Page 122 of Blood Feast

Lio held up his hands. “And we waited for you before experimenting with anything.”

“Diligently searching for portals this entire time, were you?” Mak inquired. “Mmm hmm.”

“Say you two,” Lio replied, “returning from a one-hour watch that lasted much longer than an hour.”

“My Grace is very diligent in his duties,” Lyros said with an amused tilt to his brows.

They climbed the stairs, finding nothing but more abandoned rooms on their way up. At the top of the tower, they gathered in the center of the chamber where everyone could stand up straight.

“It’s definitely like the nonagram we saw at the lighthouse,” Lyros agreed after Lio had explained their findings.

“Any ideas what to do with it?” Mak asked Cassia.

She opened her senses to the faded ritual pattern still perceptible to her mind’s eye. Nothing happened.

Lio took up his position behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Ready to try an active casting?”

Her fears stirred again, but she drew a steadying breath and leaned into his hands. She sank into herself, and her connection to the Lustra felt like a steady stream, not a river raging out of its banks during flood season.

Lio squeezed her shoulders.See how much better you feel when your power isn’t bottled up inside you?

I suppose we’ll simply have to wear it out in bed prior to any spell I cast.

Your magic tutor approves this plan. I would also like to point out that channeling into me when we feast does more than take the edge off your power. That helps you build your intuitive ability to manipulate the magic, the same wayrigorous training exercises teach a warrior’s muscles what to do in battle.

In that case, you’re welcome to train my magical muscles anytime.

You know I always make our magic lessons as pleasurable as possible.

The Lustra’s power seeped up into her. Beneath that gentle trickle, she sensed a deep, vast reservoir.

“The tower is built on a letting site,” she realized.

She was unprepared for Lio’s reaction. His determination hit their Union with a force she felt to her toes.

“We found one.” His voice was tight with emotion. “Is it damaged like the one at Paradum?”

“No.”

“Kallikrates never got to this one. Can you sense the beast magic and soothsaying in it?”

She hesitated, also unprepared for her own deep sense of frustration. “I don’t know. It all feels like power to me. It’s not like my letting site, where I can feel my blood magic and plant magic. My real affinity.”

“The completed triune affinity is your real magic. One of the Silvicultrixes’ original, intact letting sites could hold the key to awakening the rest of your power.”

“Right now, the key to that door is what we need to focus on.”

“We’ll talk about this more later.”

Cassia bit her lip and opened herself cautiously to the new and unknown letting site. The power she left untapped loomed below, tempting, terrifying. She let a mere rivulet of Lustra magic flow through her and Rosethorn into the nonagram.

The fabric of the world shifted. The stones beneath their feet turned to rich soil. Vines snapped around them, and the walls were gone, replaced by walls and arches of ivy, so tangled she could see only glimpses of a strange sky above them.

Lio, their Trial brothers, and Knight were still beside her, trapped with her in a labyrinth of her ancestor’s making.

TRIAL BY LEAF

“Right,” Mak said, “I’dsay that’s a sign the Changing Queen wanted this secret to stay secret.”

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