Final Word for leverage, Lio pushed off from the wall and sped toward the other side of the room. Staying in one position would be certain death.

The mages now surrounded an altar where the temple’s sacred sickle rested before a bronze brazier. In unison, they thumped their chest with their fists and held out their palms. The altar flame rose from the brazier in seven tendrils that whorled around each other.

Lio’s Union Stone flashed from the top of his staff. Now.

Mak and Lyros’s wards thickened the air, an invisible darkness. Cassia’s roses broke through the floor and grew over every door and window.

Lio focused on the Aithourians’ mental defenses. Seven clean strikes, and they would no longer be a threat. He reached into himself for his power.

But there was more than mind magic welling up within him. The ghosts of Castra Augusta were always just behind his eyes. Every suffering animal. Every crying child. Every parent and grandparent and spouse who had watched someone they loved die, knowing they were next.

Lio finally let out the cry of despair that had been building in him night after night. The echoes of their final moments overflowed from him and poured into the fire mages’ minds. Still the seven men were not enough to hold so much pain.

Their mental defenses crumbled as easily as the castle had. They screamed like the dying villagers.

These men weren’t helpless and harmless like Miranda’s victims at Castra Augusta. Lio bared his fangs and flooded them with another wave of the pain their Order had caused.

One by one, they fell to their knees below him, clawing at their heads. Their fire spells spun out of control, finding anything they could to feed on. Every banner on the walls and offering at the altar caught fire.

Through the visions of slaughter in Lio’s mind’s eye, he saw Cassia’s face before him. She clutched his shoulders.

Lio, what are you doing?

He gritted his teeth. Following the plan.

Lyros said to stop the fire mages with your mind magic, not this!

He didn’t specify how I should break their minds.

“Cassia!” Lyros barked from somewhere beyond a wall of flames.

She glanced over her shoulder. Lio didn’t take his eyes off the mages, but at the corner of his vision, Skleros raced toward a door, the sacred sickle in hand.

Lio dug into the corners of the war mage’s minds and filled their every thought with the image of Neana’s face. Then he drove Azad’s despair into their hearts.

The men crumpled to the floor, weeping pitifully. “Neana,” her enemies sobbed.

More roses sprouted to reinforce the tangle over the door in front of Skleros. But Cassia turned back to Lio.

She framed his face in her small, strong hands. Her strokes on his cheeks threatened to pull him back to himself. He couldn’t come back. Not until justice was done.

Don’t do this, his Grace pleaded.

They deserve it.

That doesn’t matter. Don’t make yourself their judge.

Lio sailed up, out of her hold. I’ve seen your day terrors about Azad and Neana. How can you deny you want justice for them?

Not like this!

The war mages’ sweat and offal spoiled the air. Their heartbeats pounded faster and faster. Another moment, and they would beat their last.

Stop! Cassia shouted in Lio’s heart.

Her magic slammed into their Grace Union. Her power twined through his every thought and tangled around his soul. There was nothing in him but her. His link with the mages shattered, and his staff flew from his grasp.

He hovered there, blind in the thrall of her beautiful, wild power.

When she released him, he fell. Her levitation caught him and set him on his feet.

The mages lay around him, their heads at unnatural angles. Broken necks. Swift deaths at the Stewards’ hands. Mak and Lyros stared at Lio over the bodies.

Cassia landed in front of the door, where her roses lay in tatters, chopped away by a sickle.

The dead screamed inCassia’s veins. Villagers? Mages? She didn’t know anymore.

She couldn’t afford to lose her focus on the pendant. It moved through the temple, a whisper of Lustra magic. The letting site murmured back, urging her forward.

Cassia beckoned. “I can track Skleros with the pendant. This way!”

Lyros gave Lio’s shoulders a shake. “Focus on Skleros’s dream wards now. Nothing else. Do you understand me?”

Lio yanked himself free, snatching up his staff. “I understood you when you said to do what I must to protect us from the fire mages!”

Mak shoved them both toward the door. Cassia plunged through the hole in the roses, the others close behind her. With a crash, more roof beams collapsed behind them in the burning chamber.

The hallway was so narrow that Lio’s body pressed against hers. At the physical touch, their pain blended.

She poured it into a spell, ripping roses up out of the floor along the length of the hallway. A line of fire traps exploded, leaving her flowers in piles of ash.

“Good move.” Mak’s ward rose in front of her.

Cassia looked back at Lyros. “You predicted Skleros might escape. We fall back on your next plan?”

“Can you do it?” he asked.

She fingered the web of Lustra magic that glimmered throughout the temple. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

Their success or failure, survival or death, depended on her magic now.

Skleros was a moving target, racing along a twisted path through the temple complex. She closed her eyes, trying to anticipate his destination.

The others followed her down the hall to a library. She flew across the room toward an alcove. With a silent apology to the Mage King, she knocked scrolls out of her way with a blast of levitation, then grabbed the solid oak shelves and physically hurled them aside. “Skleros is on the other side of this wall. He’s probably warned the rest of the mages.”

“Follow the plan.” There was no more anger in Lyros’s voice. “Please. Stay alive tonight.”

Cassia gave him a quick, tight hug. Pulling from the letting site itself, she let her roses devour the wall of the library. The vines opened up the adjacent room, setting off half a dozen fire traps as they grew.

Cassia levitated out first with her Trial brothers covering her and Lio at her back. The mages’ first volley of flames collided with Mak and Lyros’s wards.

So many braziers. So little cover. They were in the main chamber of the temple, and another war circle of Aithourians was waiting for them with more than a dozen apprentices.

As fire and lightning burned through Mak and Lyros’s wards, the Black Roses shot toward the ceiling again. War magic chased them to the rafters of the vast room.

The lights of the battle reflected off the bronze sun disk at the head of the chamber. Behind it towered a painted statue of her ancestor with sword held high and magefire hovering over his open palm.

Cassia dodged another tongue of fire and found herself face-to-face with the Mage King. There was no judgment in his noble blue gaze. The war mage’s spell singed the seven-pointed crown resting on his blond hair, but missed her.

A bolt of lightning arced toward Lio, and he dropped behind the sun disk just as the war magic struck the bronze. Cassia flung out a hand, carpeting the floor below him with roses. No fire traps exploded. He landed safely on his feet, sending her his thanks in their Grace Union.

Then his eyes slid shut. As his thelemancy swept out of him, her gut clenched. But he didn’t aim for the Aithourians. His power honed in on only one target: the Gift Collector.

Skleros stood in the center of the columned chamber, grasping Cassia’s pendant. “Trying to take back your token of good faith, little witch? That’s against your agreement with the Master. He may demand your head after all.”

Lio’s magic struck. Skleros’s mouth twisted in a snarl, and he hurled a dagger at Cassia.

She whipped behind the statue to avoid the blade and tried to focus on the patterns of Lucian and Ebah’s magic. Here in the main chamber, they were strongest of all.

The core of the letting site was right beneath the statue, as if Lucian were the eternal guardian of his queen’s power. Her theory had been right. Ebah had wanted him to build this temple here.

Over the statue’s shoulder, she could see Mak and Lyros blurring through the room, evading fireballs and repelling bolts of lightning with their wards. Blood sprayed where they landed blows with their weapons. Skleros wove among them to toss blades at Mak and Lyros, but his aim was not so deadly with Lio raking through his thoughts.

Mak grabbed one lightning mage by the throat and levitated with him. Bright forks of magic snaked over Mak, but didn’t burn his warded skin. The mage struggled in his hold, then went still. Mak spun, using his dead opponent as a shield, and hurled the man’s body into another mage’s fire spell.

But there was always more fire. The Aithourians were drawing from the temple braziers. Anger filled Cassia at the sight of them exploiting the Mage King’s power.

Lio, Mak, and Lyros were buying her time, but they couldn’t hold out long when they were this outnumbered and the mages had an endless source of fire magic. And any time he wished, the Collector could decide he tired of this and end the round.

There was only one power in this room that would give the Black Roses the upper hand. The temple’s. And she had only minutes to learn to harness it.

She’d healed Paradum with her blood magic and earned the tower’s recognition. She could do this.

She had to.

Dagger in hand, she let her magic take root in the letting site. Energy rushed through her body. But the mages’ spells were like invasive weeds, sucking life out of the Lustra. She had to make them stop.

The battle played out before her eyes while her mind was deep below the earth. Lyros’s spear arced through a rush of flame and struck the caster in the chest. The apprentice beside him caught him as he fell back. While the young mage was distracted, Mak swooped down, aiming the Star of Orthros at the apprentice’s head.

Cassia shut her eyes. She focused her Will on each point where the Aithourians were draining the Lustra.

This power was hers. She pulled the magic back to her with all her might.

Pain seared her veins. Dozens of fire spells scorched the arcane paths inside her.

She was screaming, falling. Then Lio’s arms were around her. A bed of roses was under her back.

What happened?her Grace said in her mind.

She forced her eyes open and tried to sit up. I have to try again. Keep fighting Skleros.

Lio pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his wrist.

She growled in frustration at her thirst, but she couldn’t deny she needed blood. She gave in and bit him hard. His hand tightened in her hair as she dragged a fast drink out of him and into her parched veins.

She lifted her head with a wet gasp. Lio hesitated an instant, as if he might not let her go, but then released her. Meeting his eyes, she gazed into a dark sky of mind magic. He had never looked farther away.

She dragged her hand across her lips and got to her feet. Wards now bracketed the space behind the sun disk. On the other side, fire roared. Flesh tore, and blood spattered. Their Trial brothers were fighting to keep the mages away from her and Lio so they could cast.

She was running out of time.

She braced her hands on the disk and reached into the letting site again. The mages were still using the Lustra-fed fires as they pleased. Her plant magic had done nothing to stop them.

Goddess help them. What if her plant magic wasn’t enough?

Lyros had a plan for this, too. If her spell didn’t work, it was Cassia’s responsibility to find a Lustra portal and signal retreat. Was it time to surrender?

She stood paralyzed for an instant of indecision they couldn’t afford.

Then she shot upward again to look over the disk. The Gift Collector was still on his feet, but his skin was sallow, his knuckles white as he drew yet another knife. The surviving war mages and their apprentices surrounded him in a battle formation. Mak and Lyros held their own in a desperate dance of stepping and levitation, weapons and wards.

There was no hope of fighting their way through to Skleros. If they tried to step, no doubt the mages would trammel them and drag them right into a fire trap.

She was the one who had lost the pendant. This was her crisis to solve.

A fork of lightning sent her ducking back behind the disk.

Are you all right?Lio’s mind voice was strained.

Yes. How close are his dream wards to breaking?

Lio wrapped both hands around Final Word and stood the staff in front of him. Blood leaked from his fists. Not as close as I should be.

We have to escape.

His frustration roared through their bond, but he didn’t argue.

Cassia opened one of Lio’s hands and pressed her own bleeding palm to his. As their libation dripped to the ground, she sought the Lustra’s guidance.

The portal was right behind them at the Mage King’s feet. A doorway directly to the letting site. Goddess only knew what secrets Lucian and Ebah had hidden down there.

Cassia touched the portal with her magic. It answered her with angry whispers. From the center of the chamber, her pendant murmured back.

No, no, no. That was why Skleros was here. Why he needed the pendant. This portal required soothsaying to open.

She had failed. They were trapped.

There was only one way out—fighting. She touched a bloody finger to her Union Stone and flashed the signal to retreat.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, only for Hesperine ears to hear.

Raising her dagger, she demolished the floor in front of her with her vines. Hespera’s Roses crawled over Anthros’s sun disk, vines snapping and thorns scratching. Mak and Lyros’s auras slid out of the way.

She gave her roses a push. The enormous bronze shield toppled forward. The Aithourians fled, some traversing to the other side of the chamber. But the two nearest and their apprentices disappeared under the sun disk’s weight. She was grateful the roar of magic in her ears drowned out the sounds.

She stood in front of her Grace and faced the war mages with Mak and Lyros beside her.

Every single Aithourian fell to their knees at once. Their mouths fell open, screaming, but no sound emerged from their throats.

She reached for Lio’s magic, but the thelemancy pouring out of him was flooding into Skleros. The Gift Collector’s eyes were locked on Lio’s as they stood frozen in their mental battle. It wasn’t Lio causing the war mages’ suffering.

Every Aithourian writhed on the ground, clawing at their chests. Tongues of flame and sparks of lightning writhed in the air as currents of magic tore out of their bodies. With sickening recognition, Cassia followed the flow of power with her gaze.

In the gallery above them stood Miranda.