Page 59 of Blood Feast

I feel the same.

Together, they turned to their Trial brothers.

“We’re in,” Lio announced.

Mak blew out a breath. “I was sure you would say no, Lio. And I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“You’re right, there was a time when I would never have considered this. But I’m not that person anymore.”

“You weren’t worried I would refuse?” Cassia asked.

“Not as worried,” Mak replied. “You’ll see why.”

“Can we leave from here without detection?” Lio asked.

Lyros nodded. “The magic from Nike’s statue will cover our departure.”

Mak held out his hand. On his palm rested a charm of some kind, a four-pointed star the size of his thumbnail. The pearlescent metal caught the starlight, gleaming brighter than silver and steel.

“Is that crafted from adamas?” Lio asked.

“No more questions. Not here. Join hands.” When the four of them linked their hands in a ring, Mak looked at each of them. “Ready?”

Cassia nodded. “Yes.”

“Whatever happens,” said Lio, “we have each other’s backs. And no regrets. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” they all echoed.

Cassia felt the pull of Mak’s magic as he stepped. The cliffs seem to shift and split around them. A weight slammed into her chest, and she smelled blood. As a vice of power closed around her heart, she wondered what in Hespera’s name they had just agreed to.

REFORGED

After the magic groundCassia up, it spat her back out into the world.

She staggered, clutching at her chest, and caught herself on the edge of a wooden table. “Bleeding thorns. I see why we couldn’t bring Knight.”

A trail of red leaked from one of Lio’s nostrils. “What did we just step through?”

Mak put a hand under Cassia’s elbow. “Sorry. That was the best I could do to open Nike’s wards. They aren’t friendly, even to her own blood relatives.”

“The first time is the hardest.” Lyros steadied Lio and handed him a handkerchief. “Now that the protections approve of you, it will get easier.”

Cassia looked around them, her chin dropping. The walls of the round stone chamber were lined with weapons of all kinds. More than she had seen anywhere in Orthros, except the Armory of Akofo, where they were to remain locked at all times.

A memory flashed in her mind of Lucis’s solar, her personal torture chamber, where she had knelt before him in the shadow of armaments that had belonged to the kings of Tenebra.

She could not see any of that ugliness in the Hesperine creations around her. Perhaps she should. And yet how could she? These blades rang with the dark battle cry of blood magic. Like her roses, which had already killed for Orthros.

Lio walked over to study one sword. “Itisadamas.”

“The hardest metal in the world,” Mak confirmed.

“But no one knows how to craft it,” Lio protested. “It’s well documented that the Blood Errant found their weapons in a Hesperite ruin with no evidence of how they were created.”

Mak coughed. “Nike added that entirely fictional account to the annals herself, under the pseudonym of a dead historian.”

“Your sister tampered with the historical record?” Lio seemed most scandalized by this above all, and Cassia almost laughed.

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