The Survivors
Miranda’s heart was thefirst that had awakened Cassia’s Hesperine empathy. Now that girl from her Gifting visions was here in the flesh. The full force of her emotions assaulted Cassia in the Blood Union.
Her sense of betrayal cut into Cassia, and she stood blind and dumb from Miranda’s hatred. She thought she might vomit from so much bitterness. It was so familiar. She had lived for years with that same poison inside her.
Miranda let her head fall back. Fire cascaded into her mouth. The mages went still, empty of magic, devoid of life. She licked her lips.
Suddenly Lyros’s spear flew toward her, a brilliant streak as fast as a lightning spell.
Her hand shot out. A gust of wind howled through the room and knocked Night’s Aim off course.
Lyros’s spear slammed into the floor. He raised his own hand and levitated the weapon back toward him. But a ring of fire sprang up around the Black Roses, and the spear rebounded off the flame ward to fall out of reach.
Phantom pain split Cassia’s skull just before Lio cried out and staggered backward. She caught her Grace as he slid to the floor. What happened?
He groaned, lifting a hand to his brow. She expelled me from Skleros’s mind.
Cassia cradled his head. How can she do that?
Mind magic…so much.
Mak stood over them, maintaining a ward, while Lyros dropped to his knees beside Lio. “Is he all right?”
Cassia took a breath to stave off her panic. “Miranda may not have the Collector’s favor, but she’s stolen more than enough power. Including mind magic.”
“I can fight.” With a snarl of effort, Lio levitated to his feet.
Cassia had fight left in her, too. As she had done on the roof, she called roses out of the magic in the temple’s seams, this time in the gallery behind Miranda.
“I will not let you ruin this for me,” Miranda spat. “Not again.”
Cassia’s vines had barely sprouted when Miranda swept fire around her, burning the plants before they could grow. How could she react so quickly to Cassia’s spells?
Miranda smiled. “I took your magic. The same magic you still have inside you. I can always predict your spells. I can always find you.”
Cassia’s skin crawled. She pressed a hand to her belly.
She was bound to Miranda, as long as the Collector’s Overseer possessed the plant magic she had ripped out of Cassia all those years ago.
Lio wrapped his armsaround Cassia as she swayed on her feet. All the horror of the night she had lost her magic came back to him. He had relived that moment with her, but he had not been there to save her.
He wanted to shout his fury at Miranda. But all he could do was reaffirm his oath in Cassia’s mind. I will make this right. I swear in Hespera’s name and by our Grace bond.
I can’t bear this. I need her out of my veins.
I will free you from Miranda once and for all.
Skleros backed toward the wall, his gaze darting between Miranda and the Hesperines. “So you’re in the mood for a challenge, are you?”
“No. I’m here to kill you.” Miranda pulled a weapon off her back. The digging fork’s long iron handle was scorched, and its tines were sharpened to wicked points.
Skleros wheezed a laugh. “Descending to Cassia’s level with gardening tools now, are you?”
Miranda traversed down to stand in front of him without breaking a sweat. Skleros pulled his executioner’s axe from his back.
Lyros caught Lio’s eye. “Plan four.”
Lio nodded in agreement, then Cassia, then Mak.
Shadow wards slammed down around them. Still holding Cassia, Lio stepped through the ring of fire with their Trial brothers. Lending all the power they had to each other, they drove through Miranda’s flame wards. Their opposing element seared his senses, but together, the Black Roses pushed through.
Lio landed behind Skleros with Cassia. Mak and Lyros appeared on either side of him, flanking the Gift Collector. Between them and Miranda, there was no way out for him.
Miranda’s smile was more like a snarl. She swept her digging fork back and forth in the space in front of her, holding them all at bay. “Why not make it a melee, then? I can take four Hesperines and this spurred carcass, too. I’ll teach all of you what I’m made of.”
Everyone moved at once. Miranda lunged at Skleros, a manic gleam in her eyes. Lyros snatched up his spear and threw it in a single motion just as Mak swung his morning star high. Lio went low with his staff, aiming for knees.
Cassia ripped roses out of the ground to bind Skleros’s legs so he couldn’t dodge the four weapons striking at him.
Miranda screamed in fury and pivoted mid-attack to block the Star of Orthros. Skleros crouched, and Lyros’s spear sailed over his head instead of into his heart. Final Word was about to make contact with the back of his skull when magefire nipped at Lio’s feet. He cursed and levitated, missing his target.
“How dare you fight at my side!” Miranda shouted. “I won’t let you steal my kill.”
Shock rolled through Lyros’s aura. Even he hadn’t calculated for this. The Black Roses weren’t the kill, and Skleros wasn’t the thief.
Magic slammed into Lio’s chest, propelling him upward. His back struck a pillar, and his head slammed back against the stone. Miranda’s spell held him there, a weight on his chest, a burn in his lungs. Another deadly mix of warding and fire magic.
She released him. Stunned, he couldn’t manage to levitate. He hit the ground. Pain blasted through his knees, and his teeth sank into his tongue.
Gingerly, he touched the back of his head, and his fingers came away bloody. Trying to focus his double vision, he looked for the others. Miranda had hurled all four of them to opposite corners of the chamber and encircled them with flame wards again. Cassia yelled his name and sent roses slithering around the confines of the spell. With the four of them separated, none of them had a hope of breaking out on their own.
Skleros circled Miranda. “You should let them help you. You’ll last longer.”
“Not a chance. I’ll kill you with my own hands, and I’ll enjoy it.”
Skleros laughed. “You should know better than to try.”
“You should know better than to harm my people.” She spun her digging fork. “Do you know what this is?”
He sneered. “A weapon for a pawn like you.”
“It’s one of the few things that survived the fire at Mederi Village. Did you think I wouldn’t find out you chose that target for Lucis’s army? That you told the army from Cordium where the refugees were hiding?”
“I was counting on it. Learn your place, bitch.”
“I’ll show you our places in the game.”
Skleros and Miranda drove each other back and forth across the length of the room in a fast, ugly fight. Every time Skleros’s axe blade came at Miranda, Lio feared she would be destroyed, and her secrets with her.
Lio could find no way into the maze of dream wards over their minds. Miranda rebuffed him with the power of six mind mages. All he could do was watch through the wavering flames that trapped him, helpless to protect the one Gift Collector they needed alive.
Cassia struggled to risefrom the rose vines that had broken her fall. She saw Mak and Lyros on their feet. But her legs wouldn’t hold her weight, screaming with the pain of Lio’s shattered knees.
His gaze found hers from the other side of the chamber. I’ll survive.
All her Grace instincts screamed that Miranda had hurt him. Again. Raw power blasted out of her and battered the flame ward around her. But that accomplished nothing except to make her arcane senses burn.
Miranda leapt onto the fallen sun disk to evade another swing from Skleros’s axe. He pursued her, his spurs clanking on the bronze. Their weapons clashed, and the grinding of steel against iron made Cassia’s teeth ache. Then Miranda’s digging fork fell, banging across the disk.
“No!” The word shocked Cassia even as it came from her mouth. She didn’t want to care if Miranda lived or died. But she did.
Miranda whipped out a stone dagger. The ancient artifact she had used in her necromantic experiments on Lio and Cassia.
Skleros stood over her, his axe blade aimed downward. “Well, you are desperate if you dare show your relic blade in a fight with another Overseer.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Miranda panted.
“You have spent your short existence showing mortals how afraid they should be of the game. Haven’t you learned proper fear by now?”
Through the mix of betrayal and fury and pain Cassia shared with Miranda, she found one shard of clarity.
She couldn’t let Miranda’s life end like this.
Cassia took her dagger in both hands and slammed it into the temple floor. Stone chips flew at her, nicking her face. She didn’t even feel them.
The unbound power of the letting site rushed up through her dagger. Endless cords of life and fire were right at her fingertips. If only she could reach a little farther, she could take hold of them. On her own terms, just as the Black Roses had triumphed in the tower’s trials.
Cassia pulled. Her vision hazed under the onslaught of Lustra magic from below. But the fire fought her.
Skleros brought the axe down.
The blade rang on bronze. Miranda, rolling to the side with a hair’s breadth to spare, sprang up with her dagger. Skleros doubled over. She pulled her arm back, her blade now bloodied.
Skleros took one step back, clutching his abdomen. “Your blade isn’t enough to strike me off the board, little girl.”
Her empty hand moved. From her sleeve, she drew Skleros’s stone dagger. “No, but yours is.”
Emotion seeped from behind Skleros’s dream wards. His horror crept over Cassia as the color drained from his face. Miranda smiled.
Skleros drew a long, curved butcher’s knife and was upon Miranda in an instant. She had already sheathed her own relic dagger somewhere Cassia couldn’t see. Snatching up her digging fork, Miranda disarmed Skleros with one move.
She fought with more strength than any human her size should possess. Cassia understood the power that came to your body when you were fighting to save—or avenge—the people you loved.
Miranda stabbed the digging fork into Skleros’s chest and drove him onto his back. The smell of melting bronze filled the air, and he hissed, arching on the tines. Then frost skittered across the sun disk, and Miranda released the digging fork. Skleros lay pinned, his breath rattling.
Miranda dawdled his relic dagger in one hand. “Now who is learning his place?”
“You’re a child!” For the first time Cassia had ever heard, Skleros sounded afraid. “You can never defeat a champion from the first game.”
“My youth is my advantage. You’re so ancient, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to fear for your own survival. To be weak. Fear and weakness make me powerful.”
“The Master only has use for the fearless and strong.”
“Wrong. The Master values the survivors above all.”
Two stilettos appeared in her free hand, and she flung them in quick succession. They landed in Skleros’s hands, and the bronze glowed hot again, then cooled around her blades.
Miranda knelt over him and pressed his relic dagger to his gut. “Tonight, I will survive, and you will die slowly. No running back to the Master for a new body this time. You’ve played your last game, and I won.”
Cassia turned her head away as Skleros began to scream.
While Miranda was focused on her revenge, the Black Roses might have a chance to escape.
Fire was death. Fire was life. Life—survival—was what awakened beast magic. If the portal in this temple obeyed soothsaying, then the fire must demand beast magic. Cassia had none, but she did have a Will to survive that had brought her though every trial. She could only hope the temple would respond to that.
She pulled harder on the temple’s magic. The web of spells shivered.
Skleros’s wails turned to deep, pleased laughter. Cassia didn’t want to look, but she did.
“Miranda.” Kallikrates spoke with Skleros’s bloody mouth. “How I missed you.”
She cupped Skleros’s cheek. “Master.”
“My clever girl. He never should have underestimated you. While he grew arrogant, you kept your eyes on the endgame.”
“Always.”
“You have proved yourself more powerful than he. You shall take his place in my games for all time.”
An unnatural current of magic rose from Skleros’s corpse and swirled into Miranda’s mouth. A shudder went through her, and she bowed her head.
“Yes…” She sighed the word in two voices, her own and the Collector’s.
Miranda didn’t need saving from Skleros. Cassia had to save the Black Roses from her.
Cassia twined her rose vines up her arms, letting their thorns draw her blood. As her libation permeated the letting site, she flowed into the temple’s spells, and them into her. Everlasting embers tasted hot and bright in her mouth, and her blood ran through the earth with water. She opened herself, a conduit for life and fire.
One current of magic surged through her body and out of her dagger, shattering the floor with a forest of black roses. But two more currents of the spell ran wild like a flood seeking a riverbed. There was nowhere inside her for them to go.
The unbound magic flowed into the only path there was: the spell patterns of the temple itself. The ground shook, and with a rumble, the walls began to fall.
She raced along the tearing threads of Ebah and Lucian’s spells. Beyond the temple and across the miles of their kingdom. To the ruin of a lighthouse. To the center of a broken circle of stones. Round and round a burning tower.
At last, Cassia saw it. The pattern the Black Roses had been seeking in every ruin.
Six monuments. And at their center, three doors.
Nine nodes in all. But a Silvictultrix with only one power.
As the ancient magic in the temple unraveled, Cassia watched the second door open to reveal the third and final portal.