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“Then you can reassure me right now,” Cassia replied.
Lio stared in the direction of her voice. The door shut on the seemingly empty room. Then she shimmered into sight as if a translucent cloth had been drawn away from her.
She smiled at him. “Surprise.”
“Can you be here? How are you here?” he asked foolishly, even as he held out his good hand to her.
She came to him and, taking his hand, pressed a kiss to his sandy, bloodstained knuckles. “I plotted with your Trial circle.”
Lio beamed at her. “If they’d told me which healer was going to tend my wounds, I wouldn’t have resisted.”
“We agreed to proceed under the strictest secrecy. Kia and Nodora used their veil spells to help me escape the embassy in the confusion of the intermission. Mak and Lyros delivered you into my care, eager to provide a consolation prize in honor of your sacrifice tonight.”
Lio brought her wrist to his mouth and licked her vein. “You are no mere consolation, my rose.”
With the utmost care, she eased his tunic off of him. Her smile disappeared. “Shouldn’t these have healed already?”
“The Sunfire has slowed down my body’s ability to repair itself, but it’s only temporary.”
She fashioned a cushion out of his tattered athletic tunic to elevate his ankle. “I expected the clean, elegant…Hesperinesort of fight you had with Lyros tonight. Not this.”
“The mage didn’t do anything to me that won’t mend. And quickly, with your attentions.”
“Just because youcanwithstand being broken into little pieces doesn’t mean youshould.” She fetched his change of robes from the end of the bench and folded them behind his head, cushioning him from the wall. “I never understood the appeal of tournaments. I still don’t. What pleasure is there in watching the one you love get hurt?”
Lio chuckled. “I think the pleasure is watching the one you love win. But alas, your champion is a diplomat. I do recall warning you upon our first meeting that I am no warrior.”
“I wish you would keep it that way.”
“I may use fists instead of words now and then, but my cause is the same.”
The storm in her aura gentled, revealing the admiration beneath. “I know.”
He smiled. “Didn’t you enjoy the match? Just a little bit?”
An echo of excitement quivered through her aura. “Of course I enjoyed it. Before you got hurt.”
He slid his hand down her neck to rest upon her pulse. “Your heart has not stopped racing since you entered the gymnasium.”
She swallowed. “You are a sight to behold.”
“Thank you for being with me.”
“What you did during the fight…pulling me into your mind like that…”
She trailed off, her lips parted, her eyes full of emotion. Eyes he had once gazed through, entirely by accident, in the crowded great hall at Solorum. Tonight, in the deep withdrawal of battle, with all his power concentrated within himself, he had felt as close to her as he had that night, when they had still been strangers.
“I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it,” he tried to explain, “especially in the middle of battle. But in the tensest moments, you felt closest to me. It was easy to pull you closer. Until the fight disrupted my concentration. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it up.”
“Those few moments of being under your skin were more powerful than the half a year when we were parted by the breadth of the world.” Her aura glittered with the tears not to be seen in her eyes. “Half a year, I worried about you. I listened to the Dexion describe all the horrible things he wanted to do my Hesperines. I watched him destroy…” She shook her head. “And tonight I had to watch him hurt you.”
“Cassia, my rose. I’m all right.” Lio caressed her face with his uninjured hand.
“I just watched my share spit his own blood in the dirt, and that is not all right.”
“I bit my tongue, that’s all.” He poked it out at her. “It will take time for it to turn to glass again. In the meantime, you may have to tell all the bedtime stories to Zoe.”
That brought a hint of a smile to Cassia’s face, but she shook her head. “I can do better. I can fix your tongue and the rest of you, too. I happen to know a draught of mortal blood will provide fuel for your body’s natural regenerative properties, and I happen to know a mortal eager to be your draught, who is very fond of your natural properties indeed.”
