Page 230 of Blood Feast

She knew their chances of survival against the kind of power Kallikrates could wield through Miranda.Stay alive. Let us protect you while you attack Miranda’s mind.

He pulled her into his arms.You won’t lose me.

You can’t promise me that, just as Azad couldn’t promise it to Neana.

We can promise each other that we will go down together.

She clung to him, tears burning at the back of her eyes.Yes. I swear to you. I will be at your side and never let you fight your last battle alone.

And I will never leave you to waste away without me.

He stepped back. Somehow, he was smiling, and the sight made her heart ache.

She lifted the chalice, and he bit his wrist, making a generous libation into the cup. Cassia braced herself and opened her own vein to add her blood to his.

The petals and thorns of Hespera’s Rose glowed with crimson light, and magic swelled inexorably up from the stones. Downfrom the stars. Cassia drew in a deep breath, and she tasted blood and roses in the back of her mouth.

“Hespera’s Sanctuary,” Lio breathed.

Cassia let her magic run through the temple, digging deep roots and drawing in blood spells long-untended. As potential stirred to life beneath the ruins, she gasped. “It’s working.”

She eased her spell out of the ground. Seedlings lifted their little green faces from between the broken stones around the Ritual circle. Magic throbbed through their veins and hers as they grew into mighty vines and flowered.

The spell felt so right. Two powers, wound into one whole. This was her magic, a perfect Union.

Yes,her Grace affirmed.Your power…it’s so beautiful, Cassia.

She swept her spell out from the Ritual circle, and everywhere it touched, black roses bloomed. She let them twine around the pillars and fill the breaches in the walls. Following them in her mind, she stretched all the way to the gate and conjured a barrier of thorns where the Sanctuary ward had once stood.

The vines grew together, closing the final gap in her defenses, just as an aura loomed before the temple. Familiar, yet far more powerful than ever before.

Cassia gripped Lio’s hand. “She’s here.”

LIO'S VOW

A spell boomed fromthe direction of the gate, and the impact made the ground tremble under Lio’s feet. Standing behind Cassia, he wrapped one arm around her and planted Final Word to steady them against the next barrage.

She raised their avowal cup in both hands, and black rose petals swirled around them on an arcane current. “It will take more than a few lightning spells to demolish my roses this time.”

Mak let out a whoop. “I can feel the blood magic they’re pulling out of the temple. It’s almost as if the Sanctuary wards have come back to life.”

“That will give even Kallikrates a challenge.” Lyros raised his voice triumphantly over the crash of war magic.

“I’ll make her pay for every step she takes toward us.” Cassia leaned back against Lio. “Will this buy you enough time?”

“Yes.” He honed in on Miranda’s tainted mind.

While she fought her way through the fortifications, he would break down her mental defenses. And he would not stop until he knew what lay within the doors under Solorum Palace.

Standing in the whorl of Cassia’s magic, Lio drew his own power out of himself. His surroundings faded from his awareness as he turned inward. A distant crack of lightning reached his ears, but all he could smell was the death that shrouded Miranda’s thoughts.

The structure of her dream wards was forever imprinted on his thoughts, an arcane memory forged the night the Lustra hadhelped him defeat her. He had no letting site to empower him tonight, but he had his knowledge of her mind.

Calling on the pure blood magic in his veins, he navigated through the poisonous outer layers of her thoughts. Her resistance burned cold through his head, weighing on his chest, and a shudder wracked him.

He knew better than to force his way through. He must find his way through the befuddling shapes of her dream wards to her innermost weaknesses.

He wove through clouds of smoke, evading deceptive mirrors. Reflections of Miranda’s past flashed at him. A crow coming to life in her hands. A human dying on her blade.

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