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He reached their bedchamber. The roses had overflowed their pots to cover the floor and climbed past their spindly stakes to entwine the window frames and rafters. The sky above was full of stars, and on the horizon, the Light Moon shone through a crimson aurora. The glyph stone rested in the center of the chamber, pulsing. The Sanctuary ward throbbed around him, invisibly shining.
Although he could not see Cassia, he felt her as near as his own heart. Stepping to her was returning home from the place he did not belong. The Sanctuary ward manifested to his sight, and a glorious flash of light consumed the world around him.
When he could see again, he beheld the Harbor Light shining through the crimson window. The ceiling was lost in storm clouds, and thunder boomed through the hall. The void he had fallen into in the waking dream surrounded him, a great swath of nothingness.
But it could not reach him. The voracious emptiness and the rain lashing down halted at the Sanctuary ward that throbbed in a dome around him. Within the spell, a small but powerful heart beat.
Lio smelled Cassia’s blood and turned to see her kneeling at the center of the ward. The embassy surrounded her, staring at her with mad eyes, but her light wrapped each of them and held them in place.
Lio went down on his knees behind her. He felt no pain. He wasn’t wounded. This was reality.
He laid open both of his hands with his fangs and wrapped his arms around her. He cupped her bleeding hands in his. The glyph shard glowed bright, and that gleam raced up Cassia’s arms, tracing the paths of her veins in light. Magic shot through Lio, as if the flow of their blood had become one, and he could not have released her if he’d tried.
You’re here!Her voice filled his mind.
He held her mind as he held her body.We’ll do this together.
Lio fed more of his magic to her spell. The madness faded from the eyes of the mortals around them.
How did we just do that?she asked.
Your Sanctuary magic in Union with my mind magic will keep him beyond the threshold of the ward.
She breathed a sigh of relief. The tendrils of light lay the mortals gently on the ground, then withdrew into the dome around them. The vines of her spell expanded and melded with the dome, brightening the barrier.
A silent howl of rage battered their auric senses. A new storm of lightning struck the ward all at once.
He has too much magic.Cassia shook in Lio’s arms.
Lio shuddered with her.He stopped me from signaling for help. I’m not sure anyone in Orthros knows we’re under attack.
It’s up to us, then.
My Grace tells me we aren’t going to lose tonight.
He felt her smile in her aura, even as she gasped aloud.Iwillhold the ward. If I protect us from his war magic, can you battle his mind magic?
I will try to drive him out. But who brought him in?
Even as Lio asked, one volley of lightning faded. In the moment of darkness before the next, he beheld whom they dueled. Eudias stood at the eye of the storm with Skleros for a shadow.
The Collector had appointed the apprentice’s mind their next dueling ground. The Collector had reduced a human being to this, a weapon for them to fight over, a field to be trampled in their battle.
Eudias needed someone to rescue him.
Lio’s magic was ready, answering to the call of Cassia’s blood ritual. Another break in the lightning revealed the tendons in Eudias’s neck as his possessor braced himself. The Collector was ready for a bombardment.
Lio approached Eudias’s mind as slowly as he would a startled deer and touched a gentle brush of power to the young man’s mind.
The storm of the Collector’s magic batted him away like a butterfly in a strong wind.
Lio tried again. He hovered on the edges of Eudias’s aura, studying the obstacles between them.
The Collector opened the apprentice’s mind and dragged Lio in.
THE GREATEST MAGE
Lio stood in along corridor of sandstone. The sun glared in through rounded arches, casting swaths of light at intervals. The shadows between were the only respite from the heat of the day.
