Page 121 of Blood Feast

Dust tickled Cassia’s nose, and she wrinkled it at the piles of mundane barrels and crates. “Really? The men of this epoch turned the most magical chamber in the Changing Queen’s tower into a storage room?”

“Foolish mortals.” Lio knelt between a moldering rug and a rusted trunk and ran his fingers over the planks of the floor. “Can you feel this?”

She crouched beside him. No spell marks were visible on the grimy wooden floor, but she could sense them. “Oh, yes. There was a ritual symbol here.”

“How many nodes?” he asked.

“Three times three,” she answered.

“Another nonagram like the one Mak and Lyros found at the lighthouse.”

“Like the nine standing stones, too.”

Lio got to his feet, bracing one hand on the ceiling. “Our Trial brothers will have our fangs if we experiment on this without them.”

Cassia nodded. “Let’s wait for them.”

They had moved a few of the crates and barrels out of the way when they heard Mak and Lyros calling them from below. They headed for the stairs.

Cassia paused at the top. “I wonder if I can levitate down, on purpose this time.”

Lio gave her a kiss that left her blood pounding and her magic singing. “There. That should give your new instinct for levitation some encouragement.”

She realized she was nose to nose with him and glanced down to find her feet hovering off the floor. Blushing, she didn’t try to concentrate on the spell, but let her intuition take over. She didn’t sink.

Knight circled her fretfully, nosing the bottom of her shoes. Lio shook his head and put a reassuring arm around Knight’s neck.

Cassia managed to float down a few steps without falling and breaking an ankle. Holding her arms out slightly, she tried a pirouette. Lio caught her before she knocked one of the torches off the wall.

“Perhaps try floating in a single direction for now,” he suggested with an affectionate smile.

“Good idea.” She focused her Will ondown.

She swept along the curve of the stairwell while Lio walked down with a very puzzled Knight.

They found Mak and Lyros waiting on the first floor. When Cassia floated in, Mak beamed at her. “Well, look who learned to levitate!”

She gave them a bow midair, and they all clapped for her. Looking down, she tried to lower herself to the floor again. She floated a bit higher. “Oh dear.”

Lio pulled her down and held her until she was sure she wasn’t going to float off again.

“Good timing,” Lyros said. “That will certainly be an asset out here. How did you manage it?”

“It turns out I simply needed motivation,” she replied.

Lyros looked at Lio. “Did you toss her off the top of the tower?”

Mak shook his head. “We would have heard screaming.”

“Not under my veils,” Lio said innocently.

“He did no such thing.” Thorns, Cassia really needed to learn veils next so she could conceal it whenever she blushed like this.

“Ahh.” Lyros gave a knowing nod. “That kind of motivation. Clever, Lio.”

Mak snickered. “That was certainly a more pleasant way to learn than jumping off Wisdom’s Precipice.”

“We also looked for portals,” Cassia interjected.

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