Page 27 of Blood Feast

He’s there too?Cassia called.

Throwing taunts through Lucis’s soldiers,Lio said.

We’ll send him our own message.

The Collector gave no sign he had sensed her in Lio’s thoughts. Just like the first time they had dueled him together in a waking dream, their Grace Union was somehow shielded from his mental invasion. That sacred bond held true, beyond the Old Master’s power.

Another wave of arrows rained down, and Lio shuddered at the pain he felt in Mak and Lyros’s auras.

Miranda’s visions rose again in his and Cassia’s joined thoughts. Hesperines dying in flares of light. Mortals caught between them and the mages’ flames. The odors of bloodshed and burning flesh.

Here, now, one of her visions could so easily became reality.

Pick our battles,Cassia said.

Retreat to better ground,Lio agreed. “We have to retreat!”

Still running from me, Deukalion?the Collector hissed.You cannot run far enough. There is nowhere you can hide.

Tell him we’re not hiding,Cassia snarled.We’re coming for him.

We always violate the rules of your game,Lio shouted at him.We are the complication you fail to predict. Cassia and I will keep breaking your grand design—for eternity.

Lio felt the moment when the certainty spread through the Collector’s vast mind. His rage burst forth like a poison, and the archers he inhabited staggered.

It is done,the Collector hissed.She is one of you now.

A laugh tore out of Lio, rife with his and Cassia’s triumph.We won that round, Kallikrates.

My most delicate instrument. You destroyed her. I will destroy you.

The heart hunters, cladin white furs, blended into the snow below the precipice. But Cassia could easily track their movements with her Hesperine eyes. Her ears picked up four dozen distinct heartbeats.

They advanced through the brewing snowstorm, their white liegehounds baying at their sides. Knight let out a warning howl that echoed down into the ravine.

The men and their dogs looked like what they were: playing pieces on a great game board.

Cassia was watching the Collector advance upon the Queens’ ward.

“His name is Kallikrates,” Cassia said.

“Hespera’s blood,” Uncle Argyros murmured. “You have put a name to one of the Old Masters.”

Cassia reached deeper into the mountains, searching for even a hint of the power that came to her so easily from the letting site. “There really are six of them, a hex of necromancers who have existed for thousands upon thousands of years. They were mortal men when the Diviner Queen opened her spirit gate in the Empire and traveled to this side of the world for the first time. When she taught the people here to use magic, the Old Masters began to abuse that power. She managed to protect theEmpire by collapsing the gate, but this continent has been their tournament field ever since.”

“Cassia…once again, what you and Lio have learned is turning our understanding of the past and present on its head. These are secrets of the ages. And yet you saw the shattered gate with your own eyes, and you have also beheld the Old Masters’ game.”

She watched the heart hunters reach the top of the pass, powerless to hold them off. Where was her Lustra now? “They control everything, Uncle Argyros. They’re the puppet masters pulling the strings of every king and mage and peasant. It’s all a sick contest to them. Their sport has killed entire civilizations. There are eras of history we never knew existed, because the Old Masters’ past matches erased them.”

“So this is what drives them. These are the inner workings we see when we peer into minds so powerful and ancient they have become inhuman. It is a wonder they have not destroyed each other yet. It seems they will preserve their own existence and the balance of power among them at any cost.”

Cassia nodded. “They have rules. The game in our time is a match of subtlety and strategy. They are to keep their influence a secret from humankind. Kallikrates lives for conspiracy, so he thinks this is his opportunity to win a round.”

“What are the criteria to win? What is the prize for the Old Master who emerges the victor?”

“We don’t know, but the answer may well be hidden behind that sealed door. Lio and I need to find out what’s inside.”

A heart hunter’s horn droned through the air, and Cassia shivered. The last time she’d heard that sound, the avalanche it conjured had nearly killed her. “We have to do something!”

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