Page 227 of Blood Feast

“They may have been razed, but that doesn’t mean their magic is gone.” Lio rested his finger on the star in the north. It hovered in the gap between two peaks, where a river flowed out of the Umbral Mountains.

“Hagia Boreia,” Cassia said with reverence.

“Where our foregiver Anastasios sacrificed himself to keep our last Sanctuary mage alive. His blood anointed that ground during one of Annassa Alea’s greatest castings. There is nowhere in Tenebra we will stand a better chance.”

Lyros’s eyes shone. “Brilliant.”

“It will be an honor to fight there,” Mak said.

Cassia took Lio’s hand. They had faced Kallikrates upon the graves of his victims at Tenebra’s fortresses. Now, if they fought him on the sacred ground of Hespera’s martyrs, they might prove to him that no matter how much he destroyed, the Hesperines were still standing.

With the Black Rosesof one mind, it took less time than Lio expected to settle on their plan. When they stood ready in Cassia’s garden with the hounds, a hush of anticipation came over everyone.

Lio took Cassia’s hands. “After sixteen hundred years, using our foregiver’s blood as a stepping focus is an uncertain experiment. But with both of us, it might just work.”

Mak clapped Lio on the shoulder. “As long as you two don’t drop us in the middle of a heart hunter camp, we’ll be fine.”

“Or too far east, into Rudhira’s courtyard,” Lyros added.

“Have some confidence.” Cassia drew herself up. “I managed to step to Mak without falling off a cliff, didn’t I?”

“Barely,” Mak said.

Lio gave her hands a squeeze. “Our bond will make it easier.”

He held all their auras in focus, closing his eyes, and recalled visions he’d seen in the elders’ minds when they talked of the lost past. Cassia held the remembrance with him, and the glimpses sharpened. Their hearts pounded in unison, pulling Anastasios’s power through their veins.

They stepped in Union. Their joined Wills carried them and those they loved through the world.

His feet hit frozen ground on a riverbank. The white-capped water churned past, pummeling jagged rocks that protruded from its surface. Just before Cassia tumbled into the raging current, he caught her and pulled her to safety.

She looked up at him, breathing hard, her fingers curled in the front of his robe. “Thank you. We don’t have time for me to break my neck.”

He kissed her forehead.

Mak levitated out of a nearby pile of snow and shook himself. “Could have been worse.”

“Did it work?” Lyros called, climbing a short way to join them. The dogs clambered alongside him, looking none the worse for wear.

Lio cast his senses out and tried to recognize anything. They were at the bottom of a ravine with steep slopes rising on either side. Not far upriver, a waterfall crashed down into the gorge.

He caught something on the icy wind, like a song of comfort or of mourning. All four of them turned toward the falls and looked up to where the water cascaded from between two peaks.

There it stood. The Great Temple of Hespera in the North was now nothing more than a time-worn fall of stones above the flowing water. But a deep sense of recognition rang inside him. Cassia pressed a hand to her heart.

“One of the Great Temples.” Mak sounded reverent. “Not many Hesperines can say they’ve set eyes on it.”

“To think,” Lyros said, “our parents found refuge here when they fled the destruction of the Last War.”

“I didn’t know your parents were here, Lyros,” said Cassia. “I thought your mother and Nodora’s father Kitharos came from Hagia Zephyra, the Great Temple in the West.”

He nodded. “They did.”

Lio knew this painful story well and wondered if Lyros would choose now to share it with Cassia. But it seemed here at the foot of one of the Great Temples was the right time to speak of it.

Lyros continued, “When the Mage Orders came for Hagia Zephyra, the mortals in the temple turned on their Hesperine leaders. They called their immortality hubris and believed the discovery of the Gift was what had incited the war mages’ wrath against all Hespera worshipers.”

Cassia touched his arm. “I had no idea. That betrayal must have been horrific.”

---