Page 148 of Blood Feast

Before he could escape with magic, Lio made the attack he’d been holding back. He went low, dodging under the path of Skleros’s axe, and swept his staff behind the man’s ankles. Living bone cracked this time. Skleros went down.

Cassia’s roses snaked around Skleros like chains, tearing the axe from his hand. Lio summoned the traversal cuffs into his hand and snapped them around the necromancer’s broken ankles.

She came to stand over Skleros, her dagger dripping blood to feed the roses that held him captive.

Lio leaned down, pressing his staff across Skleros’s throat. “You’re lucky there’s something in your brain that’s of use to me. I’ll wait till I’m done with your mind before I drive adamas through your heart.”

Skleros only laughed again. “You’re learning. But not fast enough. I’ve survived every round of the game since the first. Do you think I’m afraid of an infant like you?”

“You should be,” Lio said. “That many millennia of secrets will take time to extract. I won’t be done with you for a long while.”

“No,” Skleros replied, “you won’t be rid of me until the Master wins the final round.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Cassia said. “You have to help Lyros and Mak.”

Lio nodded and pulled his staff back. Knight pinned Skleros under his weight and growled in his face.

Lio levitated to Lyros first. The thorns parted to let him through.

Just in time for Lyros to stagger against him. One jagged bone dangled from Lyros’s hand. Lio caught his Trial brother and pressed a desperate hand over the bleeding hole in his chest.

Cassia dug her handsinto Skleros’s new blond hair and wrenched his head back. Her blood pounded with years of muddled pain. The Lustra’s at the king’s rape of the land. Her own at the destruction Skleros had once brought into Hespera’s Sanctuary. And now the suffering he had inflicted upon her Trial brothers.

“Here’s a souvenir from this round of the game,” she hissed.

She traced her dagger across his unblemished face, making an ugly slice from above his left eye to his right jawline. Lustra magic welled in his blood, and more tiny cuts feathered out from the wound, like thorns.

“My first scar in this form,” Skleros mused. “Do you think such a trophy an insult to me? You should know my pain only gives the Master pleasure, Cassia.”

His ruined voice grew smooth and deep. His rough tone was gone, and the syllables of her name seemed almost intimate on his tongue.

Her stomach turned over. She moved her dagger to Skleros’s throat, holding her magic at her fingertips.

One wrong move, and he could unleash untold magics on all of them.

“Hello, Kallikrates,” she said.

The Collector studied her face through Skleros’s eyes, his gaze a caress that made her want to claw at her skin. “Your Gifting has dulled your pain, but it could be sharpened again with the right touch.”

She wanted to spit in his face, but an idea took hold in her mind. More dangerous than anything she had ever attempted. Perhaps the only thing that could save them now.

Shewasan infant compared to this ancient, twisted mind. He had taken them by surprise at every turn. This might also bea trap in the form of words, not spells. But even so, it was an opportunity to attempt what she had never dared before.

A negotiation with the Collector.

Lio’s alarm rang in their Union.Cassia, what are you thinking?

She was thinking of that bone spearing Lyros. Of a wolf’s claws raking Mak’s chest. Of a Gift Collector’s poison creeping slowly toward her Grace’s heart. Would they live through the next close call?

This is my chance to spare us from a battle that might be our last,she told Lio.

Cassia, no—!

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him levitating with Lyros across the battlefield. She had to buy them time. If the Collector grew tired of toying with them, it would take all four of them to survive whatever spell he unleashed.

“I still understand you, Kallikrates,” she said. “You know I’ve always been a schemer after your own heart.”

His rich laughter washed over her, and she felt filthy. “You are. I see that you’re attempting to talk your way out of this round. Ambitious, little Silvicultrix, especially without your soothsaying power.”

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