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The water rose up out of its pool, battering their defenses. As the rest of the room was submerged, Lio stood with Eudias in an island of dry ground. The futile attack subsided.
The stone benches shattered. Boulders, bricks, and slivers of stone launched at them. They were a hand’s breadth away when the perimeter of Lio’s defenses flashed bright. There came an instant of heat and tremendous pressure. Then the streaks of lightning faded from his vision, and he saw the refuse of scorched, shattered rocks all around them. He realized his arms were at his sides. Eudias stood on his own feet, his arms outstretched, one clenched into a fist around his charm.
A roar behind them made Lio turn. Flames blasted through the doorway, as if all of Corona poured itself into this one room. The rocks turned molten around them, and the floor ran with liquid fire. The current parted around them and flowed into the water, gradually filling the pool.
Lio felt the Collector in every lick of flame, in every rivulet of magma, in each bubble of the boiling water, in each clap of thunder from the clouds above. But he did not feel him in the half-dozen bolts that leapt together into one great column of lightning.
“You’re winning, Eudias! You’re almost there! We can do this.”
Eudias bowed his head. The lightning reversed itself and rose upward into the storm.
Light crackled through the dark storm clouds. The water evaporated. The magma stilled and cooled. The fire died to embers.
Lio heard the sound of glass breaking, the Collector’s final protest. Then the clouds cleared.
MARBLE DUST
The clarity of theUnion told Lio he was alone in his own mind. Cassia’s aura told him his Grace lived. The distant presence of the Queens’ ward told him Orthros still stood.
The Collector was gone.
Lio held Cassia close and opened his eyes. Eudias had made it inside the Sanctuary ward and lay unconscious nearby, his heart beating slowly, but steadily. All around them, the Tenebrans cowered and cried out in fear.
Shards of crimson glass lanced down through the air on the other side of the gauze of Sanctuary magic. Chairs and tables tumbled, and silk tablecloths whipped about. A white pillar collapsed with a tremendous crash. Chunks of red and black granite hurtled. Rose House was crumbling, falling into the necromancer’s portal.
Skleros stood on a shaking crag of floor tile and shouted over the noise, shaking his fist at Lio. “Yours will be the next head I deliver to my Master!” The Gift Collector leapt from his perch and dove into the portal.
In his wake, the void collapsed. Released from its pull, the debris crashed down upon Lio, Cassia, and the mortals.
A heap of rubble landed on the ward and enclosed them all in stone and broken glass.
Sanctuary magic still emanated from Cassia, but the intimate Union their spell had fostered had faded. Lio took a breath to say her name. The odor of scorched stone assailed him, twisted around the sweet fragrance of her blood.
Lio coughed. “Cassia?”
She didn’t answer. He realized he was holding her up. Knight lay still against them, his fur soaked. The pool of blood under them was Cassia’s.
“Cassia!” Lio lay her back in his arms. For the first time, the sight of her blood turned his stomach. Where the light of her spell had permeated the veins of her wrists and arms, her skin was broken. Blood ran in rivulets down her body.
“Stay with me! We won. Don’t give up now.”
So much blood. So many wounds to heal. No time. Lio put his mouth to one of her wrists, pressing his tongue to her major veins.
“He’s killing her!” Benedict shouted.
There came the sound of a scuffle, then Callen’s growl. “Stay out of the way.”
“He’s saving her life.” Perita crowded near with the Semna’s attendants.
“Ariadne,” the Semna instructed, “a tourniquet on her other wrist. Pakhne, join my healing spell.”
Cassia’s skin was not closing under Lio’s tongue. Why wasn’t the wound healing?
“Semna, why isn’t her body responding?” Pakhne asked.
“She’s far gone,” the Semna answered, “but we won’t give up until she does.”
Lio touched Cassia’s mind with his weary power. That short reach frightened him more than a long fall into the Collector’s void. She felt farther away from Lio than she had even a moment ago.
