Page 180 of Blood Feast

With a grimace of distaste, Lio dug into the five mages’s minds. Pity he didn’t want to feel tempered his power. The arcane pathways inside the men were scarred in a way he recognized. “One of Kallikrates’s Overseers definitely did this.”

Lyros shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would the Collector do this to his and Lucis’s mage allies?”

Mak gestured at the war mage in front of him. “I recognize this one. We faced him at Patria.”

Recognition came over Lyros’s face. “You’re right. This is the war circle from the siege, or what’s left of them, in any case. The other two of their brethren died the night they attacked Mederi—one to Rudhira’s blade, the other to Lio’s magic.”

Lio tried to think through the roar in his ears. The war mages were surrounded by parts of bodies. It was difficult to make sense of the dismembered remains. But he made himself study their clothes and wounds. All of them were Lucis’s soldiers, and it looked like they’d been butchered not with the professional instruments of war but by a Gift Collector’s brutal tools.

“Miranda did this,” Lio said. “She took revenge for her people.”

Mak blew out a breath. “What are we going to do with them? I want to make them pay as much as you do, but it doesn’t seem like justice to kill them when they’re no longer a danger to anyone.”

Mak was right. Miranda had already subjected the mages to the worst punishment any of them could imagine.

So why did Lio still want to punish someone, anyone, for all the nameless pain he had swallowed?

The war mage nearest him strained against the ropes that bound him to the stake. His lips moved. At last, words emerged from his mouth in a haunted echo of a human voice.

“Please,” he begged, “kill me.”

Lio’s hand curled tighter around his staff.

Lyros eyed Lio. “We’d best leave our wards up. Just in case.”

A veil spell settled over the men, then. Mak’s power cut off their pleas for death from Lio’s hearing. The silence of the grave fell over the battlefield once more.

All these lost lives. And five of their murderers were the only survivors.

The distant heartbeat fluttered in Lio’s ears again.

“The pulse I’m hearing isn’t one of theirs! There must be another survivor.”

Lyros clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll keep looking.”

The three of them headed across the outer bailey. Mak paused by soldiers in unfamiliar colors and knelt to check for pulses. He shook his head, then swore softly. “Their swords aren’t of Tenebran make. These are Cordian soldiers.”

Dread settled in Lio’s stomach. “The princes of Cordium have sent soldiers to fight with Lucis?”

A few paces away, Lyros stood over the bodies of men in flamboyant, colorful clothes. “And some of Cordium’s infamous mercenaries, it looks like.”

The people here had never stood a chance. But one slow heart still defied the odds.

“The heartbeat is fading,” Lio said. “We should split up again to search faster.”

Mak and Lyros exchanged a look.

“What is it?” Lio asked.

“We can’t hear it,” Mak answered ruefully.

“I’m not imagining it,” Lio insisted.

Mak held up his hands. “We’re not saying you are. We’ll go this way.”

They circled the outer bailey, while Lio forged into the area within the remains of the stone wall. He levitated again and swept left. No, the sound got fainter that way. Right? Ahead and to the right.

The sound grew less faint as he approached a pile of bodies by a blasted-out portion of the wall. Knights and village men had died together in the defense. Their enemies had paid dearlyto gain this ground. Dozens of Cordian soldiers lay dead on the threshold of the breach.

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