Page 244 of Blood Feast

Kallikrates, faster than thought, drove the relic blade into Lio’s throat. The statue of Hespera shattered into countless shards as Lio watched his own mind break.

Lio’s cry of paindied on the Collector’s blade, but Cassia screamed for him. His jaw hung open. He lifted his hands to his neck, catching his own blood.

Words, thoughts, everything Cassia was ceased. She became her Grace’s pain.

The Collector staggered away from Lio, his hands around the hilt of Rosethorn. He tried uselessly to pull her blade from his heart. A hole was growing from the wound, eating away his form to reveal a starry sky.

“You are no thelemancer, Cassia,” Kallikrates hissed. “You have no power in his mind.”

“I am the power in his mind.”

The walls, the air, the sky above were a part of him and of her. Fractures were spreading across these manifestations of his tortured mind, and the dome above cracked a warning. But she was present in his every thought, and she would not let his innermost Sanctuary fall.

At her summons, the fragments of the Goddess’s body spun around her. She hurled them all at Kallikrates.

A flurry of sacred stone shredded him. More bright stars shone through his wounds. His groan of shock echoed to the dome of the Sanctuary.

He had finally met a magic he could never collect. Grace Union was more powerful than him.

Cassia moved in front of Lio, pouring the strength of their bond into her dagger. Her black roses snaked out from the blade embedded in the Collector’s chest. This time, they took hold of him.

As he opened his mouth to speak more poison, she wrapped her vines around his neck and squeezed. The voice from their nightmares halted in his throat.

Cassia raised a whorl of blood from the chalice. “I will cast you out. I will hunt you down, and when I find you, the price I collectwill make you wish for the fleeting existence of a forgotten mortal.”

She flung the blood at him. It splattered across his thelemantic form. Tiny cracks sounded, like frost eating at glass.

The Collector shattered. Shards of frozen blood scattered across the Sanctuary. As the smoke began to clear, the moons shone down through the skylight, making the crimson slivers glitter.

Cassia fell to her knees beside Lio and eased him onto his back. The relic blade was gone, banished with is creator. She pressed one hand to her Grace’s bleeding wound and held her wrist to his mouth.

“Stay with me!”

His eyes slid shut. The walls of the Sanctuary disappeared, and they were kneeling in a vast expanse of stars.

“No! Hold on!”

She wrapped him in their bond. His heart beat with hers. But his mind faded beyond her reach.

THE WOUND

Reality returned in pieces.Her hand, covering Lio’s unblemished throat. His lips, cold upon her wrist. Mak was holding him for her, massaging Lio’s jaw. Lyros had his arm around her.

“I can’t get him to bite.” Mak’s voice, angry, urgent.

Lyros pressed a strong hand to her forehead. “Cassia? Are you back with us?”

“I’m here,” she said, dazed.

But Lio wasn’t. Her heart raced, and she felt his matching pulse under her fingers. How could his mind be so far away?

“I—I can’t reach him. Not even in Grace Union.”

Thank the Goddess for Lyros’s steady voice. “Try to describe how your Union feels. Does he seem asleep, unconscious? Or is his presence weakening?”

Cassia took a deep breath through her fear and focused on Lio’s aura. “I can feel his mental wounds. His magic has never been like this. As if he actually exhausted it.”

“Is it getting worse?” Lyros asked.

---