Page 144 of Blood Feast

“Right.” Mak sighed. “Lyros is correct that a Gift Collector has never changed sides. And no necromancer in history has every become a Hesperine.”

Lio felt Cassia’s heart twinge, and he frowned at Mak. “This is not reassuring us about the battle.”

Mak held up a finger. “But there is a necromancer who has allied with a Hesperine.”

Lio had to shut his jaw before speaking. “Nike has a necromancer ally? Your sister, who has sent so many of them back to Hypnos that he probably has a dedicated portal to the realm of the dead just for her victims?”

Mak gave a sad laugh. “Wish you’d had time to tell her that. It would have made her laugh.”

Mak’s homesickness washed over Lio. He tried not to wonder what his own sister was doing at this moment. It was hard not to imagine Zoe crying and frightened and confused about why he and Cassia would put her through this separation.

“What else did Nike tell you about her ally?” Cassia asked.

“Oh, she didn’t tell me. I found out in time-honored younger brother fashion—by snooping. You remember all those scrolls she filled after she came home?”

Cassia nodded. “It seemed she might be writing down her findings from her travels.”

“They’re letters,” Mak told them. “She’s been writing to the necromancer. And he writes back.”

Lio stared at his cousin. “Nike is pen friends with a mage of Hypnos?”

“How does she even get her messages to him?” Cassia asked in disbelief. “One does not simply send a courier into a necromancer’s lair.”

Mak shook his head. “The fellow uses his familiar like a carrier pigeon. It’s a vulture. An undead vulture.”

“A literal bloodless vulture,” Lio said flatly.

“That was my first reaction, too.” Mak shuddered. “Uncanny thing.”

“And whereisthis apostate’s lair?” Cassia wondered.

“He’s not an apostate,” said Mak. “He’s a mage in the Order of Hypnos. In Corona.”

“What in all the Divine Domains?” Lio uttered. “That’s…unbelievable.”

“And brilliant.” Cassia’s admiration and regrets tangled in her aura. “Nike has a source among the enemy.”

“How does this help us tonight?” Lio asked. “We can’t march into Cordium and ask him for information. And we can’t ask Nike to politely write to him and request he send us Kallikrates’s secrets by carrier vulture.”

“That’s not the point.” Mak looked at Lio as if his head was full of rocks this time.

“Ah,” Lio said after a moment. “Your point is that there is one necromancer who’s had a change of heart. And if there’s one, who says there can’t be two?”

Cassia’s gratitude throbbed in the Blood Union. “Thank you, Mak. That gives me hope.”

Mak bowed from the saddle. “Think about that before you do anything hot-headed, will you, Lio?”

The forest outside CastraRoborra looked smaller to Cassia now than to her seven-year-old self. And yet it was richer with scents and sounds. The year’s fallen leaves, ripe with decay, now trapped beneath fresh frost. The lone lament of a bird. The clack of bare branches against each other in the wind.

“The woods feel deserted to me.” Her own voice sounded hushed to her in the winter night.

“I don’t sense any minds so far,” Lio confirmed.

She clucked her tongue softly and murmured a command to Knight to seek for enemies. Nose to the ground, he disappeared into a nearby cluster of evergreens.

Warding magic waned in the air, a spell returning to Mak and Lyros’s hands. Mak shook his head. “The wards we sent out didn’t activate any death magic. Yet.”

“There may still be traps nearer the fortress,” Lyros cautioned.

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