Page 28 of Blood Sanctuary, Part Two

“I can’t let you go in the embassy’s place. In my place.” Lio held fast to his Ritual father.

Rudhira embraced him for a long moment, then set him away from him. “This is my choice.”

Think like a diplomat, Lio, not like my Ritual son.

No, Lio had to stop thinking like a diplomat. Rudhira didn’t need a diplomat to explain this to him. He knew the Aithourian Circle. He should know that if he offered himself to the war mages, neither he nor the hostages would ever see Orthros again. He should know not to come here looking for a way to end the hostage crisis.

He had come here looking for a way to end his life.

He will wither in the soil of Tenebra, she says. She must rescue him before he becomes a martyr.

Konstantina had been right. Of course. She was a theramancer of Annassa Soteira’s blood. She was Rudhira’s sister. She had seen the signs.

She wasn’t worried Tenebra would martyr him. She knew he would one night martyr himself.

How had Lio not noticed? He had gone to his Ritual father for support countless times without ever realizing Rudhira was desperately in need of rescue himself. He had known Rudhira still mourned, not knowing how close they were to mourning him.

Rudhira served and served and served until there was nothing left inside him. Until the suffering he beheld night after night and the Hesperines he lost year after year and the mortals he could never save grieved him so much that he couldn’t bear the pain anymore.

Even as he sought escape in death, he would not permit himself Sanctuary unless he gave his life for others.

Konstantina was trying to save him from himself. She knew he would never lay down his sword, so she was trying to wrest it from his hands before he threw himself on his own blade. She had masterfully wrought Orthros’s politics in an attempt to do what was best for everyone while saving the life of one person she loved. Just as Lio, still a student of her craft, had tried to save Cassia without starting a war.

“Remember what I told you when you proposed the Summit,” Rudhira said. “Our bond of gratitude cannot be broken. My work with the Hesperites is done, thanks to the time you and Cassia have bought us. I have made the Charge into all I have ever wished for it to be. My Fortress Masters are fit to continue what I have started.”

“No one can fill your boots.”

“Konstantina has Orthros well in hand. She is our mothers’ true heir.”

“Never doubt you are necessary to us in every way.”

He thought his sister was ashamed of him, when she was his greatest protector. Lio did not know where to begin to approach that rift. He might cross the veil, and he feared if he prodded at the wound of the royal siblings’ differences, it might cause Rudhira more pain than comfort.

One word out of place, and Lio might drive his Ritual father closer to the edge.

Lio might be a mind mage, but he was no mind healer. He was in no way qualified to coax a hurting soul back from Hypnos’s brink. Least of all Rudhira, whose heart bore nearly sixteen centuries of war wounds.

But Lio was on the stand. The Goddess only knew why, but it was Lio who was alone in the dark with her First Prince, standing between him and certain death.

What had he learned from his mother about what to do in this situation?

He started asking questions. “Why is your heart so heavy tonight, Rudhira?”

“I’m tired, Lio. With Orthros, I will soon turn sixteen hundred. You cannot fathom how heavy the years are. They will never be this difficult for you because you will face them all with your Grace.”

“Is that what weighs on you? That you have not found your Grace yet?”

Rudhira leaned back against the wall opposite the mage’s room, gazing at the door through which he intended to go. “My Grace is dead.”

Horror robbed Lio of his words once more. Into the silence, he uttered a prayer. “Hespera. This cannot be.”

“Tonight, I asked Kassandra if she could divine where the Aithourians are holding the hostages. She answered me with an entirely different prophecy. You know the difference between her predictions of amorphous futures and those rare moments when she speaks with absolute confidence about what is not subject to change. She has explained to me, as if it is divine law, that my Grace is a Sanctuary mage. We will be true heirs of the Queens, she congratulated me—I with Annassa Soteira’s dual affinity, my Grace with Annassa Alea’s. We would have been. I envy Kassandra that vision of the life that is out of my reach.”

“Why would it be out of your reach? Are these not wondrous tidings for you and our people? A Sanctuary mage!”

Rudhira shook his head. “The truth is clear. All the Sanctuary mages died in the Last War. My Grace can only have been one of the mages of Hespera who never made it to Orthros.”

“Is that what Kassandra said?”

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