Page 127 of Blood Feast

Lyros lifted his spear. “If they’re as friendly as the ivy, get ready to fight.”

Cassia’s horror crept over Lio. She said nothing, but he could feel her terrible realization. If the Changing Queen’s traps required all three of her affinities to escape, then this test of her beast magic was one they wouldn’t pass.

“We’ll find a way,” she said with bravery he knew she didn’t feel. “That’s what Hesperines do, isn’t it? Ebah may have designed one solution to this puzzle, but we heretics will invent our own.”

“That’s right!” Mak called into the night. “Come and get us, you doddering spell-beasts. I bet you’ve never met a Hesperine before, have you?”

They fell into their fighting formation, back-to-back in a circle again. Knight let out a howl unlike any sound Lio had heard him make before.

Unearthly howls answered him. Wolves.

The pack emerged from the fog, nine beasts as large as Knight. Their eyes, orange as magefire, held uncanny intelligence.

“What are they?” Lyros whispered.

“Not illusions,” Lio murmured back, “nor similacra. Not mundane wolves, either.”

“Creations,” Cassia breathed.

Knight howled again, and the pack took up his song. Dare they hope the wolves were their allies?

A single wolf turned away from them and trotted a few steps along the path. As one, the others surrounding them faced forward.

“This feels more like an escort than an attack,” Cassia said with relief. “I think they’re offering to lead us out of the marsh.”

The wolf in the lead, surely the alpha of the pack, looked over his shoulder at her expectantly. When she hesitated, he spun to face her. His teeth peeled back, and his warning growl sent a chill down Lio’s spine. They all stood very still.

Cassia took a slow breath. “I think he wants me to communicate with him using my beast magic but I…I can’t.”

Lio put a reassuring hand on her back, trying to think of a plan. “You communicate with Knight intuitively even without your beast magic. Perhaps the wolves will respond as he does?”

Her misery intensified. “It’s not there anymore.”

“What’s not there?” he asked, trying to understand.

“The connection I felt with Knight.”

“No! That was your latent power—your innate capacity for your future beast magic. That should still be there.”

She shook her head.

He couldn’t bear her looming sense of failure, her fear that she couldn’t protect them. He was the one who had Gifted her before she had claimed all her power, without knowing what the consequences might be. He cursed everything they still didn’t understand.

The promise he’d made to her the night of her transformation burned through his veins. He would not rest until she claimed all her power.

The wolf took a step forward. This time, his howl sounded like a war cry. The pack turned on them and attacked.

Lio swept his staff out at the three wolves lunging toward him and Cassia. There came no impact of adamas on muscle and bone. The staff passed right through their bodies.

He dropped his weapon and threw himself in front of her, his arms up to shield his heart and throat. The fangs that closed around his forearm were no spectral touch. Pain tore through his flesh. A sickening crack rang in his ears, punctuated by Mak and Lyros’s shouts.

Lio swung his other hand, aiming a fist at the wolf’s jaw. His knuckles passed right through its head.

Then there was a heavy thud, and something jostled the wolf off Lio’s arm. Fresh agony burned through his wound, but he was free.

Knight wrestled the wolf to the ground, aiming his bite at its jugular. The other two wolves had already retreated a pace with scrapes marring their fur.

“Oedann,” Lio barked out, then whirled to check on Cassia.

---