Page 178 of Blood Feast

Splinters dug into Cassia’shands, but she pressed on into the ruins of the keep. With her Hesperine strength, she shoved more scorched beams out of her way.

“Baat!” she commanded Knight again.

He whined and scratched at the rubble in the demolished doorway.

“No, darling. You may not come in here with me. This mess is no place for a big dog.”

She feared he would hurt himself or get trapped. But her Hesperine agility let her shimmy safely under fallen pillars and levitate over broken stones.

The residue of war magic was everywhere, acrid to her arcane senses. This was the work of an enchanted siege engine. She knew what the chances were of finding anyone alive. Not a soul had lived through the siege of Castra Roborra.

But they’d had no Hesperines to protect them. There had been Chargers here at the refugee camp, just like at Patria, which had held out for months against the Order of Anthros’s trebuchets. Surely the Hesperines had managed to survive, to save someone.

An arcane glimmer caught her attention. She pushed her awareness deeper into the ruins.

Did you find something?Lio asked.

I don’t know…

She navigated around a pile of fallen stones and nearly tripped over another body trapped in the collapse. A Knight of Andragathos she didn’t know. She turned away from the sight and tried to focus on the gleam of magic she’d felt.

There. Yes, thank the Goddess. That was a trace of Hesperine magic.

She crept further into the keep, coughing in the ash she stirred. At last the rubble opened up to a clear space, a cocoon of safety inside the devastation. Stones had piled up around it in a perfect sphere.

She could still feel the imprint of the shadow wards that had held the collapse at bay. But there was no Hesperine to be seen.

She drew a shallow breath and tasted light. That radiance filled her lungs and veins, a shout of triumph and a final cry of despair. She put a hand to her chest, her fingers twisting in the front of her robe over her heart.

Cassia, what is it?

She let her tears fall.One of our people died here.

Complete silence fell over the Blood Union between her and Lio, Mak and Lyros. They stopped together, holding a moment of eternity for this Hesperine who should have had forever.

Who?Lio pleaded.

She knelt and dug her fingers into the soil, reaching for the weary Lustra. Could it give her a sign of what had happened here?

A vision ghosted through her mind. A Hesperine with a lean warrior’s build and shoulder-length black hair. She knew him.

She held his image in her thoughts.It was Azad.

No!Lio’s sorrow overflowed their Union.

The shared a memory of the last time they had seen Azad. He had danced the night away at their avowal celebration with Neana, his Grace.

One of their own had been martyred here. Azad had been a Ritual tributary of Blood Komnena. Apollon’s Gift had flowed in his and Neana’s veins, as surely as in Lio and Cassia’s.

Through the Lustra, she saw Azad standing alone at the heart of the keep. Fire and stone rained down while his wards held back the destruction. But every ball of magefire the trebuchets hurled at him brought new lines of strain to his face and wore at his protective spells.

Another flaming stone shattered against his magic, and burning fragments sprayed his ward. One ember made the smallest breach in his spell.

The next gout of flame washed over his defenses. The fire found that vulnerable point and ate at it.

No, no, no,Cassia chanted in her mind as the fate already written played out in her mind’s eye. Lio watched with her, sharing the horror in her every thought.

Fire spilled through the breach in the ward, and Anthros’s element engulfed Azad. His once-immortal body returned to the Goddess in a blinding flare of white.

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