Page 1 of Blood Feast

22

Nights Until

WINTER SOLSTICE

A NEW FORCE OF NATURE

Magic coursed in Cassia’sveins, a thrill along her every nerve. Raw power throbbed up from beneath her feet and flowed through her as naturally as blood. Her heart pounded in time to her spell, and she heard her Grace’s heart beating in unison.

Lio’s voice sounded in her mind.Now try one more time to channel your magic back to its source.

She braced herself against the ultimate temptation—to pull him deeper into her spell. To get lost in this flow together. To pleasure him with it until she tasted his ecstasy in his blood.

She focused all her Will on her raging power and pushed it in the opposite direction. It only tangled tighter inside her, grasping, loving.

She bared her fangs. With a growl, she bent her magic and drove it back down into the ground. A shattering sound hurt her sensitive ears. The power of the Lustra, the wilds, retreated from her body and left her in her own skin.

Blinking to clear her vision, she beheld Lio’s offered wrist. Her fangs shot farther out of her gums, and the spell lights in the tower room were suddenly bright to her dilated eyes. All her senses honed in on the delicate blue veins beneath his pale skin. But she made her parched tongue wait a moment longer, merely to prove she could.

“You need a sip after that much magical exertion,” he said.

His voice undid her. She took his wrist in both her hands and sank her fangs into him. He gave a little hum of satisfaction and wrapped his other arm tightly around her.

She dragged in a mouthful of his blood and moaned in relief. Her world shrank to the Drink. The pressure of his flesh against her fangs. The warmth of his essence sliding down her throat. His magic cascading into her veins.

When he caressed her head, she remembered herself. She carefully withdrew her fangs but kept her mouth over the bite, licking gently at his torn wrist to heal him. As discreetly as she could, she lapped the remaining blood from his skin and her own lips. She was getting better at not making a mess. She was also greedy for every last smear of his blood. Lifting her head, she found him smiling down at her.

“Well done,” he said. “You managed a channeling and a drink without losing control. Of course, you know I love it when you lose control, but this bodes well for our effort to leave our residence eventually.”

“We’ve kept ourselves locked in here for a month. I have to learn faster if we ever want to see our family and friends again.”

“They understand why we need this time in seclusion after your Gifting. They all faced the challenge of having powerful magic made even more powerful by the Gift of immortality.”

“They mastered basic Hesperine skills like stepping and levitation in less than a month. I haven’t even gotten to attempt those yet because I’m too busy trying not to cause explosions.”

“They don’t have your unique, never-before-seen duality of Lustra plant magic and Hesperine blood magic.” He grinned, his own fangs unsheathed in response to her drink. “The amount of time a new Hesperine needs is always proportionate to their power. Therefore, you need alotof time, and I will keep you in this tower until you’ve had plenty.”

She licked her lips again. His black hair was windswept from her spell, his robe hanging half open over his bare chest. Their veil hours robes were the only things resembling clothes they had worn since the night of her transformation. She tendedto lose control of her hunger at any given moment, upon any convenient surface, whether their bed, his desk, or the floor of the practice room.

But losing control of her magic wasn’t nearly as enjoyable. They stood in the warded chamber where Lio had spent years mastering his volatile affinities for mind magic and light magic. The results of their experiments with her abilities surrounded them. Every test subject was in pieces, destroyed by the sheer amount of her power. A riot of rose vines in full bloom grew through the rubble.

Their latest victims lay at Cassia’s feet. A scroll, now in shreds. A spare pane of glass from Lio’s workshop, now in fragments. And a stone vase—miraculously undamaged, dangling from a branch of roses.

She nudged a fat bloom away with her toe. “I must do better than this.”

“Be patient with yourself. We’ve scarcely begun to study your magic, and the results of our tests are unprecedented!”

That brought a smile to her face. At least her scrollworm was enjoying the research her magic required.

He waved a hand at the only intact furniture in the room, a warded chest, and the lid opened. His quill flew into his hand, and a scroll levitated before him. His eyes alight, he scrawled an addition to his notes. “This is progress! Resilient materials such as stone can now survive in proximity to your spells. With more practice, you’ll be able to regulate your magic so you no longer break glass or shred paper, either.”

Cassia sighed at the mess. “I’d ask you to teach me a cleaning spell if I wasn’t afraid I’d disintegrate the entire tower trying to cast it.”

Lio only chuckled. His amusement felt like a warm tickle in her own heart. To think, when she had been human, she had felt their empathic bond only in flashes. Now that her Gifting hadfully awakened their Grace Union, she scarcely knew how she had existed without this constant connection to him. She sank a little deeper into their bond, and her frustration eased into contentment.

He turned to her, his notes forgotten, and placed a soft, slow kiss on her neck. Her new skin seemed to come alive under his lips. Her Hesperine senses weren’t as unbearably raw as they had been right after her transformation, but she still wasn’t accustomed to how sensitive she was everywhere. As much as she loved it when Lio grew a beard, for now she relished the smoothness of his clean-shaven face as he nuzzled her throat.

She tried to keep her wits about her.Perhaps you should at least pay a visit to the main house to reassure everyone.

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