The Law of Loyalty
Loss saturated Lio’s bloodand paralyzed his limbs. He stood there grasping his Grace braid, holding on to Cassia in their Union.
He looked around at the bodies of everyone Azad had tried to save.
He had to find survivors. Even one person who was still alive. Azad and Neana’s sacrifice could not be in vain.
Lio stumbled forward. More timbers crashed into embers around him. A murder of crows flapped overhead, cawing. In the hush between every sound, he heard the silence in the minds and bodies that surrounded him.
Until a vibration broke the quiet, the faintest touch on his hearing.
One heartbeat.
He held his breath, straining toward the sound. Slow and faint. But still beating.
He lifted off the ground again and levitated toward that hint of life. Even the air soughing against his ears made him curse.
“Lio!” Mak called. “You need to see this.”
Lio gritted his teeth. “I can’t. I think I hear a heartbeat.”
“They’re here,” Mak said.
Lio held on to that flicker of hope and stepped to his Trial brothers.
When he saw whom they’d found, his prayer of gratitude died on his lips and turned into a snarl of fury. There were five survivors, all wearing the flame-red robes of the Aithourian Circle.
Lio whipped Final Word into his hand before he realized their was no need. The mages were on their knees, bound to a ring of stakes. Mak and Lyros stood on opposite sides of them, maintaining a ward around the war mages.
Lio’s magic boiled. All the suffering that had bled into this ground gathered inside him. With a thought, he could flood the war mages’ minds with the pain they had caused. He could make these men live out the deaths of their victims until they wished they had never survived.
Are you all right? Cassia voice slipped into his heart. So close. Too close to all the ugly things there.
He veiled his thoughts. No. Are any of us?
No, she agreed.
Lio felt a hand on his shoulder, then. Mak’s voice pulled him back from the brink. “We need your opinion. We found them like this, as if someone staked them out to make an example of them. Their auras feel wrong. Can you tell if the Collector stole their magic?”
It took a moment for Mak’s words to reach Lio’s rational mind. “You think someone performed essential displacement on them?”
Mak nodded. “They remind us of Pakhne after Kallikrates displaced her healing magic.”
Lio took a step toward the nearest mage. The Aithourian whimpered. Tears streaked through the blood and ash on his contorted face. He lifted his haunted gaze to Lio in a wordless plea. The mortal’s aura was hollow.
“I think you’re right,” Lio said.
“Can you confirm it with your thelemancy?” Lyros asked.
With a grimace of distaste, Lio dug into the five mages’s minds. Pity he didn’t want to feel tempered his power. The arcane pathways inside the men were scarred in a way he recognized. “One of Kallikrates’s Overseers definitely did this.”
Lyros shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would the Collector do this to his and Lucis’s mage allies?”
Mak gestured at the war mage in front of him. “I recognize this one. We faced him at Patria.”
Recognition came over Lyros’s face. “You’re right. This is the war circle from the siege, or what’s left of them, in any case. The other two of their brethren died the night they attacked Mederi—one to Rudhira’s blade, the other to Lio’s magic.”
Lio tried to think through the roar in his ears. The war mages were surrounded by parts of bodies. It was difficult to make sense of the dismembered remains. But he made himself study their clothes and wounds. All of them were Lucis’s soldiers, and it looked like they’d been butchered not with the professional instruments of war but by a Gift Collector’s brutal tools.
“Miranda did this,” Lio said. “She took revenge for her people.”
Mak blew out a breath. “What are we going to do with them? I want to make them pay as much as you do, but it doesn’t seem like justice to kill them when they’re no longer a danger to anyone.”
Mak was right. Miranda had already subjected the mages to the worst punishment any of them could imagine.
So why did Lio still want to punish someone, anyone, for all the nameless pain he had swallowed?
The war mage nearest him strained against the ropes that bound him to the stake. His lips moved. At last, words emerged from his mouth in a haunted echo of a human voice.
“Please,” he begged, “kill me.”
Lio’s hand curled tighter around his staff.
Lyros eyed Lio. “We’d best leave our wards up. Just in case.”
A veil spell settled over the men, then. Mak’s power cut off their pleas for death from Lio’s hearing. The silence of the grave fell over the battlefield once more.
All these lost lives. And five of their murderers were the only survivors.
The distant heartbeat fluttered in Lio’s ears again.
“The pulse I’m hearing isn’t one of theirs! There must be another survivor.”
Lyros clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll keep looking.”
The three of them headed across the outer bailey. Mak paused by soldiers in unfamiliar colors and knelt to check for pulses. He shook his head, then swore softly. “Their swords aren’t of Tenebran make. These are Cordian soldiers.”
Dread settled in Lio’s stomach. “The princes of Cordium have sent soldiers to fight with Lucis?”
A few paces away, Lyros stood over the bodies of men in flamboyant, colorful clothes. “And some of Cordium’s infamous mercenaries, it looks like.”
The people here had never stood a chance. But one slow heart still defied the odds.
“The heartbeat is fading,” Lio said. “We should split up again to search faster.”
Mak and Lyros exchanged a look.
“What is it?” Lio asked.
“We can’t hear it,” Mak answered ruefully.
“I’m not imagining it,” Lio insisted.
Mak held up his hands. “We’re not saying you are. We’ll go this way.”
They circled the outer bailey, while Lio forged into the area within the remains of the stone wall. He levitated again and swept left. No, the sound got fainter that way. Right? Ahead and to the right.
The sound grew less faint as he approached a pile of bodies by a blasted-out portion of the wall. Knights and village men had died together in the defense. Their enemies had paid dearly to gain this ground. Dozens of Cordian soldiers lay dead on the threshold of the breach.
The princes’ forces had come prepared for Hesperines. Their liegehounds rested at their sides, bloodied and still. Poor, noble dogs. They had lived by the law of loyalty and died out of love for their masters, no matter whose side they fought on.
Lio quickly strengthened the veil over his thoughts and emotions. Not fast enough to escape Cassia’s notice.
What did you find? she asked.
There is no reason for you to see this.
The sight of the dogs was not something she needed in her memories forever, nor haunting her when she worried about Knight.
She hesitated, a protest brewing in her mind.
Please,Lio said. Let me spare you this one thing.
Her aura gentled. All right, my Grace. Thank you.
Lio wiped his eyes and sank back to the ground. Listening closely, he picked his way closer to the breach.
A growl halted him in his tracks.
He went still. Then slowly, he turned his head, careful not to meet her hostile eyes.
Red stained her fur. Lio hadn’t noticed her lying in despair by her master as if she too were dead. Now she crouched over the soldier’s body, her lips peeled back.
Lio and the liegehound eyed each other.
She didn’t lunge. He realized her back legs were barely holding her weight. She was panting too hard for such a cold night. Even as he stood there, her heartbeat grew weaker.
No. By the Goddess, he would not let one more innocent life end tonight. He would save one creature, if it was the last thing he did.
He thought of Martyr’s Pass, when he had crossed his first battlefield to rescue Knight from a heart hunter’s trap. He had managed to secure the dog’s trust and bring him safely to Cassia.
But this liegehound was not Knight, who was bonded to a Hesperine’s Grace and persuaded by her Lustra magic to love their kind.
There was nothing Cassia could do for this dog now. If Lio asked, it would only give her further cause to mourn the loss of her beast magic. He didn’t want Mak and Lyros to cast wards over the hound, either. That much blood magic would only make her more frightened and aggressive.
There had to be something Lio could try. He knelt down to make himself smaller and less threatening. “Good dog.”
She snarled at him.
“Oedann,” he murmured softly. “Oedann. You fought bravely by your kaetlii.”
She let out a whine that tore at his heart.
Lio kept his voice low and soothing. “I know you loved him. But this needn’t be the end for you, Lady Hound. There are other safe places. You can find another loma.”
The dog crouched lower over her master’s body. To protect him? Or in surrender to her pain and weakness?
“Loma,” Lio repeated, thinking of every calming word he had ever heard Cassia say to Knight. “Het. Soor het. Down, girl. There’s no threat here. I’m a friend, I swear, although nothing has ever taught you to believe so.”
She whined again, as if terribly confused to hear familiar words coming from a Hesperine’s mouth. He wasn’t sure if he was calming her or agitating her.
“Toaa,” he soothed. “Toaa.”
Lio inched closer to her, keeping to one side instead of approaching directly. Her gaze tracked him.
“Your master is with his gods. You can let him go. Obett.” Lio was within arm’s reach now.
She snapped her jaws at him in warning.
Thorns. He could stand to lose an appendage if she got rough with him, but he couldn’t afford for her to rip out his throat. Clearly her wounds were the only reason she hadn’t tried. It would take more than a calm voice and liegehound commands to prove to her he wasn’t the enemy.
All her breeding and training hinged on magic, didn’t it? The arts of hedge warlocks, the crueler descendants of Lustra mages.
Lio braced himself and opened his arcane senses to the hound. The battlefield’s tragic emotions shuddered through him. He pushed through them to focus on the grieving creature in front of him.
She was opaque to him, as he had expected. Liegehounds had as much resistance to mind magic as they did to poisons and frost. But had one of the three most powerful mind mages in Hesperine history ever tested their full power against that of the ancient liegehound breeders?
Lio’s stomach turned at the prospect of what he was about to do. It went against everything in him to subject the innocent animal to any more fear and suffering.
But the alternative was to leave her here to die in pain. It was clear to him which was the cruel choice and which the kindness.
“You will be all right,” he promised her. As gently as he could, he let his full power wash over her mind.
He was prepared for her to snap at his neck or torture him with yelps of pain. But all he heard was her sigh. As her exhausted mind opened to him, he felt an answering sigh from deep in the ground. Was the Lustra helping him?
The hound eased to sleep under his spell. Lio, too, let out a breath of relief, knowing he had given her an escape from her pain.
He knelt beside her and carefully examined her wounds. Curse the mortals who had brought her into this fight to get battered by blades.
Working as quickly as he could, he scavenged among the bodies to make bandages. Once he had bound the dog’s bleeding back, he kept applying pressure to her wound while he studied the magic inside her. There was a distinct cord twining from within her chest toward her master. It reminded Lio of the patterns of Lustra magic he and Cassia had encountered on their quest.
The end of the spell-cord was frayed, broken. And yet it still bound the dog to the dead man. What an injustice that her life was fated to end with his. As long as she was tied like this, there was no hope for her.
Lio took hold of the magical bond with all his Will. Goddess, please, let this free her and not doom her to die even faster.
With the gentlest thelemancy, he unraveled the cord bit by bit. Fast asleep, she knew no discomfort while he worked. But with each filament of the bond that he snapped, a lifetime of pain wore at Lio.
He bore it. Welcomed it. Goddess, let me take someone’s pain tonight.
He unwove every harsh word and brutal training exercise that had defined the dog’s existence. As her cage of discipline crumbled, the fog over her mind began to clear. He caught sensory impressions, familiar and foreign. Warm fire. Satisfying bone. Open grass, running, joy.
He stroked her head as he worked. Her ears were so soft. “You’ll be all right,” he said again, praying it was the truth.
At last the bond that had defined her life and death frayed to nothing under his power. She drew a deep breath in her sleep.
“I think it worked,” he said to her.
But her blood had already soaked the bandage and pooled between his fingers. Goddess, if only they had a healer with them. After giving her hope to outlive her master, he couldn’t let her die of her wounds.
In that moment, he came to a decision. He would fight for her life with everything he could offer her.
He ran his hand along her cheek. “I don’t know if this will help you, but it’s our only chance. And if it does work…I promise being bound to me will be a much kinder fate.”
Lio bit his hand and lowered it to her muzzle. He opened her dangerous jaws and pressed his bleeding cut to her tongue. With his thelemancy, he touched the part of her mind that controlled her swallow reflex.
The Lustra had helped him into her mind, and he had given her the healing power of Hespera in his blood. Now all he could do was wait.
He didn’t move until he realized the blood under his hand was drying. Her wound had stopped bleeding.
He sat there and listened to his familiar’s heart beat stronger.
Cassia tucked Azad’s Gracebraid close to her heart. She wondered where Neana was and shuddered. If she survived, she had no future now, only the Craving that would slowly end her life.
It wasn’t right. Azad had died here in this dirty hole without his Grace at his side. The knights hadn’t even fought with him as he had tried to save Castra Augusta.
None of this made sense. What had Azad been doing in here while the slaughter went on outside? Why had he made his last stand alone?
Cassia could think of only one explanation. While the knights had tried to hold off the attackers, Azad must have been protecting someone inside the keep.
Cassia listened, straining her Hesperine senses. She couldn’t catch a hint of hearts or auras.
But of course she wouldn’t, if a Hesperine had veiled someone to hide them from the enemy.
Cassia drove her dagger into the soil. Does any creature survive here?
Proof of life welled up through the veins of the earth.
There are survivors, she called silently to Lio, afraid her voice would disturb the delicate balance of the stones.
His heart leapt in her chest. We’ll come help you.
There’s not enough room, and we don’t want to risk a cave in with too much movement rattling the debris.
His aura rang with alarm. Cave in? I’m coming to step you out of there.
There’s no danger to me, my Grace.
She brought her roses gently out of the soil. Vines spread across the sphere of stones. Thorns fortified the bubble of safety Azad had left behind, and black roses bloomed where he had died.
Cassia kept pulling. She parted the ground with her roses and guided their strong vines to hold back the layers of dirt and rock. By the light of Rosethorn’s Union Stone, she could see a stairway leading down into darkness.
The cellar. Cave-ins from the siege must have sealed it off. How long would the roof hold?
“Hello?” she called as softly as she could. “Is anyone there?”
“Cassia?” came an astonished murmur. A figure crept up the stairs. Red light fell across her disheveled chestnut curls.
“Genie!” Cassia whispered.
Flavian’s seventeen-year-old sister crawled out of the hole, breathing hard, and threw her arms around Cassia.
Cassia held her tightly. The last time she had seen Genie, the vibrant young woman had been in Solia’s retinue of ladies. How had she come to be on a battleground?
“We have to get you out of here, quickly and quietly,” Cassia said. “The rubble isn’t stable.”
“Thank all our gods you found us. We had no water—we were running out of air...”
“We?”
“The children. The children are the only ones we got into the cellar before…before…”
“Lady Genie?” called a small voice from below. “Is it safe to come out now?”
The glow from Cassia’s dagger illumined the faces of Patria and Segetia’s children. Tenebra’s newest orphans.
Cassia held the image for Lio to see. The children are alive.
His relief and gratitude filled her, powerful and pure. What can we do?
Is there any way you could clear a path outside the keep? I don’t want the first thing they see to be…
Of course.
“We must all be as still and quiet as we can,” Cassia explained to Genie and the children. “I shall work some magic now. Don’t be afraid—my spell will keep us all safe.”
The children huddled closer together, but nodded. Avoiding Genie’s gaze, Cassia kept her lips tightly closed over her unsheathed fangs. The last thing she wanted was for her canines to frighten them. Her magic was terrifying enough.
She eased her roses down through the crumbling cellar entrance and let them climb the walls and ceiling, fortifying the structure around the little ones. Once she was sure they were safe, she expanded the vines inside the sphere of stones around her and Genie. They grew through the space where she had crawled in, and the breach in Azad’s defenses filled with thorns.
At last she let her roses tear through the keep, shoving aside every rock and timber in their path. When her spell was complete, she looked down the tunnel she had made. Moonlight shone at the end of it, and Knight stood silhouetted there, guarding their escape.
She motioned to Genie. “It’s safe for us to lead the children out now.”
When Genie didn’t reply, Cassia braced herself and finally risked a glance at the young woman.
Genies was staring. Cassia had been so prepared for a horrified stare like Ben’s that it took her a moment to realize Genie was wearing a different expression.
She looked…awed. She opened her mouth, as if at a loss for words.
Cassia smiled. “Ready to go?”
Genie gave her head a shake, her dirty curls bouncing. “Right. We need to get out of here.”
Genie stationed herself at the cellar entrance and guided the children out, organizing them in a line as they went. “Everyone take the hand of the person in front and behind you. Just like that. Now, would you like to be the leader and take Cassia’s hand? Very good. Your mama and papa will be proud.”
Cassia’s throat tightened. She took the hand of the little girl in the lead. She had seen this child in Lio’s thoughts the night he had helped evacuate Mederi.
Now the girls’ round face turned up toward Cassia, pinched with exhaustion and anxiety. “Have you seen my goat?”
Cassia willed her tears not to fall and stroked the child’s hair. “We’ll have time to look for everyone else later. Right now we need to get you and the other children to safety. Thank you for being the leader. You’re very brave.”
Cassia led her through the tunnel, moving patiently so the whole line of children could follow. When she and the goat girl made it out of the keep, Lyros was waiting. Cassia gave his arm a squeeze.
There was no sign of the bodies. He and Mak guarded a wide, clear space around the half-demolished castle well. Her Trial brothers’ wards held back tall piles of debris, and Lio’s veils lay heavy over the devastation beyond.
But where was her Grace?
Coming,he said without further explanation.
Lyros knelt in front of the little girl and smiled. He had veiled his fangs to look like a human’s canines. “Hello there. I’m Lyros, and this is Mak.”
The child clenched her fist, holding something tightly in her hand. “I need to find my family.”
“We’re taking care of you for them tonight,” Lyros said. “If you come over here, we can give you some water and make sure you aren’t hurt.”
Mak, clearing stones from around the well, waved at her.
She nodded mutely, but before she went with Lyros, she turned to Cassia again. The child opened her hand and offered up what she held.
The sight of the black feather on the girl’s palm sent a chill down Cassia’s spine. “Where did you get this?”
“Lady Miranda gave it to me. She said to keep it safe, and if we need her, we can use it to find her. But I don’t understand how, and I don’t know where my parents are. Please, will you tell her to come help?”
Cassia took the feather and kissed the child’s brow. “I will find her.”
She and Lyros shared a look of regret over the girl’s head. He held out his hand, and the child let him lead her to the well.
Cassia hugged Knight to her. “Barda. Ckada.”
His protective instincts awoken, Knight wove among the children emerging from the keep and herded strays back toward the group. But he also let the frightened little ones pet his fur for comfort. That was something he had learned not from liegehound training but from Zoe and the sucklings. Cassia wanted nothing more than to cuddle her Grace-sister on her lap right now to reassure Zoe and herself that everything would be all right.
Lio stepped into sight by her side and wrapped his arms around her.
She hid her face against his chest and held him tightly. Oh, Goddess, how she needed to hold her Grace. Where were you?
I’ll show you as soon as we see to the children.For a long moment, he didn’t let go of her.
Then they sprang into action again and guided the rest of the children out of the tunnel. When all of them were finally out in the open, the area was packed with scraped, thirsty little humans. Cassia lost track of how many villages they represented.
Lio touched her back. Mak and Lyros and I can take care of them. Could you find out what happened from Genie?
Yes. Will you veil our conversation? None of us are ready to tell the children what happened.
Lio nodded, and his magic enfolded her.
Cassia drew Genie aside and convinced her to sit down and accept a waterskin. She let the young woman drink and catch her breath before broaching the difficult questions.
“Did anyone hurt you?” Cassia asked gently.
Genie shook her head. “Thanks to you. How did you do that? With your magic?”
Cassia tensed before she could help it.
But there was no condemnation in Genie’s aura. “Did becoming a Hesperine give you that power?”
Cassia relaxed a little. “Plant magic was my affinity as a human, but the Gift made it much more powerful and gave it unique Hesperine effects.”
“I’ve been hearing all sorts of marvelous tales of the Black Roses’ deeds. Now I see why. When I saw your fangs tonight, I knew rescue had come.”
Cassia had thought she didn’t possess enough tears for what had happened here, but Genie’s words put a lump in her throat.
“Where is everyone else?” Genie’s tone was so grim, she seemed to already suspect the answer.
Cassia knew this would be the first of many times during this war when she delivered the news that the worst had happened. She was far more accustomed to facing the worst herself, rather than trying to help others face it. Would every time be this hard?
She sat down and put an arm around Genie. “I am so sorry. You and the children are the only survivors we’ve been able to find.”
Genie pressed a hand to her mouth. Denial filled her aura.
“Forgive us,” Cassia said. “We were too late.”
“No.” Genie took a deep, shaky breath. “You were just in time. If you hadn’t saved us with your spell…”
She was shaking. She bowed her head over her knees. Cassia gathered Genie’s hair back from her face and gave her sips of water, stroking her back.
“How did you get here?” Cassia asked.
“I came to run the refugee camp with your sister’s permission. She knows I need to be here for my people and the families need”—Genie’s face crumpled—“needed a lady to make sure the conditions were fit for women and children. The queen is the only one who understands.”
“Your family wanted you somewhere safe,” Cassia guessed.
“Of course.” Genie swiped at her eyes, and silent fury cried out from inside her. “When the enemy came, the knights put me down there as if I’m one of the children, not a woman responsible for these people’s lives.”
“It was wrong of them to treat you like a child. But at least the little ones had you with them.”
Genie’s gaze swept over her young charges. “We have to get them somewhere safe, but I don’t even know where that is now.”
“What happened here?” Cassia finally asked.
Genie looked at her. “Cordium.”
A hand closed around Cassia’s heart. “Reinforcements from the Magelands?”
“No. Seven full war circles of mages with siege engines, soldiers in the colors of at least three princes, and an army of Cordium’s infamous mercenaries. Not reinforcements. An invasion.”
Cassia’s pulse pounded. It couldn’t be.
After centuries of political and religious factors had stayed Cordium’s hand, after generations of Tenebrans had held their ground against the Magelands’ attempts to subjugate them, the time had finally come. Cordium had no more caution or mercy. They were here to win the Last War.
“All our goddesses preserve us,” Cassia breathed.
“We’ll need all of them.” Genie’s voice wavered. “They moved through here like a wildfire. Nothing could have stopped them.”
“Did anyone make it out before the attack to get word to the queen?”
Genie pressed her trembling lips together and shook her head.
Until now, Cassia had held on to a little hope. She finally asked the question she had been avoiding. “Was Ben here?”
Genie gripped her hand. “No. He leads the knights who escort the evacuees to safety. They left with a Hesperine days ago to bring in another village. They should have returned by now.”
So they were out there, somewhere in the path of the army bent on crushing Solia’s kingdom.
“We have to warn my sister,” Cassia said.