Page 5 of Blood Feast

“They’re not gone,” Lio said. “They’re simply…not evident at the moment.”

Cassia put a hand to her chest. She was dressed to leave their residence, but without her two talismans, she felt like a piece of her was missing. “Oh, Goddess. What if my magic disintegrated them?”

“The Changing Queen’s pendant is an artifact of Lustra magic, and our ambassador medallions are artifacts of blood magic. I doubt your power is harmful to them.”

“Where was the last place you saw them?”

He scratched his head. “The floor, where I threw them while I was stripping us naked for your Gifting.”

She peered between the flowers covering one of the carpets. “When you lost your medallion before, you were able to sense it with your magic and find it. Surely that will work now.”

“I can’t detect it’s resonance,” he admitted. “Why don’t you try?”

She flexed her senses amid the profusion of magics in the room. Within the Sanctuary ward that sheltered their bedchamber, blood magic and Lustra magic lay tangled up like wanton lovers. Light magic and thelemancy emanated from Lio’s stained glass windows. The scent of his blood on the messy bedclothes threatened her focus until he cast a cleaning spell.

“I can’t begin to separate a particular magical signature from all the spells in here,” Cassia said. “Wait. Let me try one more idea.”

She called out to the letting site, softly, so as not to provoke a raging channeling again. She sensed its mournful answer.

Where are our medallions and my pendant?She knew a force of nature didn’t comprehend words or even images, so she focused on what the talismans felt like to her arcane senses.They hold great power. I need them so I can protect the Lustra.

A vine of roses and another of moonflowers snaked higher up one of the iron bed posts. When they were on Cassia’s eye level, their leaves parted to reveal what dangled from their branches.

“No,” Cassia cried. “How could this happen?”

Lio bent to study what remained of the artifacts, his aura bright with fascination.

Their two silver ambassador medallions had fused together with her ancestor’s wooden pendant caught between them. The transformed artifact overflowed with their combined magics, just like everything else in the room.

Lio grinned. “I like this arcane pattern we’ve established, my Grace.”

“What if I ruined them? This might have changed or broken the important enchantments that were already on them!”

“Your Gifting consecrated these artifacts. We can only wait and see what new magic they manifest.” He reached out and gently took the melded talismans in hand.

When they broke apart in his hold, he gasped. The two halves fell onto his palms. The Changing Queen’s pendant was still joined to Cassia’s medallion, but it had not left Lio’s untouched. Three wooden ivy leaves remained fused to the silver amid its celestial designs.

“What did I tell you?” he said in wonder. “You’ve left your mark on me. Thank you, Cassia. To be blessed by a Silvicultrix, by the Lustra…I appreciate how rare that is.”

They untangled their ambassador cords and put on their medallions. The sight of him wearing her mark stirred a base sense of satisfaction in her. The letting site purred in response.

His own aura heated as a slow smile spread across his face. “Yes, I appreciate that very much.”

Knowing he bore her mark, not only on his medallion but in his blood, she felt a little readier to leave the tower. They headed for the door, but she paused in front of the new window he had crafted during their seclusion. She touched the glass as if bidding this month farewell. And yet he had somehow captured it in the panes of blood red roses and pure white moonflowers.

He took her hand and ran her fingers over one of the flaws in the glass, which an unpredictable surge of her magic had created during his crafting process. “You know the imperfections are my favorite part of the design.”

She wasn’t sure how they dragged themselves down the stairs to the entrance hall. Lio’s mood dimmed with every level they descended. She stood there before the front doors and started to take a deep breath to brace herself. Then she remembered she didn’t need to breathe.

She didn’t need a cloak, either. Lio, deprived of his ritual of bundling her up, kissed her forehead instead.

She smiled in the hopes of alleviating his somber mood. “I can finally dance naked in the snow without getting cold. Care to join me later?”

That got a laugh out of him. “Well, when you put it like that, there are advantages to leaving our residence after all.”

She took his hands. “This isn’t the end of anything, Lio. It’s the beginning of our new lives together as Hesperines.”

“I’m sorry. Of course it is. Don’t think I’m not looking forward to this. I’m so proud of you. I can’t wait for everyone to see the Hesperine you’ve become.”

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