26 Nights After Winter Solstice
CHASING GHOSTS
As Cassia saddled herhorse, she felt like their history at the lighthouse was repeating itself. The Black Roses were once again about to leave a Lustra refuge and face a possible ambush.
She felt trapped in the moves playing out on the game board. Were they doomed to dance to the patterns Kallikrates dictated until the doors came crashing down?
“Here.” Mak handed her a morsel of dried apple. “You and Freckles both need to sweeten your moods.”
With a rueful smile, she gave the fruit to the mare. Freckles looked no less grumpy afterward, but Cassia found comfort in watching her horse enjoy the treat. “How is Bear after his fall at Roborra?”
Mak examined his horse’s leg. “The sprain has healed, but I’ll give him one more dose of my blood before we ride out, as a precaution.”
He pricked his hand with one fang, then put a slice of the dried apple on his palm and held it out to Bear. The horse ate up the treat, swallowing Mak’s blood along with it.
Cassia watched with interest. “So that’s how you care for him as your familiar?”
Mak nodded. “You know that animals can’t receive the Gift? When they drink our blood, they don’t transform like humans do.”
“Yes, Lio explained that to me. He mentioned that our blood gives them healing and longevity.”
“Right. It maintains them in the peak of health and prevents aging. Helps them recover faster from injuries, too, although there are still times when they need a healer.”
“So Bear really is immortal.”
Mak stroked the stallion’s head. “He’s stuck with me forever, as long as I keep giving him my blood every now and then.”
“If you stopped…”
“He’d start aging again and have the normal lifespan of an Orthros Warmblood, which is still quite long.”
Cassia fed Freckles another piece of apple. “Can a Hesperine have more than one familiar?”
“Certainly. Uncle Apollon gives his blood to his horse, Patriarch, although the familiar he relies on most during spellcasting is his lion.”
The mention of her Grace-father made Cassia’s heart ache.
Mak winced. “Thorns, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind either of us of home.”
“It’s all right. If I ever stopped remembering, I’d be far more worried about myself. Tell me about casting spells with familiars.”
Lio groaned. “Don’t ask him that. We’ll be here for hours while he talks about how the Stand uses horses in warding drills.”
Mak put on an expression of affront. “You talk my ear off about your research treatises. The least you can do is not fall into Slumber when I’m talking about horse wards.”
“That’s fair,” Cassia said.
Lio put his hand to his heart. “My Grace, the betrayal! Are you taking his side?”
She levitated to place a quick kiss on Lio’s mouth. “I’m saying I find both your research treatises and his horse wards very interesting.”
His mouth curved in a smile. “Clever words, Ambassador.”
Mak laughed, and home felt a little less far away. They might be riding into more death traps, but by Hespera’s Cup, at least they could still find ways to laugh with each other.
Lyros, however, seemed in no mood to join in. He came around to each of them, checking to make sure they had packed everything, then grilled them on the tactics they had practiced for the past few nights. She thought he might keep them there a week longer, but at last he seemed satisfied enough with their preparations.
He drew his spear. “Wards and veils up.”
“Here we go again,” said Mak.
Lio lowered his staff, once more holding it like a knight’s lance. “Ready.”
“Ckundaat,”Cassia said to Knight.
The door of the keep forced them to ride single file. Cassia held her breath as Lyros went first out of Ebah’s spell. The rest of them charged after him and leapt down the steps.
They landed in the muddy snow. There was no sound except the call of the hawk hunting in the twilight.
“The thelemantic wards haven’t been disturbed,” Lyros said.
Mak turned Bear in a circle. “They know we’re here. Why haven’t they made their move?”
Lio’s gaze, sharp with magic, scanned the walls. “Perhaps they are here, but we haven’t detected each other yet.”
Knight made a quick patrol around the courtyard, but he sounded no alarms.
“They might be choosing a different battleground,” Cassia guessed.
“We can hope,” Lyros said. “Let’s step.”
She saw their destination in Lio’s mind, a remote area in the domain of Patria where they had searched for a letting site that summer. They stepped and left their errant Sanctuary behind.
Clouds obscured the stars, but Cassia’s eyes adjusted quickly. She saw no one and heard no heartbeats in the rolling fields. Lio’s magic swept the area, a veiled probe she could only sense in their Grace Union.
“There’s a patrol headed this way, about half an hour to the north,” Lio said. “No one else.”
“Whose patrol?” Lyros asked.
“Rudhira and Solia’s. One Hesperine and six mortals. We’re clear to ride south and search for the tunnel entrance where Kalos was shot.”
Lyros turned General southward, and they all set off with him. As they rode, Cassia opened her senses to the Lustra. She sucked in a breath.
“What is it?” Lio asked.
“Now I can feel how powerful the magic is here. The letting site feels like…a nearby storm. And its rain is running all through the ground.”
“The passages,” Lio said.
She nodded. “It won’t be difficult for me to sense the entrances, but you’ll have to open them with your medallion.”
He reached out and touched her hand. “I’m certain you could open them without your pendant. But you’re wise not to cast any spells this close to the Charge.”
She kept her magic in check and let the Lustra guide them. The Warmbloods, already familiar with this territory, required little direction. But Knight kept stopping, his nose to the wind. She could only imagine how confusing it was for him now that their allies were the threat they must avoid. She called for him to come, and he stayed by her side this time.
After half an hour, Cassia spotted Castra Patria in the distance. “With Rudhira and Solia’s patrols so near, that must mean they still hold the fortress.”
“No fire coming from the walls tonight,” Mak observed. “Hopefully that means a lull in the siege and a respite for your sister’s forces.”
Lyros said darkly, “That also means the Charge is not distracted by the enemy, so they’re more likely to detect us.”
It hurt to be this close to Solia with no hope of seeing her. They would be lucky if they managed to ride past without getting arrested. Trying to infiltrate the castle would be madness.
Lio sent her comfort through their bond. He had always been her greatest solace when missing her sister. She could bear anything as long as she was with her Grace.
Lyros cast another wary glance at the fortress. “How much farther?”
“I sense another portal up ahead. I think it’s the one we’re looking for.” She showed Lio the passage’s route in her mind’s eye.
He nodded. “That should be the one where I found Rudhira healing Kalos.”
Lyros looked from him to Cassia. “Can you tell if there’s anyone inside?”
They both shook their heads.
Lyros’s aura was grim. “We’ll have to keep our veils up and hope no surprises come out of the portal.”
The glowing symbol in the hillside came into view, and they guided their horses cautiously toward it.
Mak frowned. “I can’t sense whether there are auras inside either. The magic running through those passages confuses the senses.”
“How much time do we have before that patrol behind us catches up?” Lyros asked.
“A quarter of an hour,” Lio answered.
“We’d better find Miranda’s trail fast, then,” Lyros said.
Cassia scanned the surrounding hills. “Any ideas where she was standing when she shot Kalos? We need to get Knight as close as possible to her scent.”
“We can easily narrow it down,” Mak replied. “An apple wood arrow shot from one of the standard issue bows Lucis’s soldiers use, possibly enhanced with malign enchantments…”
“You’ve been researching archery, too.” Lio sounded impressed. “Did you have in mind to craft bows next?”
Mak shrugged. “Not at the forge. The archery research was in case Rudhira or other woodworkers wanted to try crafting bows for the Charge.”
“We’ll follow you.” Lyros gave Mak a look like he was holding back more he wanted to say.
Mak turned Bear and set off across the dry winter grass, guiding them to a slope some distance from the portal. They had just reached the crest of the hill when an impression came to Cassia through the Lustra. The hint of a Hesperine aura.
She drew Freckles to an abrupt halt and looked back the way they had come.
“What is it?” Lio pulled Moonflower near to her.
“The Lustra is warning me,” she replied quietly. “I think there’s a veiled Hesperine near the portal where we were standing a moment ago.”
“How did the patrol get here so fast?” Lyros demanded.
Lio shook his head. “I can still sense the patrol a quarter of an hour away. This is someone else.”
“Can you tell who it is?” she asked.
“I can’t feel their mind at all. Without your magic, we would never have known they’re here.”
“Whose veils can hold against your thelemancy?” she asked desperately, knowing it was a short list.
“The Queens’ most powerful scion,” was Lio’s first guess.
“You have to step us away, now!”
Lio set his jaw. “No. See if Knight can catch Miranda’s scent.”
“If that’s really Rudhira, will your veils hold?” Lyros pressed.
“Nike taught me her experimental veils, remember? She evaded him for nearly a hundred years with those spells, and so will we, if that’s what it takes.”
Cassia wasted no time leaping down from Freckles. She called Knight to attention. “Ckuundat!”
For once, it was an advantage that Miranda had painted her breastplate with Cassia’s blood. They could only hope the difference between the human blood on the armor and her Hesperine blood didn’t confuse Knight.
Cassia bit her hand and held it out to her hound, ready to snatch it back if he tried to do more than smell it. She longed to know what would happen if he licked it, and yet she was afraid to find out. She couldn’t risk harming him.
He breathed sharply and took a step back.
Her heart sank. Clearly, she needn’t have worried about him being too eager to taste it.
The Lustra hummed another warning. Cassia’s pulse pounded. “He’s coming closer.”
Lyros vibrated with frustration while Mak cursed vocally.
Lio’s eyes fell shut, and shadows gathered around him and his mount. “Keep trying.”
“Soor,” Cassia soothed her hound. “It’s all right, darling. I know it seems like I’m hurt and my blood smells different now. But I’m safe, and I’m still your kaetlii.”
Knight moved closer, stretching out his neck and flaring his nostrils.
The Lustra tracked the veiled Hesperine’s passage. Their pursuer was crossing the distance with alarming speed. The shadows spilled out from Lio to encircle them all.
Cassia stood still in front of Knight, her blood drying on her hand, her heart in her throat.
“Seckkaa!” she tried at last.
He put his nose to the ground. The veiled Hesperine started up the hill.
“My spells will hold.” Lio’s voice echoed with thelemancy. He was so wrapped in darkness, he looked liked a specter riding a wraith.
Knight sniffed in circles. Cassia’s nerves frayed with each moment they stood in the open with a thin veil of darkness between them and the powerful immortal closing in on them.
As her Grace sat locked in a covert duel with a fellow Hesperine, the air became so saturated with magic that Cassia thought she would drown.
“Seckkaa, Knight!” she commanded again, uselessly.
Her hound returned to her feet, his tail drooping.
“There’s no trail here,” Cassia ground out.
Just as their pursuer crested the hill, a Hesperine step swept her away, and their surroundings disappeared.
She and Knight and Freckles landed back where they had begun the search, with Lio, Mak, and Lyros still surrounding them on horseback.
She reached up and took Lio’s hand. “How much longer can you keep this up?”
His blue eyes glowed down at her from within the darkness of his power. “Long enough to make sure we aren’t followed.”
Lyros gazed at Mak. “How sure are you that was the hill she shot from?”
Mak hesitated.
“I need you to be honest,” Lyros said.
Mak replied at last. “She shot from that hill.”
General danced uneasily under Lyros. “You didn’t learn this much about archery from books.”
Mak sighed. “I’ve been picking up some things here and there. From the Ashes and the Tenebrans.”
Lyros dragged a hand through his hair. “Bleeding thorns, Mak.”
Mak’s brows drew together in his most stubborn expression. “I know I should have told you sooner. But I’m telling you now.”
“We’ll have time for confessions later,” Cassia cut in. “We need to keep searching for Miranda.”
“Two more attempts,” Lyros declared. “If we can’t find her trail after that, we go back to the tower. We can’t risk more than that if Rudhira is looking for us. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Lio said.
“We only need one more attempt.” Cassia levitated into her saddle again. “There’s one place in Patria where we know without a doubt that we can find evidence of Miranda.”
“No,” Lio replied immediately.
“Yes.” Cassia turned her horse toward the northeast. “The place we last saw her—Paradum.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Lio protested. “Rudhira surely has it under guard. For all we know, our side of the war has turned it into a garrison for troops, and it’s overflowing with Chargers or holy knights or—”
Cassia drew her dagger. “Then they’re squatting in my keep. The letting site is mine. I will get us in and out.”
Lio closed his mouth. A slow smile spread across his face. “Well, I cannot argue with that. Lead on, Silvicultrix.”
Cassia half expected tofind Paradum in ruins. During her Gifting visions, she and Lio had watched her inner conflicts tear the place stone from stone. But outside that dream world, the small castle still stood, locked tight and eerily quiet. As the Black Roses approached on their horses, not even a night insect chirped.
All that had been destroyed was the letting site. The Lustra magic leeching from its wounds reached out, trying to catch Cassia. She held herself back, her grip firm on her dagger to aid her self-control.
When they halted their mounts a safe distance from the castle, Freckles put her ears back. Switching her tail, she picked up her feet as if the ground were covered in nettles. The other Warmbloods were equally restless.
“It’s empty,” Lio said in surprise.
“Are you sure?” asked Lyros.
“Yes,” Cassia confirmed.
Knight let out a growl, pacing round and round the four riders.
Mak frowned. “If there’s no one here, what is he trying to warn us about?”
“Dockk,” Cassia called.
Knight backed away from the castle to stand close to her. She reached down to stroke him. The fur along his back stood on end.
A frisson of alarm went down Cassia’s own back. “This isn’t how he behaves when warning us of an enemy. It’s almost as if he’s…frightened.”
She nudged her horse to continue forward. Abruptly, Freckles shied. Struggling to keep her seat, Cassia patted the mare’s neck, murmuring reassurances.
Moonflower let out a whinny and began to buck. Lio levitated out of the saddle, landing a bit hard on his feet, and watched his horse bolt in the other direction.
Bear and General galloped after him with Mak and Lyros still on their backs. They were nearly over the next hill before the two warriors gave up trying to control their mounts and rolled out of their saddles.
Lio beat dirt off his robes. “Moonflower has never done that, not once.”
Mak popped back into sight next to them with Lyros at his side. “I can’t believe this.”
Lyros shook his head. “Nothing spooks Warmbloods!”
Only Cassia was still in the saddle. Perhaps it was the strength of Celeris in Freckles’ veins or her connection with Cassia. The little mare stood her ground, although she wouldn’t go a step nearer the castle. Through the Blood Union, Cassia could feel just how afraid Freckles was and how much determination it took her not to flee.
Cassia leaned down and pressed her cheek to Freckles’ neck. “You’ve proved your bravery today. I know you don’t want to be here. It’s all right if you go wait with the other horses.”
Freckles waited for her to dismount, then shot away and disappeared over the hill.
“What in the Goddess’s name is in that castle?” Lyros asked.
Cassia hugged Knight to her. “It’s the letting site. Animals can feel that there’s something wrong with it.”
Mak raised his eyebrows. “No wonder they aren’t using this place as a garrison.”
Lio rubbed the back of his neck. “I can feel the wrongness too.”
“You can?” Cassia asked.
He shivered. “Our bond makes me aware of it now.”
The four of them continued on foot, Knight growling at every shadow. Lio led them to a discreet entrance in the back wall. The door lay in pieces, the postern blasted apart and marred by scorch marks.
“Solia did that?” Cassia guessed.
“Yes. This is where we carried you out during the battle.” Lio took her hand. “Are you sure you can bear to enter this place again?”
She wasn’t afraid, she realized. Far from it. She had to go through that door. She wanted to stand victorious in this place where Kallikrates had once violated her magic.
“I need to do this.” She levitated over the debris and set foot in Castra Paradum again.
Knight whined, but followed her, the others close behind. Before she walked further inside, Mak put a hand on her arm. “Let me check for traps.”
She glanced at the bow he held. “Where did that come from?”
“The Mage King’s armory.” He nocked three bloodied arrows and shot the volley into the ground ahead of them. “All clear.”
They levitated over the bare ground, Mak checking for traps along the way. Cassia kept Knight heeled, fearing he would go ahead of her and into danger, but her poor hound showed no sign of wanting to leave her side.
She led them through the inner walls overgrown with thorn vines. Her thorns. Those were alive, sprouted from her need the night she and Lio had fought Miranda here.
They passed through the dead apple orchard, through Cassia’s youthful memories of Miranda when they had been friends, past the ghosts of her Gifting visions. At the edge of the garden, she paused, looking across to the doorway of Agata’s empty kitchen. The cook had looked after her and Miranda like a mother.
Cassia believed Miranda regretted causing Agata’s death. It was sickening that she had reanimated their friend as a bloodless, but perhaps preserving her in undeath had been Miranda’s twisted way of trying to atone.
Lio put his arm around her. “I’m so sorry about Agata.”
Cassia leaned into him. A gentle, aching magic emanated from the kitchen like a lament. She recognized royal Hesperine magic, the cool and powerful traces of Rudhira’s power. She knew he was always compassionate when sending the undead to their final rest.
“He freed her here,” Cassia murmured.
“Yes,” Lio said.
Cassia drew a shaky breath. “I hope she is happy in Mother Kyria’s embrace.”
“Which way should we go next?” Lyros asked gently.
Cassia pointed to the other side of the garden. What had once been the window of her sickroom was now a gaping hole where vines had destroyed the wall to free her and Lio. “That’s where we last saw Miranda.”
She set out across the garden. When she reached the patch where her pea plants had once grown, the feathery touch of the letting site became a tangled grip.
She gasped, going down on her knees. She heard Mak and Lyros’s voices, felt Lio’s alarm in her heart. Knight was baying like a wild thing. But all her senses roared with the power pouring up out of the ground, here where she had channeled Lustra magic for the first time.
The letting site was crying for her. It was a force of nature, without morals or emotion. But she had a heart, and the letting site’s pull dragged a chaos of emotions out of her. Grief and anger and joy and recognition.
All of that flowed down her arm, and she plunged her dagger into the ground, returning her first focus to the soil that had forged it.
It didn’t tap the letting site. It tapped her. The channel that always ran through her from the Lustra now reversed, the world spinning the other way on its axis. Magic poured out of her and back into the letting site.
She knelt there, caught in the force of it, as if her heart had burst open to feed the land. She saw blood running down the inside of her arms, watering the soil. She wept, not with pain. She had never felt more powerful.
She was healing the letting site.
Cassia. We have to go!
At Lio’s warning in her mind, she looked up from the ground. And met a familiar gray gaze.
Rudhira’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear him over the howl of her own magic. He held out his hands, as if trying to approach a wild creature.
The Blood-Red Prince had found them.