Page 145 of Blood Feast

Cassia halted Freckles beneath a tree that seemed familiar, although she couldn’t place it in her memories. Then she realized it was not from her own recollections of that night, but the final moments of Solia’s handmaiden, which Nike’s mind magic had allowed Cassia to witness.

“Iris was captured right here,” Cassia said.

The other three paused around her, and they all shared a moment of silence for the brave woman who had sacrificed her life for her future queen.

“We’re getting close.” Cassia urged Freckles onward.

They rode between stunted saplings and once-proud oaks with scars burned into their bark. Not from the fires of battle. Cassia recognized the signs of salt damage. More than that, she felt the sickness in the soil. And yet that proved to her the Lustrawas still alive here, somewhere deep, giving her a sense of the poisoned land.

Knight returned to them, falling into step beside Freckles. Cassia reached down to pat his shoulder. He hadn’t bayed a warning, so he must not have found anything. But he remained alert, which also put Cassia on guard.

The forest ended abruptly at a line of dead pines. She looked across the field of snow before them to the place where fortress walls had once towered over her. She didn’t need to say a word for Lio to pull Moonflower closer to her.

He reached over and clasped her hand.I almost lost you here before I ever knew you.

She squeezed his hand.You gained me here.

“This is where I first met a Hesperine,” Cassia said.

Mak let out a breath. “Nike saved your life right here?”

“The arrow hit the ground in this area.” Cassia gestured to the snow at Freckles’ hooves, then at the trees behind them. “She carried me into the shadows, where Alkaios and Nephalea were waiting.”

Lyros pointed across the field. “And that’s where the fortress stood?”

“Yes.”

Cassia remembered looking out across that seemingly impassable distance to the bodies Lord Bellator had catapulted over the walls. She had believed Iris’s broken form was Solia.

That horrific moment had defined her human life. Now, turning over that shard of her past in her mind, she discovered it was one her Gifting had smoothed so it was no longer too sharp to touch.

She breathed, her chest free of the crushing weight of that grief and bitterness and despair. She had survived this place. She had even healed from it.

Whatever danger lay in the ruins, her past was no threat to her. She bared her fangs at the snow-covered rubble ahead.Let Miranda do her worst.

We’ll face this place together, this time,Lio answered.

They drew their weapons and fell into the formation Lyros had taught them, with him at their back and Mak ahead, Knight and Cassia on either side of Lio.

I still protest this arrangement with every fiber of my being,Lio informed her.You should be in the center where you’re safest.

You know the rest of us overruled you about this several training sessions ago.Let my roses throttle your enemies so you can concentrate on breaking the dream wards protecting Miranda’s mind.

I will, but not happily.

I know, my champion.

His thelemantic veils descended over them while Mak and Lyros’s wards swept out ahead. Cassia adjusted her grip on her dagger as they rode forward across the field.

It was too quiet. Her heart seemed lodged in her throat. Despite all their spells, she felt exposed.

They reached the snow-capped, crumbling stones that marked where the outer wall had been. Not a living creature disturbed Traitors’ Grave. No magic raised the hairs on her arms. And yet there was a thick presence here, a stirring of some other power.

An instant before it overwhelmed her, Lio’s magic shot through the mind ward and bled into their Grace Union. The onslaught of impressions broke against his magic, and they tugged on her heart as if from a distance.

The certainty that all was lost. The anger that this was the end. Grief, blow after blow, until the loss and the blood wore herdown like visions of her own impending end repeating before her eyes.

Even held at bay by Lio’s magic, the flood of emotion made her stomach sour. She swallowed hard. “Do all battlefields feel like this to Hesperines?”

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