Page 243 of Blood Feast

The temple of Lio’smind shook. A pillar came crashing down, sending pain reverberating through his being. No. This shouldn’t be happening.

Fire crackled behind him. He spun to see smoke billowing through the complex. The flames of the Last War flickered closer to him. He had to get out.

When a hooded figure in a black robe strode up the steps toward him, he knew who was taking control of the vision.

There was a tear in the chest of Kallikrates’s robe. The relic blade hung from his hand. “You should have heeded my warnings about the dagger.”

Cassia!Lio called.

I’m here.

Pull me back to you. Open our Grace Union with all your might.

Cassia’s presence filled the Sanctuary behind Lio. Roses of every color flowed up from the ground and caught the falling pieces of the temple in their branches. Her vines embraced him and pulled him toward safety.

Lio hurled thelemancy at Kallikrates. The floor at his feet split open, and the air around him tore to reveal an endless sky. Lio looked into the seams of his own mind.

No. How was this possible? They were not in Miranda’s thoughts anymore. Somehow, the Collector had exploited their link and followed Lio back into his own mind.

I’m holding you.Cassia echoed his own vow back to him.No one touches your mind but me.

Her power swept him back into the Ritual Sanctuary. The double doors slammed shut. Her roses twined up the Goddess’s statue to close the skylight in the dome overhead.

The relic blade sliced through the vines above, and they both screamed. Lio clutched his head, crumpling to the floor, and met the Collector’s unblunted power.

The agony of Miranda’s attack in Hierax Temple had been nothing. Now Kallikrates cut through Lio’s mental defenses with his own hands. His limbs seized, and his back arched off the floor. The mindscape around them wavered, flickering to blackness, then burning bright as fire.

Stay with me.Cassia filled his mind, and everywhere she touched, her presence dulled the pain of the Collector’s attack.You’re not alone. We can defeat him together.

Lio dragged himself to his feet. Smoke was pouring down through the skylight to fill the Sanctuary. From the billowing clouds before Lio, the Collector appeared.

Lio hurled another blast of his power at Kallikrates. The spell buffeted the Old Master’s robes, and for an instant, his grimace was visible inside his hood. His gray lips stretched around his bared teeth, an image from the death throes of everyone he had sent to their graves.

His hand shot out, shrouded in black with long, sharp nails. Lio tried to dodge, but his own mind and body warped, throwinghim into the Collector’s grasp. Kallikrates grasped him by the hair and dug claws into Lio’s skull.

Cassia’s roses lashed out at Kallikrates. A spiral of vines closed around him like a shroud. But her thorns passed through his spectral form.

He forced Lio to his knees at Hespera’s feet. “I am here to collect my price.”

Lio’s mind, his greatest strength, was fragmenting. The immutable pieces of himself shuddered and broke and rearranged. He reached for each certainty inside himself, only to find new voids where parts of him had been torn away.

He had never been so afraid.

Cassia!he called out to his Grace in desperation.

She was right there inside him, where she always was. He hadn’t lost her yet.

He confessed the horror creeping into his every remaining thought.I’m not sure I can stop him.

Her love was in the void, filling the chasms in his fracturing mind.I will stop him.

I don’t want you to go through this with me.

I know. But I will never leave you.

His Grace appeared before Hespera, her fangs bared in a snarl of fury. Her white avowal robes fluttered around her, untouched by the smoke. She held Rosethorn, dripping with blood over their chalice, and her pendant glowed on her chest.

She hurled her dagger at Kallikrates. Her power sailed through the landscape of Lio’s mind toward the Collector’s heart.

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