Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

46 Nights After Winter Solstice

THE FINAL SANCTUARY

“Now that no oneis dying and everyone’s fangs are polished,” Lyros said, “I think we can make some decisions.”

Cassia thought it far too soon for such a jest, but before she knew it, all four of them were laughing.

They had gathered around a carved stone table in another chamber they’d discovered off the main cavern. Knight lounged under the table with Dame while she gnawed on a stick he had found for her.

She bent to check on the dogs and covered her smile with her hand.

“What?” Standing beside her, Lio gave her a bemused look.

“They’re getting along even better than I hoped. I can tell when a champion is besotted with his lady.”

Lio grinned, and she was sure he had already glimpsed her mental images of puppies. She knew she was getting ahead of herself, but she simply couldn’t help envisioning a fuzzy, wiggling hoard of little liegehounds.

Cassia straightened, and the sight of their weapons sobered her. The bronze chandelier overhead glowed with Lio’s spell lights, shining on the three remaining adamas artifacts Mak had set on the table.

Lio pulled their battered map from his scroll case and spread it out. “Where to, Black Roses?”

Cassia looked across at their Trial brothers. “None of us have to bear our doubts in silence anymore. If anyone has hesitations about continuing our quest, tell us.”

Lyros gave an emphatic shake of his head. “Lio and I have faith in us all.”

Mak smiled, his arm around Lyros’s waist. “That’s good, because Cassia and I have some ideas.”

“You first, Mak,” she said.

He thumped his mace with a finger. “I thought these were finished, but I’ve realized they need one more enchantment. A spell to limit how our enemies—or even we—can use them.”

Lio leaned forward, aura bright with interest. “I’ve never heard of a spell like that.”

“There isn’t one.” Lyros’s pride shone through his aura. “Mak is inventing it.”

Mak blushed. “It’s just a ward. A modified version of the Blood Shackles that will effect anyone who attempts to wield one of our weapons.”

“An enchantment that complex is far more than ‘just a ward,’” Lio said. “When you’re done making incredible arcane innovations, don’t forget that your revolutionary proposal is intact in my scroll case.”

“All right, one thing at a time.” Mak waved him off, but his aura was pleased. “For the spell to work properly, I’ll need to enchant all four weapons at once, since they’re bound together by our Union Stones. So we’ll need to rescue Rosethorn from Miranda first.”

Cassia nodded. “To do that, we have to stop letting her lead us by the nose through Kallikrates’s traps. I think we should lure her to us this time. We now know that’s possible because she can track me just as easily as I can track her.”

She was prepared for the dark cloud that gathered in Lio’s aura. But the ferocious look on his face still took her breath away. “We will not use you as bait. I will never go along with any plan that relies on such a tactic.”

She smoothed the front of his robe. “I am not the bait, my darling. I’m the trap.”

He took her hands in both of his, holding them against his chest. “She has Kallikrates’s favor now. It will take more magic than you have ever wielded to defeat them.”

“I will channel the entire Lustra if that’s what it takes.”

A fierce smile came to his face. “That is a plan I can agree to.”

“Us, too,” Mak spoke up.

“Now this is good strategy,” Lyros agreed. “How will we convince Miranda to show herself?”

“We have something she wants.” This was the part of her plan that Cassia hated the most.

Lio swore.

“I know,” she said. “If you don’t have the heart to do it, my Grace, we’ll think of something else.”

“No. It’s a good plan.”

Lyros glanced between them. “Whatever it is, Mak and I may not be willing to risk it, either. What bait do you have in mind?”

Lio pulled their avowal cup out of his scroll case and stood it on the table. “Cassia’s third focus.”

Mak shook his head. “You’ve had your avowal cup with you all this time? Romantic idiot.”

“Guilty.” Lio smiled.

Lyros blew out an incredulous breath. “When did you realize it’s one of your foci, Cassia?”

“Last night. It reacted to the letting site.” Were her cheeks as flushed as they felt?

Lio rested his hand low on her back, and the possessive magic inside her hummed at her mate’s touch.

Mak snickered. “Well, it’s a good thing you two take your duties to the Lustra so seriously.”

Lyros’s eyes narrowed with amusement. “And a very good thing Lio didn’t ruin that cup.”

Lio cleared his throat. “In any case, if Cassia casts with it to reveal it as her focus, Miranda is sure to make her move.”

Cassia nodded. “With my pendant and dagger already in her possession, she’ll be rabid to complete the triune focus so she can use it to destroy the remaining node.”

“This will work.” Lyros rotated the map toward him. “We can choose our battleground, a location that will give us the advantage. Any thoughts on where?”

“Not a Lustra site we would risk endangering,” Cassia said. “We have to keep her away from the remaining node, wherever it might be.”

Lio’s gaze sharpened on something no one else could see. She knew that look.

She brushed her fingers across his temple. “You have an idea, Sir Scholar.”

“It has to be a place that will strengthen your magic as much as possible. But not a Lustra site. That means we need a Hesperine site.”

“Oh,” Cassia breathed. “Yes.”

They would defeat Miranda with the Lustra, but on Hesperine terms.

Lio yanked all the documents out of his scroll case and scattered them across the table. “Think about how your roses responded to the Queens’ ward. And in the Ritual hall at House Komnena.”

Lyros stood back and let Lio have at the papers. “This could give us a real chance. If we fight where Sanctuary magic survives, Mak and I can cast stronger wards.”

Mak chewed his lip. “That might help with the enchantment I want to put on the weapons, too.”

“Your spell will be brilliant,” Lyros said. “We’ll simply have to accept the risk we face at any Hesperine Sanctuary. The Charge is likelier to discover us there.”

Lio gave his head a shake, her braid falling in his eyes as he rifled through his notes and charts. “We aren’t going to a Sanctuary.”

Finally he seized on what he must have been looking for. He flattened out the small scroll in front of Cassia. It was another map, meticulously labeled in Lio’s handwriting. She recognized the coastline and rivers, mountains and forests as Tenebra and Cordium. But none of the place names were familiar to her.

“Lio…is this the shadowlands in another time?”

“This map dates from the Great Temple Epoch. I copied it from one of my father’s years ago. I thought this might help us on our journey…give us clues about the past.”

Four stars drew her eye, each one at a different location on the map—north, south, east, and west. “Are those the Great Temples of Hespera?”

“They may have been razed, but that doesn’t mean their magic is gone.” Lio rested his finger on the star in the north. It hovered in the gap between two peaks, where a river flowed out of the Umbral Mountains.

“Hagia Boreia,” Cassia said with reverence.

“Where our foregiver Anastasios sacrificed himself to keep our last Sanctuary mage alive. His blood anointed that ground during one of Annassa Alea’s greatest castings. There is nowhere in Tenebra we will stand a better chance.”

Lyros’s eyes shone. “Brilliant.”

“It will be an honor to fight there,” Mak said.

Cassia took Lio’s hand. They had faced Kallikrates upon the graves of his victims at Tenebra’s fortresses. Now, if they fought him on the sacred ground of Hespera’s martyrs, they might prove to him that no matter how much he destroyed, the Hesperines were still standing.

With the Black Rosesof one mind, it took less time than Lio expected to settle on their plan. When they stood ready in Cassia’s garden with the hounds, a hush of anticipation came over everyone.

Lio took Cassia’s hands. “After sixteen hundred years, using our foregiver’s blood as a stepping focus is an uncertain experiment. But with both of us, it might just work.”

Mak clapped Lio on the shoulder. “As long as you two don’t drop us in the middle of a heart hunter camp, we’ll be fine.”

“Or too far east, into Rudhira’s courtyard,” Lyros added.

“Have some confidence.” Cassia drew herself up. “I managed to step to Mak without falling off a cliff, didn’t I?”

“Barely,” Mak said.

Lio gave her hands a squeeze. “Our bond will make it easier.”

He held all their auras in focus, closing his eyes, and recalled visions he’d seen in the elders’ minds when they talked of the lost past. Cassia held the remembrance with him, and the glimpses sharpened. Their hearts pounded in unison, pulling Anastasios’s power through their veins.

They stepped in Union. Their joined Wills carried them and those they loved through the world.

His feet hit frozen ground on a riverbank. The white-capped water churned past, pummeling jagged rocks that protruded from its surface. Just before Cassia tumbled into the raging current, he caught her and pulled her to safety.

She looked up at him, breathing hard, her fingers curled in the front of his robe. “Thank you. We don’t have time for me to break my neck.”

He kissed her forehead.

Mak levitated out of a nearby pile of snow and shook himself. “Could have been worse.”

“Did it work?” Lyros called, climbing a short way to join them. The dogs clambered alongside him, looking none the worse for wear.

Lio cast his senses out and tried to recognize anything. They were at the bottom of a ravine with steep slopes rising on either side. Not far upriver, a waterfall crashed down into the gorge.

He caught something on the icy wind, like a song of comfort or of mourning. All four of them turned toward the falls and looked up to where the water cascaded from between two peaks.

There it stood. The Great Temple of Hespera in the North was now nothing more than a time-worn fall of stones above the flowing water. But a deep sense of recognition rang inside him. Cassia pressed a hand to her heart.

“One of the Great Temples.” Mak sounded reverent. “Not many Hesperines can say they’ve set eyes on it.”

“To think,” Lyros said, “our parents found refuge here when they fled the destruction of the Last War.”

“I didn’t know your parents were here, Lyros,” said Cassia. “I thought your mother and Nodora’s father Kitharos came from Hagia Zephyra, the Great Temple in the West.”

He nodded. “They did.”

Lio knew this painful story well and wondered if Lyros would choose now to share it with Cassia. But it seemed here at the foot of one of the Great Temples was the right time to speak of it.

Lyros continued, “When the Mage Orders came for Hagia Zephyra, the mortals in the temple turned on their Hesperine leaders. They called their immortality hubris and believed the discovery of the Gift was what had incited the war mages’ wrath against all Hespera worshipers.”

Cassia touched his arm. “I had no idea. That betrayal must have been horrific.”

“The mortals agreed to surrender the Hesperines to the Order of Anthros to spare themselves. Our elder firstbloods, Daedala and Thelxinos, went willingly to buy time for those they’d Gifted. My mother and Kitharos led the escape, and my father was one of the few humans who helped them.”

“I thought none of the temples were spared,” Cassia said.

Lyros shook his head. “The Order never intended to keep their bargain. They slaughtered the mortal Hespera worshipers, too. But my parents and Kitharos made it here to Hagia Boreia with a small group of Hesperines and loyal humans.”

“I’m so sorry.”

His brow creased, as if something new had occurred to him. “My parents know what it’s like to be abandoned by the people who should have defended you.”

Mak ruffled his Grace’s hair. “You didn’t really think your ‘artistic’ hands were the reason they chose you for their son, did you?”

Lyros put an arm around Mak, and they started the hike toward the temple together. Lio took Cassia’s hand and started after their Trial brothers.

As they approached, he gestured to the steep cliffs. “Before the Last War, two great stairways led to the gate. Light mages and warders escorted those seeking safety on the long climb. When the Aithourians laid siege to the temple, my father demolished the stairs.”

The waterfall soon drowned out their voices and sprayed them with cool mist. Lio ran his hand over a pile of stones that might still hold pieces of the fallen stairways. He and Cassia put the hounds safely in a stay at the foot of the cliffs before beginning the treacherous ascent.

The Black Roses levitated over the footsteps of generations of Sanctuary seekers. Their immortal power carried them up to the place where the first Hesperines had walked when they were alive.

They landed on a broad ledge to one side of the waterfall. There had once been a bridge across to the opposite ledge, Lio recalled. Now, just a precipice of white water. He helped Cassia step the hounds carefully up to the ledge.

“Dame isn’t nervous around the Hesperine magic here,” Cassia observed. “She adjusted much faster than Knight.”

Lio gave his familiar a pat. “Giving her my blood seems to have only positive effects thus far.”

Cassia ran her hand through Knight’s ruff. Lio knew she was wondering, hoping, that this could change her liegehound’s future, too.

Lyros hefted his spear. “Let’s keep an eye out in case any heart hunters choose tonight to vandalize the ruins. They would love to pick off some Hesperine pilgrims while they’re at it.”

“I’ll vandalize their faces.” Mak’s belt-chain chimed as he drew the Star of Orthros.

“Ckuundat,” Cassia said, and Knight came to attention.

Lio tried the command with Dame. Suddenly his sweet, timid familiar was standing alert, the fur rising on her back. She positioned herself in front of him.

He used Final Word for a walking stick as they half levitated, half scrambled up to level ground above the mouth of the waterfall. “The gate would have been here.”

He started forward. Magic washed over him, as if a libation still dripped in the air. The others froze beside him, not even breathing.

“This was the boundary of the Sanctuary ward,” Mak said.

Together, they crossed the threshold where Anastasios and Alea had made their last stand.

They walked out over the floor of the courtyard where Sanctuary Roses had once grown and the mages of Hespera had welcomed all who sought refuge here. Smooth white stones, begrimed with ash, still paved the ground. No snow touched the perfect circle, as if the fire that had razed the temple had marked it forever.

They ventured further into the ruins, where bas reliefs lay defaced. Heart hunters had scrawled obscenities on every pillar stub and scrap of wall. Mak blasted each one with a cleaning spell as they passed.

The temple complex ran deep between the two peaks, in some places carved right out of the surrounding stone. Cassia paused below a rocky overhang where a long wing cut into the mountainside. “I think there’s some sort of magic this way. Does anyone else feel it?”

Mak and Lyros shook their heads.

Lio reached with his senses again. Something familiar tugged at his chest. “You’re right.”

As they followed her, the impression grew stronger. Pain. Decision. Survival. By the time she halted, Lio was choked with emotion he didn’t understand. There was nothing here but a window, tunneling through the thick walls to grant a glimpse of the stars beyond.

“Why does this place feel so important?” Cassia’s voice was thick.

Mak exchanged a glance with Lyros. “We can feel the emotion here too, but it’s not affecting us as much.”

“Do we have any idea what part of the temple this was?” Lyros asked.

Lio knelt and ran the dust of the ages through his fingers, and the power that stirred brought to mind a familiar hand. “My father’s magic lingers in this stone.”

“Do you think…” Cassia hesitated. “Could this have been the Healing Sanctuary?”

“Yes.” Lio’s throat was tight. “Where they brought him when he was dying.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Where Anastasios Gifted him.”

Lio ran a hand down his face. This was the place where his father had become the first Hesperine to receive the Gift. Where their bloodline had begun. The reason he and Cassia stood here tonight, immortal.

“Goddess bless,” Lyros said.

Mak let out a low whistle. “I see what Uncle Apollon meant when he said his magic was destructive during his Gifting. Do you think all this stone magic is from when he demolished the room, or when he rebuilt it afterward?”

Cassia laughed, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know. But perhaps I should cast my own destructive spells here.”

Lio stood and pulled her to him for a moment. “Not yet. There’s one more place we should try to find.”

They wandered past rows of pillars that still stood, broken but defiant, and under pale archways blackened by fire. Their persecutors had not been able to erase this monument of Sanctuary magic from the face of the earth.

Walking among the ghosts of emotion that still soaked this ground, Lio had expected to feel horror. But this place was haunted by a more powerful spirit.

“I feel hope here,” Cassia said.

Deep in the cup between the two mountains, they found what Lio had sought. The temple dome lay where it had collapsed, a wide ring of black rubble. They levitated to the rim and looked down through what had been a round opening at the top of the dome.

For thousands of years, the moons had shone through this skylight into the Ritual Sanctuary. For generations, the temple leaders had led blood rites here, ending with Anastasios and Alea. The great statue of Hespera that had looked on was long gone. All that remained of the most sacred place in the temple was this crater.

Aithouros had burned a glyph of Anthros on the floor in the statue’s place. But Hesperines had survived, and his violation had not. A Rose of Hespera was now etched deep in the floor, glimmering with light magic and stained with royal blood. A ward lay over it like a seal.

Mak let out a breath. “It’s just like the Blood Errant said. They came here and made a Ritual circle.”

“Here,” Lio said. “This is the most powerful place for your spell, my Grace.”

She leapt down and landed in the center of the Goddess’s petals and thorns. “I will make roses grow here again.”

Cassia held their avowalcup tightly to still her trembling hands. The countless libations made here resonated in her blood, and beneath Hespera’s sacred ground, the Lustra endured. All the magic in this place felt poised in the chalice, ready to overflow when Cassia chose. She could only hope what she unleashed would not destroy what was left of Hagia Boreia.

Lyros appeared above her on the rim of the skylight and gave her an encouraging smile. “My wards are fortified for any and all chaos.”

Mak took his position across the dome from his Grace, composed in a warrior’s stance, but his aura jittered with nerves. “My spell is as ready as it will ever be. All it should take is getting Rosethorn back from Miranda. If it works.”

“It will work.” Lio gave Mak and encouraging clap on the shoulder before levitating down to join Cassia inside the Ritual circle. Dame peered uncertainly over the edge.

“Het,” Lio called up to her. “You don’t want to be in here when the magic starts. Stay up there and fight with Lyros and Mak. Ah, barda acklii?”

With obvious reluctance, Dame stayed by Lyros. He gave her a rueful look, then reached out gingerly to stroke her fur. She wagged her tail.

“See there?” Lio said. “You’re friend, not food.”

“Fine, as long as she doesn’t lick me with dead rabbit slobber.”

A smile tugging at her mouth, Cassia snapped her fingers and motioned her hound over to Mak. “Knight, barda!”

As he took up his guard stance, Mak scratched under his chin. “Hullo, Knight. Let’s make some teeth marks on the Gift Collector, shall we?”

Lio rested his hands on Cassia’s shoulders. What do you need me to do for you, my Grace?

She knew their chances of survival against the kind of power Kallikrates could wield through Miranda. Stay alive. Let us protect you while you attack Miranda’s mind.

He pulled her into his arms. You won’t lose me.

You can’t promise me that, just as Azad couldn’t promise it to Neana.

We can promise each other that we will go down together.

She clung to him, tears burning at the back of her eyes. Yes. I swear to you. I will be at your side and never let you fight your last battle alone.

And I will never leave you to waste away without me.

He stepped back. Somehow, he was smiling, and the sight made her heart ache.

She lifted the chalice, and he bit his wrist, making a generous libation into the cup. Cassia braced herself and opened her own vein to add her blood to his.

The petals and thorns of Hespera’s Rose glowed with crimson light, and magic swelled inexorably up from the stones. Down from the stars. Cassia drew in a deep breath, and she tasted blood and roses in the back of her mouth.

“Hespera’s Sanctuary,” Lio breathed.

Cassia let her magic run through the temple, digging deep roots and drawing in blood spells long-untended. As potential stirred to life beneath the ruins, she gasped. “It’s working.”

She eased her spell out of the ground. Seedlings lifted their little green faces from between the broken stones around the Ritual circle. Magic throbbed through their veins and hers as they grew into mighty vines and flowered.

The spell felt so right. Two powers, wound into one whole. This was her magic, a perfect Union.

Yes,her Grace affirmed. Your power…it’s so beautiful, Cassia.

She swept her spell out from the Ritual circle, and everywhere it touched, black roses bloomed. She let them twine around the pillars and fill the breaches in the walls. Following them in her mind, she stretched all the way to the gate and conjured a barrier of thorns where the Sanctuary ward had once stood.

The vines grew together, closing the final gap in her defenses, just as an aura loomed before the temple. Familiar, yet far more powerful than ever before.

Cassia gripped Lio’s hand. “She’s here.”