Page 88 of Blood Feast

Mak rounded on him. “You and Lyros still can’t be charged with the same crimes as Cassia and me! I don’t want either of you adding your magic to the weapons.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Lyros said.

Lio shook his head. “The elders can charge me with whatever they like.”

Mak’s jaw clenched.

Cassia touched Mak’s arm and finally spoke. “I know. But after all the damage we’ve caused, if we don’t even use the weapons to protect our people, it really was all for nothing.”

That, at last, got a sigh of resignation out of Mak. He turned to them again and picked up the Star of Orthros. Cassia belted Rosethorn around her waist.

Lio took a firmer hold on Final Word and shut his eyes. He let his thelemancy rise within him to meet Lyros’s casting. Four points of their power swelled within the moonstones.

He slashed his fangs across his palm and closed his hand around his staff’s moonstone. The gem heated against his skin. Opening his eyes, he saw all four white stones turn red and began to pulse with a liquid glow. The crimson light reflected on an angry tear sliding down Cassia’s cheek.

If this made him even more of a criminal in Orthros’s eyes, so be it. He would never again find himself outmatched by an army of Gift Collectors with his Grace’s life slipping away in his arms.

When the glow faded from the Union Stones, he reached out to her and ran his braid through his fingers. “There’s one more spell we need to cast. We must have our Grace braids warded, like all Hesperines errant.”

Her face lost some of its color. Mere nights after he had sealed his braid into her hair, he hated that she must confront this. If they died out here, their warded Grace braids would be the only thing left for the survivors to take home to their families.

“The warding of your braids is a time-honored tradition.” Mak was clearly trying to soften the blow. “Everyone does it when they join the Stand or the Charge. You don’t want a fire mage singing the mementos from your avowal.”

“Mak and I would consider it an honor to do it for you,” Lyros offered.

“We were planning to ask you,” Cassia said, “when we thought we would be going errant with the Charge.”

Lio and Cassia had envisioned a gallant braid-warding ceremony at Castra Justa with the Charge all around them. That was what Lio had wanted for his newgift. Not for her to stand here in this tomb, robbed of their people’s protection.

But she had his protection, and they had their Trial brothers.

“The ceremony will require a blade.” Lio knew the steps of the spell, having attended Mak and Lyros’s braid warding with the Stand. “Shall we use Rosethorn?”

Cassia drew her dagger in grim silence, and Mak accepted it. Lio stood across from her, while their Trial brothers gathered on either side so the four of them stood in a ring.

Mak took hold of Lio’s hand. “Redblood, will you sustain any wound for your Grace?”

“I Will,” Lio answered.

Mak cut into Lio’s hand, deeper than any common spell libation. But the pain was nothing compared to what he had endured for Cassia before. The magic of her artifact tingled in the wound as his blood spilled into Mak and Lyros’s open palms.

Lyros turned to Cassia. “Whiteblood, will you sustain any wound for your Grace?”

Her face was set with grim determination. “I Will.”

She didn’t flinch when Lyros sliced her palm. He and Mak painted their other hands with her libation, then Lyros laid the bloodied blade in the center of their ring. Lustra magic throbbed faintly through the chamber.

Mak and Lyros each put a hand on Lio’s Grace braid, anointing him with Cassia’s blood. They extended their other hands to her and touched his blood to her braid. Warding magic darkened the Blood Union, binding the four of them in an unbroken circle. Their Trial brothers sealed the symbols of their love within the most powerful wards known to Hesperine kind.

Lio would keep this vow to Cassia, as surely as their avowal promises. Whether an injury to his body or his standing among their people, he would sustain any wound for his Grace.

VIGIL OF

UNION

2 Nights Until Winter Solstice

PREY

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