Page 200 of Blood Feast

More roses sprouted to reinforce the tangle over the door in front of Skleros. But Cassia turned back to Lio.

She framed his face in her small, strong hands. Her strokes on his cheeks threatened to pull him back to himself. He couldn’t come back. Not until justice was done.

Don’t do this, his Grace pleaded.

They deserve it.

That doesn’t matter. Don’t make yourself their judge.

Lio sailed up, out of her hold.I’ve seen your day terrors about Azad and Neana. How can you deny you want justice for them?

Not like this!

The war mages’ sweat and offal spoiled the air. Their heartbeats pounded faster and faster. Another moment, and they would beat their last.

Stop!Cassia shouted in Lio’s heart.

Her magic slammed into their Grace Union. Her power twined through his every thought and tangled around his soul. There was nothing in him but her. His link with the mages shattered, and his staff flew from his grasp.

He hovered there, blind in the thrall of her beautiful, wild power.

When she released him, he fell. Her levitation caught him and set him on his feet.

The mages lay around him, their heads at unnatural angles. Broken necks. Swift deaths at the Stewards’ hands. Mak and Lyros stared at Lio over the bodies.

Cassia landed in front of the door, where her roses lay in tatters, chopped away by a sickle.

The dead screamed inCassia’s veins. Villagers? Mages? She didn’t know anymore.

She couldn’t afford to lose her focus on the pendant. It moved through the temple, a whisper of Lustra magic. The letting site murmured back, urging her forward.

Cassia beckoned. “I can track Skleros with the pendant. This way!”

Lyros gave Lio’s shoulders a shake. “Focus on Skleros’s dream wards now. Nothing else. Do you understand me?”

Lio yanked himself free, snatching up his staff. “I understood you when you said to do what I must to protect us from the fire mages!”

Mak shoved them both toward the door. Cassia plunged through the hole in the roses, the others close behind her. With a crash, more roof beams collapsed behind them in the burning chamber.

The hallway was so narrow that Lio’s body pressed against hers. At the physical touch, their pain blended.

She poured it into a spell, ripping roses up out of the floor along the length of the hallway. A line of fire traps exploded, leaving her flowers in piles of ash.

“Good move.” Mak’s ward rose in front of her.

Cassia looked back at Lyros. “You predicted Skleros might escape. We fall back on your next plan?”

“Can you do it?” he asked.

She fingered the web of Lustra magic that glimmered throughout the temple. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

Their success or failure, survival or death, depended on her magic now.

Skleros was a moving target, racing along a twisted path through the temple complex. She closed her eyes, trying to anticipate his destination.

The others followed her down the hall to a library. She flew across the room toward an alcove. With a silent apology to the Mage King, she knocked scrolls out of her way with a blast of levitation, then grabbed the solid oak shelves and physically hurled them aside. “Skleros is on the other side of this wall. He’s probably warned the rest of the mages.”

“Follow the plan.” There was no more anger in Lyros’s voice. “Please. Stay alive tonight.”

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