Blood Feast: A Fantasy Romance

Lios Vow

LIO”S VOW

A spell boomed fromthe direction of the gate, and the impact made the ground tremble under Lio’s feet. Standing behind Cassia, he wrapped one arm around her and planted Final Word to steady them against the next barrage.

She raised their avowal cup in both hands, and black rose petals swirled around them on an arcane current. “It will take more than a few lightning spells to demolish my roses this time.”

Mak let out a whoop. “I can feel the blood magic they’re pulling out of the temple. It’s almost as if the Sanctuary wards have come back to life.”

“That will give even Kallikrates a challenge.” Lyros raised his voice triumphantly over the crash of war magic.

“I’ll make her pay for every step she takes toward us.” Cassia leaned back against Lio. “Will this buy you enough time?”

“Yes.” He honed in on Miranda’s tainted mind.

While she fought her way through the fortifications, he would break down her mental defenses. And he would not stop until he knew what lay within the doors under Solorum Palace.

Standing in the whorl of Cassia’s magic, Lio drew his own power out of himself. His surroundings faded from his awareness as he turned inward. A distant crack of lightning reached his ears, but all he could smell was the death that shrouded Miranda’s thoughts.

The structure of her dream wards was forever imprinted on his thoughts, an arcane memory forged the night the Lustra had helped him defeat her. He had no letting site to empower him tonight, but he had his knowledge of her mind.

Calling on the pure blood magic in his veins, he navigated through the poisonous outer layers of her thoughts. Her resistance burned cold through his head, weighing on his chest, and a shudder wracked him.

He knew better than to force his way through. He must find his way through the befuddling shapes of her dream wards to her innermost weaknesses.

He wove through clouds of smoke, evading deceptive mirrors. Reflections of Miranda’s past flashed at him. A crow coming to life in her hands. A human dying on her blade.

Then he saw Cassia’s face, twisted with pain, her mouth open in a scream of despair. Rage hardened his power. He struck, and the smoke shattered, slicing through his mind.

He stood bleeding in the orchard at Paradum. In this mindscape, the trees were not dead, but heavy with apples. A crow winged between the branches overhead.

“You won’t find this duel as easy as the last one,” Miranda said.

Lio spun to face her. He tightened his hands around Final Word, unsure if he clutched his real staff or a vision of it that embodied their mental battle.

Miranda held the digging fork on which Skleros had met his end. “Every time you break me, I become stronger. That’s the choice I made here, while Cassia chose the wrong side.”

Lio stood his ground. “I’m not here to break you.”

“You’ll have to, if you want to know what’s behind the doors.”

Let her think that was all he had in store for her. She didn’t suspect there was something he wanted even more than her secrets, and she couldn’t imagine how long and hard he would fight to get it.

He made a mighty swing with his staff. Beyond the vision of the orchard, her mind strained against the force of his blow.

She blocked him with the digging fork. Lio felt the impact through every inch of his ephemeral shape, as if his body might dissolve into the pain in his mind.

Miranda turned and raced through the orchard toward the castle.

“You can’t run any longer!” Lio shouted. “This ends here.”

He tried to levitate after her, but the very air held him down. By sheer force of Will, he broke through the resistance and managed to run toward her.

He swept Final Word out before him, catching her in the ankles. She went down, and he aimed the butt of his staff at her head.

She rolled, springing to her feet. With a parry, she shoved his staff away from her. Her counterattack was as fast as thought. The tines of her fork slashed Lio’s side as he dodged.

Gasping, he hunched over and pressed a hand to his bleeding abdomen. Through a haze of red over his sight, he saw Miranda flee again.

Lio! came Cassia’s worried mind voice. Are you all right?

Is my physical form bleeding?

No. She hasn’t reached the dome yet. Your body is safe behind my roses.

Then I’m better than all right. Gritting his teeth, he pushed through the pain of the mental wound and ran ahead.

He caught up to Miranda in the shadow of the inner wall. She disappeared through solid stone, leaving him outside her defenses.

Lio glanced left and right along the wall. No thorns grew on it, as they did in reality.

And yet, Cassia’s stolen magic was here, too. He had to believe that her power, even held captive by Miranda, would know him. The Silvicultrix’s mate.

Cassia.

Even as he thought her name, their Grace Union drew her nearer, in defiance of any dream wards. Her presence filled his mind, and he felt an echo in Miranda’s. Could that be Cassia’s lost magic responding to her nearness?

What do you need, my Grace? Cassia asked.

Just stay in Union with me. Can you do that and cast your spell?

Yes. Our nearness only seems to make my spell stronger.

Lio turned a savage smile on the walls of Paradum. His theory was correct.

Holding his connection to Cassia, he tore his hand with his fangs and spread his blood on the ground. Everywhere the drops fell, black roses sprang up, scaling the wall. With Final Word on his back, he took hold of one vine and climbed. Thorns tore at his hands, but his blood only strengthened the roses.

He made it over the top of the wall and leapt down into Cassia’s garden to find Miranda standing guard. Shock crossed her face. She hurled her fork at him, and it shot toward his heart like a spear.

He blocked the gardening tool midair with his staff and sent it spinning away into the grasp of the roses. As he advanced on Miranda, she drew her relic blade. She was getting desperate.

Lio swung again. She disappeared, and his staff passed through empty air. She popped back into sight at close range, stabbing upward.

Before her dagger could slide under his breastbone, he fell backward, pulling his staff back with him. He drove the end of Final Word toward her gut, forcing her to retreat. Lio sprang to his feet again.

He battled his way forward, the shape of her mind bending around him with every blow from his staff. The walls crumbled and rebuilt, and each time, thorned vines grew thicker over the stone. Where his feet disrupted the soil, plants grew, then withered, then grew again, roses fighting with poisonous weeds. Miranda fought him tooth and nail with a deadly aim and agile dodges. But he was gaining ground.

He rammed Final Word into her breastplate, right upon the Eye of Hypnos written in his Grace’s blood. The blow hurled Miranda backward through the broken wall into Cassia’s sickroom.

The Overseer landed on her back on the table where she had tortured his Grace. The black roses grew eagerly over her wrists and ankles, tying her down. She fisted her hand around the hilt of her dagger and screamed a curse at Lio.

He came to stand over her. “Did you think Cassia’s magic would choose your side, now that I’m here to rescue her power?”

“That’s what you’re really after?” Miranda laughed. “You’re even more of a fool that I thought. Hesperines can’t cast essential displacement anymore than you can be subjected to it. You’ll never reclaim what I took from her.”

“I just scaled your defenses with the help of her magic. Her power has turned traitor to you.”

“That magic isn’t hers anymore. It’s mine.”

He circled the table. “Then why haven’t we seen you use it in battle? You throw fire, lightning, warding, even thelemancy at us. But no Lustra magic.”

“I have more than enough mind magic to defeat you.”

“Cassia’s power barely obeys you, doesn’t it? You’re holding it back as you wait to push it through her foci, hoping it doesn’t escape you before you can use it to destroy the last node.”

“Her roses are falling to my war magic while we play this game. When I seize her third focus, it will be the end of the world as you know it.”

“Kallikrates himself said it took him centuries to learn how to displace Lustra magic. He admitted he holds onto Cassia’s by a thread. If he so much as touches her mind, her power will return to her.” Lio leaned closer, his fangs sliding down. “I am the only one who will ever touch her mind again.”

He watched as realization dawned in Miranda’s eyes, and she understood what he was about to try. After the miles and the bloodshed and the regret it had taken to get to this moment, he savored it.

“This is the flaw in your plan,” he said. “Me.”

“It won’t work,” Miranda spat. “Whatever mental link you think you can forge between Cassia and me, it’s not enough. You understand nothing of essential displacement.”

He was educated enough in the arcane to know she was right. But he had more than thelemancy to draw upon. What Kallikrates and his Overseers would never understand was Grace Union.

“Watch me,” Lio said.

Miranda’s gaze hardened into another’s, and she said in the Collector’s voice, “If you try to take her power from me, you will pay my price.”

Lio gathered the full force of his mind magic. “I won’t have to try.”

The Lustra fed Cassiaand her roses more magic ripe with the temple’s spells. As the channeling raged through her, Lio’s grip around her waist anchored her to earth. She laid her arm over his and wound their fingers together.

Her strongest wall of thorns still stood before the dome, but beyond it, another line of her defenses succumbed to Miranda’s fire spells. The odor of burning roses took her back to the shrine where she and Lio had fallen in love, which was now scorched earth. The night Hagia Boreia had been razed, the air must have been so thick with that stench that no one could breathe.

“You will not destroy another Sanctuary as long as I stand!” Cassia screamed at the unseen enemy. She sent out another blast of her power, regrowing the thorns that had just fallen. Above her, Mak and Lyros cheered.

But the necromancer’s aura loomed, far too close to the final bastion and more powerful than she had been at the gates.

“Can you feel that?” Cassia shouted to Mak and Lyros.

“Kallikrates’s presence,” Mak confirmed.

Lio, Cassia warned. Kallikrates is here.

I know.

Miranda is about to break through the roses with him. Was it enough time?

His knuckles were white where he held his staff. Yes. I have her right where I want her.

They were so close. Cassia steadied their avowal cup in her hand. “Lio is ready!”

“Our wards are braced for the breach,” Lyros called back.

She sensed her regrown barrier wither. No more time to shore it up now. She channeled all her determination into her final thorn wall, fortifying their last line of defense.

I will need you. Lio said. Just like when we fought Kallikrates together at Rose House, and again at Paradum.

I’m with you, my Grace.

Are you willing to channel more magic than you ever have before?

No holding back now. She opened herself to another wave of power and let it shudder through her. Somehow, she also felt stronger than at the start of the battle. How could that be?

She felt Lio smile.

Searing heat ate at her arcane senses, and she gritted her teeth. Smoke drifted between the tight weave of her vines. Then a glimmer of light.

She flooded the thorns with her dual magic. War magic fired back. She felt the breach grow, inch by agonizing inch, although she couldn’t see it from her and Lio’s position inside the dome. Mak and Lyros’s wards enfolded them, an unseen darkness gathering against the glare of fire magic.

The power of a dozen fire mages exploded through Cassia’s thorn wall. Hot air gusted in. Stone cracked. A hole exploded in the dome in front of her, spraying her and Lio with fragments of stone.

Miranda faced them through the smoke, a weed hook in one hand and a long mattock in the other.

Did she think turning Cassia’s tools against her would frighten her? It didn’t. But the sight of her pendant around Miranda’s neck, resting over her own blood on the Gift Collector’s leather breastplate, filled Cassia with a deep, instinctual rage.

Hold onto that beautiful anger,Lio said. It has always been part of your power.

Her fury took shape as rose vines that clawed out of the ground at Miranda’s feet and bound her ankles. Mak and Lyros stepped, flanking her. The hounds descended from the dome in a single leap.

Rooted the spot, Miranda couldn’t evade them. She twisted where she stood to hook her blade around Lyros’s spearhead and parry Night’s Aim. With her mattock, she blocked the Star of Orthros. Lightning sizzled at her feet, destroying the roses and forcing the hounds back.

Cassia snapped more roses around Miranda’s limbs. They burned to ash the instant they touched her.

She dipped her fingers into her and Lio’s blood, ready to pour more power from their avowal cup.

Mak and Lyros’s Union Stones carved red paths in the air as they attacked again in tandem. Lio’s staff pulsed slowly with the same signal. Wait.

Cassia held the wild power inside herself. Time to trust her Trial brothers. They had to engage Miranda at close range, if Mak had any hope of wresting Rosethorn from her.

Without warning, another wave of fire rolled toward Cassia. She raised thickets of black roses to fill the gap in the dome, like stakes on the field of a siege. The fire burned through two of them, but fell to embers before the third. She had to focus on defending their mind mage now.

Her thorn walls rose and fell before the fire and lightning that rained down. She stopped breathing the choking air. The dark shapes of the hounds leapt and circled in the chaos, harrying her into the reach of Mak and Lyros’s weapons. More fire spells rolled off the shadows on their skin as bright adamas cut at Miranda.

A crack of lightning split the ground and forced Mak into the air. As he levitated, Miranda sliced her weed hook toward Lyros’s neck.

He leaned backward with Hesperine balance. The curved blade swept past his face. Then he lunged forward and drove his spear into the weak point between Miranda’s breastplate and shoulder armor.

Her blood scented the air, but she didn’t even scream. With his spear buried in her armpit, Lyros wrenched a blade out of a scabbard at her belt.

Merely an ordinary knife. He used it to slice off her belt. It fell to the ground, scattering weapons. An awl rolled away, and a billhook landed at Cassia’s feet.

“You think I would make it so easy for you?” the Collector asked.

Cassia’s heart picked up pace. What if Miranda hadn’t brought the dagger with her at all?

We can still defeat her. Lio’s reassurance filled their Union. He was the calm in the center of the storm. Somehow, he was utterly confident in this moment. That certainty took root in Cassia’s heart and became her own.

Mak descended in a blur. His morning star struck Miranda’s arm. Adamas thumped on flesh and leather, and bone snapped. He tore off the scabbard under her sleeve, and his hand came away bloody. He hurled another mundane dagger to the ground.

Miranda popped out of sight, then reappeared, no longer surrounded by the warriors and dogs. Before Cassia’s eyes, the bone protruding from the necromancer’s arm righted itself, and her flesh knit back together.

Cassia swore. Miranda was still abusing Pakhne’s healing power for her own gain.

The dogs raced toward her. Mak and Lyros took to the air and lunged down on her from above. The air around Miranda rippled, as if with heat.

A louder boom deafened Cassia. In silence, the warped air blasted out from Miranda. Mak, Lyros, and the hounds went flying, propelled in different directions. Then the spell rolled over the dome.

No heat touched Cassia’s skin, but a tremor suddenly made it through the wards. Her quick levitation spell wasn’t enough to keep her from toppling to the ground with Lio.

Their libation spilled from the chalice across Hespera’s Rose. Lio lifted his head, a trail of blood sliding from his ear. His eyes focused on Cassia for an instant, and the ferocity in his gaze stole her breath.

Blood filled the lines of the petals and thorns. More magic spilled up from the Lustra, from the temple, a flood of growth and darkness. It seemed limitless.

But as another explosion rocked the dome, Cassia feared even this much power would not be enough.

Lio drew Cassia stilldeeper into their Grace Union. The roses snaked farther over Miranda’s body, binding her more securely to the table. Thorns pricked her skin and drew blood.

But the cry that came from her lips was the Collector’s. That one small betrayal of pain told Lio that he and Cassia had just defied history. For the first time, they had hurt an Old Master. But not for the last time.

Lio would cause him so much more pain before this was over. “You never should have touched my queen.”

At that word, Cassia appeared, standing across the table from him. “Lio, what are you doing?”

“Taking something even more important than secrets.”

Miranda strained against the roses. Flipping her relic blade in her hand, she tried to saw at the vines around her wrist. But neither she nor the Collector gave any sign they had heard Cassia. Just as in their past duels with Kallikrates, Grace Union was beyond his power.

The roses sprouted new branches and reached toward Cassia. She stared at them, and a hint of wonder dawned through her fear. “You’re challenging him for my plant magic? Here? Now?”

“I told you I would make you as powerful as you were meant to be. Tonight is another step toward fulfilling that promise.”

“I begged you not to put yourself in any more danger in Miranda’s mind!”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t ache to feel your magic inside you. All of your magic. If you can do that, I will let it go.”

The longing was stark on her face. All her protests and defenses, gone. When she spoke, it was not a timid whisper. It was the declaration he wanted to hear from her, again and again, as long as they both lived.

“I want it.”

He held out his hand to her. “Then I will fight for it.”

She gripped his hand. A current of magic opened between them, flowing from his heart to travel along his arm.

“Your foolish experiments will destroy you,” the Collector warned.

“Not before we destroy you,” Lio said.

As he unleashed all the thelemancy he possessed upon Miranda’s mind, he tapped into the depths of his Grace Union with Cassia. A conduit opened between them with him as the gate.

Her plant magic knew him. He gasped as it spread into the arcane paths inside him. All her wildness. All her yearning to be free. This was the true extent of his Grace’s power.

The sickroom stretched toward Miranda, as if a great mouth were sucking at the entire world. Emptiness split the seams of her mindscape. Pain sank deep into Lio’s chest and pulled. He leaned on Final Word to keep from falling to his knees.

For the second time in his life, he teetered on the edge of Kallikrates’s maw. But Grace Union kept him from being consumed.

Cassia’s magic reached for her through him. He gave himself over to it, the living link to its Silvicultrix.

Miranda screamed. Vines snaked out of her mouth, coated in blood. Her body bowed with the force of the magic that poured out of her. The Collector’s pull slammed her back onto the table and tore from Lio’s spine out the front of his chest. He staggered toward Miranda as she choked.

His heart labored, and his chest felt like it was splitting in two. But he would forget the pain. What he would remember forever was Cassia in this moment.

She held out her arms and watched her black roses wind lovingly around her body. The thorned vines bloomed with more impossible colors. Bright moonflowers and brilliant yellow cassia. Pure Sanctuary Roses and rich purple betony. At last, soft, crimson Roses of Hespera. Their roses caressed her throat and spun into her hair, growing around his braid.

She looked into his eyes, hers blazing green with magic. Her lips parted, and she drew a deep gasp. On that breath, rose petals spun into her.

Joy unfurled in their bond. Pure. Untouched. An empty place inside her filled. As he felt that reunion, a piece of himself fitted into place, too.

Tears streamed down her face. “Thank you.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I know.”

Miranda fell silent. The blood on her breastplate faded, line by line, until the Eye of Hypnos was gone. Her head rolled to the side, her lips moving in wordless horror. At last she rasped, “What have you done?”

Kallikrates’s rage echoed out of the void, aiming for Lio.

Cassia’s fangs flashed and held up her palms. They were covered in blood. Crimson tendrils flowed from her hands and spiraled around Lio, then splashed to the ground in a ring at his feet. The Collector’s pull on his chest snapped.

She was suddenly beside him, and he sagged in her arms, clutching his staff for support.

“You have to get out of here,” she cried. “He wants his revenge.”

“Not until we learn what’s locked inside the doors.”

Thunder rumbled outside the castle, and a flash of lightning lit the room.

“Go,” Lio said. “Defend our temple.”

“My magic isn’t inside Miranda now. It won’t come to your aid. I can’t abandon you here.”

“We won’t survive her war magic unless you wield all your power against her. We need you to fight with Mak and Lyros.”

“Call me,” Cassia demanded. “If you need me, pull me into our Union again.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. “I will hold you right here.”

The vision of her vanished, but her presence was still with him. And her magic was with her, where it had always belonged.

Lio grasped his medallion and struck the ground with his staff. The Lustra portal opened for him, and he and Miranda fell deeper into her mind.