Page 175 of Blood Feast

“How?” he asked.

“Help me cast,” she said.

He wrapped one arm around her and held his wrist to her mouth. She sank her fangs into him, and as she swallowed his blood, her magic rose to life. She sliced open both her hands and squeezed her blood onto the ground. Her power swept out of her, through his veins and the soles of his feet into the ground below. Her essence seemed to soak the walls and the stone overhead.

Blood ran through the cracks in the door, gleaming red in the firelight. Their blood. It traced each rune and filled every fissure until it dripped down the surface of the door. But no matter how much blood they shed, more cracks split open.

“No!” she shouted again.

The embers in the braziers collapsed into ashes, and the fire went out. All that remained was the scent of death.

Cassia wasn’t sure howmuch longer she and Lio could withstand their recurring day terrors. The deeper they traveled into wartorn territory, the worse their shared dreams became. A fortnight of troubling visions had worn her down and sent Lio spiraling into dark thoughts.

Their hunt for Miranda had proved fruitless so far, fraying everyone’s morale even further. Her trail was vivid to Cassia, a whiff of violence on an arcane wind, a vengeful footstepimprinted on the land. It always felt as if she was just ahead, and yet the Black Roses had seen neither hide nor hair of her.

Tonight they tracked her through an orchard in Segetia. The four of them levitated between the trees with rain slicing at their cloaks while Knight splashed along the rutted trail below. They had met no one so far except raiding parties of Lucis’s soldiers, each with a war mage and many with liegehounds, bent on flushing out Hesperines.

Cassia started to shove her tousled hair back under her hood, then realized there was still blood on her hand from the last skirmish. She shuddered.

“I’m sorry I missed that.” Lio hovered nearer, and his cleaning spell banished the mortal’s blood from her hand. “How is your arm?”

“It was only a small singe. The soreness has faded.”

Despite her reassurances, Lio’s aura was still full of anger. “I would give anything to step to Miranda right now. Thorns, I’d settle for Tendo flying us to her like baggage if it meant I didn’t have to watch another war mage hurl a fireball at my Grace.”

Mak laughed. “I doubt our favorite vulture would agree to that.”

“I do not need help flying now.” Cassia spun in the air and gave Lio a smile she hoped he would find comforting.

Knight bounded through a patch of mud, and Lyros floated aside to avoid the spray. “I know this is frustrating, but we must keep to our search strategy. Being methodical is our best chance of finding Miranda.”

“It’s begun to feel useless,” Cassia confessed.

Lyros shook his head. “We’ll do the same thing tonight that we’ve done every night. Follow Miranda’s trail as far as we can until dawn, then return to the tower to Slumber. And tomorrow, we’ll step back to where we left off tracking her and pick up her trail again.”

If Lyros drilled them on their strategies one more time, Cassia thought her mind would melt. If Mak and Lio were equally weary of it, though, no one protested. They knew Lyros was being protective and that he drove no one madder than himself. The farther they went into danger, the more he seemed to need to control every little decision they made.

“Our strategy is good,” Mak said. “If we could step to her, we wouldn’t have been here to take care those raiding parties. There aren’t any other Hesperines this far out to stop them from pillaging everything in their path. We all know what they do to any people who can’t defend themselves. Especially women.”

Lio grimaced. “You’re right. At least we can do a little for the war effort on our way and keep a few innocent people safe.”

They emerged from the trees to find a small cluster of homes, which must belong to those who tended the orchards. The settlement appeared undamaged, but deserted.

Lio’s power flashed among the cottages. “No one here. These families must have evacuated already.”

Cassia stroked Knight’s back as he sniffed heavy tracks left behind by horses and boots. It looked like the Knights of Andragathos had been through here, gathering up the villagers. “Let us pray they made it to safety with one of Flavian’s lords. I fear not everyone will reach a fortress before Lucis’s forces find them.”

Mak shook his head. “These raiders are like strikes of lightning. No rhyme or reason to their ambushes. It must be hard for Benedict to organize the evacuations.”

Cassia tried to shut out the fear and sadness that still drifted out of the abandoned homes. “It’s as if the whole domain is under siege. An entire population can’t survive locked inside Segetia’s castles all winter…or longer.”

“I know.” Lio touched her back. “I wish we had news from the front lines, too.”

She nodded. As usual, he knew what she was thinking. “I wonder how Solia and the Charge are faring. It’s hard to tell from here.”

So far, Miranda’s trail had gone around the main warfront, avoiding the territory where the bulk of Lucis’s army was clashing with Solia’s forces.

“We can’t draw any conclusions,” Lyros agreed, “but I don’t like what we’ve seen.”

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