Page 32 of Blood Feast

Stay until you know he’s safe,Cassia insisted.

Can you manage?

He is in greater danger than I am right now.

Craving fever is no small matter, my Grace.

I can manage,she said again.

“Rudhira should be here by now,” Lio said.

“I know.” Mak’s aura throbbed with worry. “But we have our orders, and it will not help him if we disobey.”

“We’re needed on the walls,” Lyros told Lio. “We’re going to reinforce the Charge’s warders.”

Lio nodded. “You two go. I’m heading back into the tunnels.”

Lio plunged back through the wall. He sent his thelemancy deep into the tunnels, and strange impressions echoed back to him. Magic played by different rules here. The Lustra’s rules.

But he managed to catch a hint of auras. Cursing the inability to step in here, he set off at a run.

He quickly came upon a group of eight humans. The villagers Rudhira had escorted out of Mederi were bedraggled but alive. His sudden arrival startled them, but then they breathed sighs of relief.

“Can you show us the way out?” the village miller pleaded.

Lio nodded. “Where is the Hesperine who stepped you out of the village?”

The man pointed back the way they had come. “He had to stay behind with the wounded one.”

Lio’s heart jolted.

Who is it?came Cassia’s swift response.

I don’t know.

Drawing blood from his hand again, Lio grasped his pendant and sent a spell light floating through the tunnels toward the portal. “Follow my light. It will take you to safety in the fortress.”

The grateful villagers set off, and Lio raced deeper into the passages. Amid the bizarre magic that breathed around him, he caught a whisper, a certainty. The Lustra itself seemed to guide him.

He found Rudhira in the glow of another portal. The prince crouched over a fallen Hesperine. Lio showed Cassia the image before him.

Not Kalos!she cried.

Lio knelt by their unconscious friend. “What happened?”

“Someone put a magefire arrow in my best scout’s chest,” Rudhira growled. “And as soon as I heal the wound, I’ll go find that archer and put Thorn in him.”

Lio knew from his own experience with a magefire wound how much pain was burning through Kalos’s veins as they spoke. “Will he make it?”

Rudhira’s healing magic saturated Kalos’s aura. “Yes. My spell is working faster than I could have hoped. I believe it’s the strong Lustra magic here.”

He’s going to be all right,Lio relayed to Cassia,thanks to the passages. The Lustra is helping Rudhira heal him.

Her fear eased.He’s not the only Hesperine Lustra mage any longer. I hope this proves to him that I have his back.

“How did you two get into the passages?” Lio asked. “No one could enter without Cassia escorting them until tonight, when we discovered I can now open them.”

Rudhira raised his brows at Lio. “When the war mages intercepted our step, they pulled you and me out at different locations. I had just taken care of the one near me when Kalos found me. He said that glowing portals have appeared all over the countryside surrounding Castra Patria, and Hesperine blood will open and close them. When he led us to the entrance, I could sense your magic.”

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