Page 212 of Blood Feast

Cassia survived the Slumber,and when she lowered her rose defenses, no enemies were lurking beyond. She would live to turn herself in to the Charge.

Her control slipped, and her Craving drove her to reach for Lio’s presence. His thoughts and emotions eluded her behind his mind magic. Her hunger spiked, her heart pounding faster with instinctual fear.

He was hiding from her. That could mean only one thing. As she had feared, he was doing something dangerous.

Before he carried out whatever his plan was, she had to get the Charge’s attention. But she would surrender on her own terms. She wouldn’t go meekly to the elders. To keep what little negotiating power remained to her, she would have to remind them what she was capable of.

Could she even do that without her foci? Perhaps she was doomed to fail at this, too.

She stood in the spot where her magic had first awoken. Knight waited on the edge of the garden, as he had once done while she worked in her rows of peas.

Each of Cassia’s choices since that night had brought her to this moment. She had survived all of that. For what? Hespera had saved her, remade her in this place in her Gifting visions. Only for her to fail.

Cassiawaslike Phaedros. She hadn’t been worthy of the Gift.

But if she surrendered now, at least she would never become like Kallikrates.

The game was over for her.

She knelt and dug her fingers into the soil. She let her Will flow into the Lustra, showing it what she required. A magical explosion, just like last time, which would bring the elders down on her.

The letting site didn’t pull. It gave. Magic, her magic, rushed into her. It was so beautiful and so familiar that tears pricked her eyes.

Dark blood and verdant earth filled her being. No explosion, but a quiet sustenance. Her dual magic overran the letting site through her and carried her mind beyond Paradum.

What was the Lustra doing? This was not what she had asked for.

In her mind’s eye, she flowed through the Lustra passages under Patria. Deep into the heart of Solorum. She washed up before the final portal.

A sound came from within the third door. The rush of liquid. She put her hands to the rune-inscribed panel. The vibration in the stone matched her heartbeat.

She looked down at herself. Blood flowed along her arms and into the door. Its runes drank of her.

Cassia opened her eyes to see soil and her own hands. No red trails marked her arms. But she could still feel the current that ran between her and this garden and the final door.

When she had healed this letting site, she had repaired more than she’d known.

“This is a node,” she breathed.

Surely the first one Kallikrates had ever destroyed in his quest to open the portals. The same night he had destroyed her. Or so he had believed.

She had restored the third door. She had broken the first two. So much healing and destruction existed in her, side by side.

“I don’t know how to do this. Hespera help me, I don’t know how to be both at once.”

There was no Hesperine here to give Cassia answers except herself.

She covered her face, smearing soil on her cheeks. “Goddess, help me.”

Would Hespera lend her ear, when Cassia had so much blood on her hands?

Cassia still believed the Goddess would answer. Somewhere deep in her, she even believed Hespera would open her arms to a Gift Collector.

Cassia didn’t know if she and Miranda could ever forgive each other. But she couldn’t bear for Miranda to have no hope of forgiveness. Because that meant Cassia might run out of chances, too.

Hespera never gave up on anyone. In her name, neither did Cassia. That meant not giving up on Miranda. Or herself.

Cassia lifted her face to the moons. She sat there and bared her soul to herself and the Goddess, with the grace immortals had always given her.

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