Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

45 Nights After Winter Solstice

A HESPERINE HEART

Cassia survived the Slumber,and when she lowered her rose defenses, no enemies were lurking beyond. She would live to turn herself in to the Charge.

Her control slipped, and her Craving drove her to reach for Lio’s presence. His thoughts and emotions eluded her behind his mind magic. Her hunger spiked, her heart pounding faster with instinctual fear.

He was hiding from her. That could mean only one thing. As she had feared, he was doing something dangerous.

Before he carried out whatever his plan was, she had to get the Charge’s attention. But she would surrender on her own terms. She wouldn’t go meekly to the elders. To keep what little negotiating power remained to her, she would have to remind them what she was capable of.

Could she even do that without her foci? Perhaps she was doomed to fail at this, too.

She stood in the spot where her magic had first awoken. Knight waited on the edge of the garden, as he had once done while she worked in her rows of peas.

Each of Cassia’s choices since that night had brought her to this moment. She had survived all of that. For what? Hespera had saved her, remade her in this place in her Gifting visions. Only for her to fail.

Cassia was like Phaedros. She hadn’t been worthy of the Gift.

But if she surrendered now, at least she would never become like Kallikrates.

The game was over for her.

She knelt and dug her fingers into the soil. She let her Will flow into the Lustra, showing it what she required. A magical explosion, just like last time, which would bring the elders down on her.

The letting site didn’t pull. It gave. Magic, her magic, rushed into her. It was so beautiful and so familiar that tears pricked her eyes.

Dark blood and verdant earth filled her being. No explosion, but a quiet sustenance. Her dual magic overran the letting site through her and carried her mind beyond Paradum.

What was the Lustra doing? This was not what she had asked for.

In her mind’s eye, she flowed through the Lustra passages under Patria. Deep into the heart of Solorum. She washed up before the final portal.

A sound came from within the third door. The rush of liquid. She put her hands to the rune-inscribed panel. The vibration in the stone matched her heartbeat.

She looked down at herself. Blood flowed along her arms and into the door. Its runes drank of her.

Cassia opened her eyes to see soil and her own hands. No red trails marked her arms. But she could still feel the current that ran between her and this garden and the final door.

When she had healed this letting site, she had repaired more than she’d known.

“This is a node,” she breathed.

Surely the first one Kallikrates had ever destroyed in his quest to open the portals. The same night he had destroyed her. Or so he had believed.

She had restored the third door. She had broken the first two. So much healing and destruction existed in her, side by side.

“I don’t know how to do this. Hespera help me, I don’t know how to be both at once.”

There was no Hesperine here to give Cassia answers except herself.

She covered her face, smearing soil on her cheeks. “Goddess, help me.”

Would Hespera lend her ear, when Cassia had so much blood on her hands?

Cassia still believed the Goddess would answer. Somewhere deep in her, she even believed Hespera would open her arms to a Gift Collector.

Cassia didn’t know if she and Miranda could ever forgive each other. But she couldn’t bear for Miranda to have no hope of forgiveness. Because that meant Cassia might run out of chances, too.

Hespera never gave up on anyone. In her name, neither did Cassia. That meant not giving up on Miranda. Or herself.

Cassia lifted her face to the moons. She sat there and bared her soul to herself and the Goddess, with the grace immortals had always given her.

With honesty and without judgment, she re-examined every moment of the battle in her mind. She turned her thoughts over and sifted through every emotion she had felt as she had reached for more and more power.

She hadn’t wanted Miranda to die, humiliated and afraid, at Skleros’s hand. She couldn’t let Kallikrates destroy one more woman who had been forged by fear and weakness and love.

All those years ago, when Miranda had cried out for help, only Kallikrates had answered. There had been no Hesperines to save her. Until now.

Cassia had broken the temple trying to protect the people she loved. And even the person she hated.

Cassia was Miranda’s Hesperine.

“Lio was right,” Cassia said to the moons. She pressed her dirty hand to her chest. “I do have a Hesperine heart.”

She faced the room where she had made her choice, first before the Collector and again before Hespera.

“I will never be like Kallikrates.” Her declaration filled the silence of Paradum. “I will never become a New Master in this game. Hespera, you already made me into the playing piece I will be through every round. A Hesperine errant.”

A Hesperine errant didn’t belong in a cell. She belonged in the field, fighting for lost causes until they weren’t lost anymore. That’s what the Black Roses did.

It might already be too late to stop Mak, but Cassia had to try.

Lio hovered over the circle of mages. Prostrate at his feet, they begged for Mercy.

“Where was your Mercy for the families of Tenebra?” he demanded.

He poured another wave of the villagers’ suffering into their murderers. The Aithourians’ screams echoed through the ruins of the temple. Finally, there was no more silence in Lio’s head.

The two mages nearest him lifted their faces toward him.

Chrysanthos reached out a hand to Lio. “I don’t care what you do to me. Just send me home alive to my nephew.”

“Please,” Eudias begged. “I never chose this. They made me an Aithourian.”

Lio recoiled, but it was too late. Their hearts stopped beating, and the silence returned.

There was no soundin the circle but the distant crackle of the unnatural fires. No screams. No heartbeats except his own.

Lio fought his way out of Slumber, knowing, fearing what he would find. When he could finally move, he reached for Dame’s lifeless body.

His hand met grass. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t here at all.

Pulling himself out of their shelter, he looked around the circle and across the bizarre plain. He couldn’t see her anywhere. “Dame? Dockk!”

He kept calling her, but she didn’t reappear. Was she lost in this otherworld somewhere? Had she somehow slipped back into the natural world? Was she strong enough to find food? Would she get picked off by an enemy?

Slumping to the ground, he shoved his hands into his hair. He couldn’t even keep a dog safe.

He was alone in this place the Lustra had brought him. Except for Cassia’s worry, hovering at the edges of his awareness. He tightened his veils around his mind. His thoughts were not fit for her right now.

He shut his eyes. A mistake. He saw the victims at Castra Augusta again. Then the mages’ bodies in the temple.

Lio had tortured seven human beings.

Finally, the reality of what he had done sank in. He had desecrated the sanctity of their minds. He had made them suffer and taken satisfaction in it. He, a Hesperine, a diplomat, had violated everything he believed in.

And what had that accomplished? It hadn’t given their victims or him peace. It had only added more suffering to the world.

He would have killed the mages if his Grace hadn’t stopped him. Cassia, who thought she could not be trusted with power.

Lio looked down at his hands. He hadn’t even needed a weapon to break Hespera’s tenets. Just the mind magic inside him.

He thought of the way Mak and Lyros had looked at him after they had given those men the Mercy he would not. He had placed the burden of violence on his brothers after he had promised to shoulder it with them.

Lio stared at his hands until his vision burned. Finally he closed his eyes and made himself look at the faces of his own victims.

A soft sound disturbed the dreadful quiet. Paws padding through the grass.

Lio’s eyes flew open. Dame was trotting toward him across the circle. He had never been so glad to see a living creature.

“Hello, girl,” he said softly. “You had me worried. Where did you go?”

She halted and dropped a dead rabbit in front of him.

Lio covered his nose with his hand. “Did you get hungry?”

She nudged the rabbit toward him, then sat down on her furry backside, her ears perked and eyes bright.

Lio laughed. He had no right to, not after what he’d done. He hadn’t thought he could. But looking at Dame, so eager to please with her present, that laugh came out of him, her real gift.

“Is this your way of saying thank you for saving you?” With a smile tugging at his mouth, he lowered his hand from his nose and extended his fingers toward her.

She didn’t bite them off, only flared her nostrils and sniffed him. Her jaws parted, and her tongue lolled out. It looked like she was smiling back.

He reached a little farther. She didn’t move. Gently, he petted her fluffy ears, and she began to wag her tail. For the first time in many hours, peace came over him.

“Thank you.”

Dame stretched out beside him.

He stroked her back next. “Dogs love unconditionally. That’s what Cassia says. You don’t decide if someone deserves it, do you? You just love.”

Lio stopped wondering what he or the mages deserved and accepted the moment of calm. After a while, Dame began to gaze at the rabbit with longing.

“This is an impressive kill,” Lio made himself say. “Oedann. You’re such a good dog. So good, in fact, that I won’t even ask you to share the rabbit with me. You can eat every bite yourself. Yes, truly you can.”

He scooted away from her. She tensed, as if ready to spring up and follow him. He tried to remember what word might put her at ease.

“Soor. Relax and enjoy your rabbit.”

He didn’t go far, but he cast a veil over her so he wouldn’t hear the crunching. Leaning on one stub of a stone, he looked out at the dreamlike landscape.

Where were Cassia and Mak and Lyros now?

He had thought he was protecting them. And yet his decisions on this journey had only made everything harder for them.

He had pushed Mak to use his weapons and pushed Lyros to fight instead of retreat. Worst of all, he had pushed his Grace harder and harder to wield her magic. He had only wanted to show them how much he believed in them when Orthros would not. But he’d driven them so hard that he’d driven them apart.

He had been so focused on the warpath that he had failed to be what they needed most. The cousin who talked Mak down when he was angry. The friend who understood Lyros when he was overthinking everything. The lover who comforted Cassia when she was fighting with herself.

He could hardly call himself a diplomat any longer. But even at war, he could be their peacemaker. He still believed in the Black Roses.

When Dame finished her rabbit, she approached him again, almost hesitant. She looked to him as if for guidance. Her whole life must have been so disciplined. Did she feel as adrift as he did right now?

His determination to hunt down Miranda was gone. Only one thing mattered now.

It would take a great deal of apologies and might end in a prison cell. But if that was what it took to bring their circle back together, then he would do it. Starting with the person he had hurt the most: Lyros.

He rubbed Dame’s ears again. “Let’s go find our pack.”