Page 132 of Blood Feast

“Let me manage the spell alone,” Lyros told him.

“Not a chance, my Grace.” Mak’s magic rose to join Lyros’s, and the dark steadiness of their wards wrapped around everyone.

“Does this mean we’re really back in the tower?” Cassia wondered.

Lio’s thelemancy touched her mind, adding new dimension to their Union. “I believe so. My magic is working, too. We must have left the Lustra’s creation and re-entered the world.”

“How is that possible? The tower looks completely different.”

“We still can’t step, so this place is clearly under the influence of Lustra magic, as well.”

“Yes. Yes, I can feel it. I could be wrong…” She gave a humorless laugh. “I could always be wrong about any of this. ButI don’t think this is the final trap guarding the tower’s secrets. I think this might be the secret itself.”

Lio’s power filled her mind ward. “If this soothsaying enchantment affects our Wills, I’ll try to protect us.”

“Our wards are ready,” said Lyros.

Cassia channeled magic up from the letting site, directing it into her incomplete foci. Her dagger and pendant stemmed the measureless flow. The whispers grew louder.

They called her forward. She stepped into the symbol, and Lio moved with her so they both stood inside one point of the star.

“The spell feels off-balance,” she said. “Mak…Lyros…would you be willing to join us inside the symbol?”

“Anything you need,” Mak replied.

“Where shall we stand?” asked Lyros.

“Each of you take one point of the star to form a triangle with us.”

Mak stepped into one section of the nonagram, and Lyros limped into the other, his staff tapping on the floor. She could feel their auras pass over the border of the symbol. The magic grew stronger, but it felt like an erratic heartbeat to her.

Cassia drew her brows together. The uneven magic was forming a headache behind her eyes. “No, this isn’t right either. Why doesn’t it feel right?”

Lio’s magic reached through her senses again. “I’m not sure. I’ve never encountered anything like this nonagram. No other magical paradigm has spell patterns based on threes.”

The enchantment demanded she use three affinities. Was there any hope of answering the voices with only one?

No, Cassia had more than a single Lustra affinity. She had blood magic, too.

“Hesperine spell patterns are based on unions,” she murmured. “Unions so powerful, they can even bind together opposing forces…”

“Flesh and spirit,” Lio said. “Thorns and roses. Hulaia and haima.”

Haima, the paradigm of blood magic. Cassia’s fangs slid down. “We shall do this the Hesperine way, and if the Changing Queen doesn’t like it, she can keep her secrets.”

She felt Lio’s fierce smile in their Union. “If you think committing heresy in the symbol of your ancestors is the answer, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“With you all the way,” said Mak, although he was barely on his feet.

Lyros was a ball of worry for his Grace, but he didn’t hesitate either. “Let’s give the Lustra a taste of Hespera’s thorns.”

Cassia motioned for her Trial brothers to move closer together. “You two stand inside the same point across from Lio and me.”

They did ask she asked, sliding a supportive arm around each other.

Cassia lifted Rosethorn and made a slash on both her hands. Droplets of her blood flew from the cuts and hung suspended in the air, caught between the pull of the enchantment and the push of her Will.

Her new ability for levitation won the contest. Her blood obeyed her, sweeping through the air and down to the floor. She traced over the glowing green lines of her choosing, forming her own symbol out of the nonagram. Five petals and five thorns, Hespera’s Rose imprinted in crimson over her ancestor’s tracings. She looped one petal around Mak and Lyros, pointed a thorn at her and Lio, and drew the center of the rose around the standing stone.

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