Page 217 of Blood Feast

“But I’m only one of the people keeping us safe. I shouldn’t have fought like a general, but as one of a circle, just as you said. I’m equally sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

Lio clasped Lyros’s wrist and held it. This journey had destroyed so much, but it hadn’t cost him and Lyros their brotherhood. “Let’s decide together if this ends in a prison cell or on the battlefield.”

“All four of us.”

Lio nodded. “I’m with you.”

“We may have to start by breaking our Graces out of prison—again.”

Cassia concentrated on Mak’saura. Since they had a close bond, it shouldn’t be difficult to step to him, but she would have to aim just right. She didn’t know what she and Knight were heading into this time.

She stepped, landing in knee deep in snow on a narrow ledge. Knight’s broad paws didn’t sink so far, but his back legs slid down the snow bank toward the edge of the precipice.

Cassia threw her arms around him and levitated them both away from the long drop. They tumbled to the ground in a pile of slush and rocks. She looked up into the mouth of a cave.

“Cassia?” Mak hissed from the darkness inside.

At the sound of her Grace-cousin’s voice, Knight began to wag his tail.

“I found you,” she said with relief. She hadn’t even bruised her head on his wards.

“Get in here before a Stand patrol sees you!”

He hauled her deeper into the crevasse in the rock, and Knight squeezed in after. Her eyes instantly adjusted, revealing the weapons in an undignified heap in the back of the cave.

She rubbed her bruised hip while it healed. “Are we in the Umbral Mountains?”

“Yes.” Mak peered out, then rolled a heavy rock over the entrance. His veil spells sealed their hiding place. “You can’t be here. I have to reach Nike’s forge, and now it will be twice as hard not to get caught.”

“You’re trying to sneak back to her forge?”

“It’s the only place you can melt down adamas,” he said, as if she were dense. “But I can’t seem to step there anymore—the elders must have locked it up. You can’t talk me out of this, and I don’t have time for you to try. Alkaios and Nephalea’s patrol of this area ends in half an hour, and then I have to move.”

So that was all the time she had to change his mind. She held up her hands. “Hear me out. That’s all I ask. In half an hour, if you still feel that destroying the weapons is the right thing to do, then I’ll let you go.”

“I’m too tired for diplomatic games, Cassia.” He sat down and leaned back against the wall. “But I know you’re going to say your bit anyway, so get it over with.”

“It’s not a game, Mak!”

He sobered. “I’m sorry. Poor choice of words.”

“We aren’t playing with people’s lives. We’re trying to save them. That’s what I’m trying to make you see.” She propped her back next to him. “I know how you feel right now. If you’re giving yourself a beating for your mistakes, wait till you hear mine.”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Is that actually why you came out here? So we could moan together about how we’ve ruined everything for our Graces again?”

“And to commiserate about our terrible Craving and how our suffering is our own fault.”

“Well, I won’t say no to some sympathy.”

She leaned her shoulder against his. “Would you like to know why the temple went up in flames?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I mucked up the spells in it,” Cassia admitted.

Mak let out a low whistle.

“And while I was blowing it to pieces in my own face, I saw all the other spells it’s connected to. The lighthouse, the stone circle, and the tower are all leveled, too. All Lio and I could save were the dogs.”

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