Page 86 of Blood Feast

Lyros faced the map of Tenebra on the wall and held up a stick of charcoal. “We should mark all the Lustra portals we know of.”

Cassia pointed to the capital. “The first ones I discovered are inside Solorum Palace. I thought I had fully explored the passages, but there must be more I couldn’t open before my magic woke. I never came across anything like the hidden door.”

Lio tapped on Solia’s fortress. “There are also the portals at Castra Patria, of course. We suspect they run all the way to Paradum, where the letting site is.”

Lyros scrawled a few marks on the map.

Mak’s serious expression didn’t change. “What are those symbols supposed to represent?”

Lyros looked over his shoulder. “A door and a well. Isn’t that what a letting site is? A well of magic?”

“That’s accurate,” Lio confirmed, biting his lip.

“But your drawing sure isn’t,” Mak said. “It looks like a war mage’s nose after you punched him in the face.”

Lyros’s brows drew down. “What? How do you see a nose in that?”

Mak shrugged. “You tell me. You’re the son of Orthros’s greatest artists.”

“I know I can’t draw to save my life, but I have thoroughly studied military cartography.”

“Oh, no one reads maps as well as you do.” Mak snatched the charcoal from Lyros’s hand. “But let me mark this one before someone bleeds to death out of their eyes.”

Lyros’s scowl deepened. Mak’s lips twitched, his eyes glinting. Then Lyros appeared to realize Mak was on the verge of a smile and back to his usual sport of teasing his Grace. Lyros laughed, and he and Mak both relaxed a measure.

That was Mak. Quickest to anger, soonest to forgive. Except, perhaps, himself. Lio realized he and Mak might be more alike in that way than he had known.

Mak drew a door symbol over Solorum Palace, Castra Patria, and the Hadrian lighthouse. Then he added a well-shaped mark to Paradum.

“Are we certain of the locations of any other letting sites?” Lyros asked.

Cassia touched a fingertip to Corona, the Divine City, the seat of the Mage Orders’ power. “We know of one in the Magelands, under the temple where my mother was a mage of Kyria.”

Mak marked that with another well symbol. “Kalos said there are a few in heart hunter territory, right?”

Cassia nodded. “Jealously guarded by the warbands.”

Mak added a well and a question mark in the forests and mountains near Tenebra’s northern border.

After a pause, Lio said, “And one letting site in Orthros.”

Mak marked Selas, his aura dimming again at the reminder of home.

They all stood back, looking at the map.

“Every location that might hold clues is heavily guarded,” Lyros observed. “With Lucis still firmly in control of Solorum, going directly to the door is an unwise course of action.”

“I’ve sneaked into Solorum Palace before,” Lio said, “under a war mage’s nose.”

Mak snickered. “Not to research Lustra portals.”

“On the contrary,” Cassia said, with her most courtly expression, “he was researching a Silvicultrix’s portals.”

Mak laughed harder, and Lio couldn’t help joining in, sliding an arm around Cassia’s waist.

Lyros grinned, too. “Fair enough. But there are many more Aithourian war mages there now, and Lucis is on the alert for an invasion by Solia and her Hesperine allies.”

“Cassia could sneak us in through Lustra portals,” Lio proposed.

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