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Cassia lifted her chin. “I’ll tell you what I told your mongrels. We’ll see if you survive me.”
MAGE OF DREAMS
Lio ignored the barreddoors and stepped into the main hall.
He froze in his tracks. The chamber was deserted. Not a single aura lit the Union. No spell light illuminated the leaden shadows. Dust motes fluttered in the beams of sickly light that fell through the window.
“Cassia!”Lio bellowed.
Only the echoes of his own voice answered him.
No time to rally his Trial sisters. He must light the distress signal now. He turned on his heel, ready to step to the Harbor Light.
The doors hung open on their hinges. All that remained of his window were broken, jagged pieces of glass. He could not see the beacon’s light.
“No!”
He raced through the entry hall and out of Rose House. The sky above him was flat black, devoid of stars. He almost stumbled on the broken front steps. He took a leap down to the road and lifted his eyes to the statue of Hespera.
Lio slid to his knees. There was no beacon to tune. The Harbor Light was gone. The Goddess’s hands had broken off at the wrists and fallen away. Perhaps they lay at the bottom of the harbor even now. Crevasses and cracks marred her beautiful hair and body.
Something in the water arrested his attention. A broken plank in the pale color of the hulls of Hesperine ships.
Lio stumbled to his feet and went out onto the nearest dock. Up and down the harbor, bits and pieces of the fleet bobbed in the water, sails and rigging, broken masts and shattered hulls. Lio stared down at the figurehead of his Ritual mother’s flagship. The gargoyle snarled up at him, missing her wings.
He would go to the ward himself and get help. Lio covered his face in his hands and reached out with his senses for the Queens’ ward, every Hesperine’s anchor.
He couldn’t sense the ward.
“It can’t be,” Lio cried. “No one is that powerful.”
“Except me,” a voice answered.
The voice was everywhere. And nowhere. He was part of the still air and the fetid water and the crumbling stone under Lio’s feet. Yet Lio could not think his name. He could not envision his face. He was an iron rule and a whisper on the edge of Lio’s senses. Lio could almost hear him in his own thoughts.
“The Hesperine path is outside my board,” the voice said. “I do not permit such paths to exist.”
“Mage of dreams!” Lio bellowed at the sky. “You are but a man! You cannot break the Goddess’s path!”
“What is left of your goddess now but broken stones?”
“This.” Lio sank his fangs into his hand and scattered his own blood across the water.
The water dissolved. The sea itself began to evaporate, revealing nothingness beneath. The dock was gone from under Lio’s feet, and he fell into the void.
BLOOD SACRIFICE
The Collector spun andlifted his hands in front of his face so fast Cassia jumped. A horrible groaning filled the chamber. The iron tables rose from the floor, their silk cloths fluttering. Not a single wine goblet spilled. The treaty signed in blood rose out of Cassia’s reach before she could grab for it.
She backed away and took a running leap. Her fingers caught the edge of the table. Clawing at the silk, she heard cups and wine bottles clash against each other. She dragged the tablecloth and the treaty over the edge.
With the paper in her grasp, she let go. She landed hard in a crouch and caught herself on one hand to a flare of pain in her wrist.
“That was not up to your usual standards of subtlety,” the Collector critiqued, “but a satisfying reminder of my own. I shall excuse you.”
Cassia darted under the levitating tables. She positioned herself in the empty center of the ring of chairs and faced the necromancers. The embassy gazed at her with unseeing eyes, all of them eerily still. Perhaps from here she could make her ward reach everyone.
Skleros sneered and laughed. “You have done fine work on her, Master. All she has to battle us with is a piece of paper.”
