Page 124 of Blood Feast

Very diplomatic,Lio said in her mind, putting his scroll away.

Lyros rubbed his neck and nodded. Mak sighed.

Cassia consulted her intuition again, as she had when they’d searched for the stone circle. She felt a tug and started walking. Several paces brought them to an open circle in the ivy maze.

“This looks promising,” Lio said.

A soft rushing sound chased his words. The rustle became the groan of vines.

The circle of ivy started to grow, shrinking the space around them.

“No. Hurry, back this way!” Cassia dashed for the archway they had just come through.

The ivy grew together faster than immortals could run, sealing the only way out.

They retreated to the center of the circle and put their backs to each other to face the advancing ivy.

“Our wards aren’t working!” Mak cried. “We can’t cast anything in here.”

Chain belts rattled as the other three drew their weapons. The ring of vine walls coiled tighter. stealing their time to strategize as Cassia wracked her mind for a plan.

Yet Lio’s voice was calm. “Pretend the ivy vines are those roses you retrained in the Ritual hall. Use your magic to make it grow where you Will.”

It had taken her many nights of effort to achieve that. Now she had mere moments.

But she didn’t confess her self-doubt aloud in front of their Trial brothers, who had so bravely defended her before. She wouldn’t let everyone down this time. She couldn’t.

There was only one person here who could save them from rabid Lustra magic, and it was her.

This time her emotions didn’t hold her power back. They drove her magic deep down into the letting site. The instant she tapped it, the full force of its power shot up through her, rooting her to the spot where she stood.

Not her letting site, with its gentle, ravenous blood magic. Not the wounded beast at Paradum. A living letting site, ancient and lush, pouring forth the power of the Lustra through the stems and branches of her body. She held out her hands, her breath coming hard. She felt so alive.

“Cassia, it’s only growing faster!” Mak’s warning reached her from a distance.

A coil of ivy slid around her throat, caressing. Then began to tighten.

She gasped and clutched the tendril, but it was too strong even for her immortal hand to break. She sliced at her ivy noose with her dagger. Where she cut off a branch, two more grew in its place.

She looked frantically around her. Lio held off a branch with Final Word. Knight snapped, growling, but every time his jaws tore through a vine, there was always another.

She bared her fangs at the vicious plants. She had not reclaimed her magic only for her own legacy to defeat her now. She would not let the Changing Queen’s power treat her like a foolish apprentice, not when she was the last and only Silvicultrix it had.

And yet, she was an apprentice. None of the skills she’d learned so far were of any use. Not intuition. Not a battle of Will with the raw power of a letting site. Least of all her dagger, the most basic of her artifacts, which she had clumsily wielded when she had no knowledge of magic at all.

She needed advanced magic. Kalos’s lesson came back to her.…you need a triune focus…the most powerful Lustra artifacts…

She closed her hand over her pendant so tightly that the ivy carvings dug into her skin. Its magic, familiar and yet unknown, whispered to her. She tried to feed her power into it.

It didn’t respond except with those whispers, almost but not quite understandable, mocking her.

She let out a cry of disbelief. What good was the Changing Queen’s focus if it did nothing against her traps?

Lio and Lyros stood on opposite sides of the group, their staff and spear braced against the oncoming wall of ivy, their arms straining. Mak swung the Star of Orthros at the green mass, leaving a swath of damage that closed in an instant. A vine snaked up his leg, tracing the laces of his sandal.

She tightened her hand on Rosethorn’s hilt, remembering his kind words.

I couldn’t bear for you to lose it. You can’t replace an artifact like that, not when your battles have created it for you.

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