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Lio hesitated a moment longer. “Aunt Kona, if I may ask, why do you disagree with Kassandra about the Summit?”
“She knows what she is doing. So do I. Orthros needs both of us, whatever shape our people’s future may take. Keep doing your part.”
With that dismissal, that blessing, Lio stepped out of her greenhouse.
He returned to the New Guest House, raising his concealment yet again. Mak and Lyros were not in the courtyard at the moment, but he would have to get past Aunt Lyta after all in order to interrogate the mage.
Out of the shadows Lio had conjured around him, his Trial brothers materialized, girded in the Hesperine warding magic they held ready. They blocked his way into the guest house.
“We’re not diplomats,” said Lyros. “We won’t try to talk you out of your plan.”
“We’ll just stop you in your tracks,” Mak promised. “Be glad we’re going to use wards and not a Grace Dance. You deserve to have your nose broken again. Rudhira’s in need of a mind healer, but you’re just being an idiot.”
“He sent you.”
“Actually,” Lyros corrected, “we followed you after you tried to make us believe that nonsense about going to the circle ahead of Cassia. I never thought we would need our training in stealth attacks to spy on our Trial brother and our prince.”
“You talked the Blood-Red Prince out of something!” Mak crowed. “A feat of the ages. Too bad you’re not smart enough to take your own advice.”
“All right,” Lio said. “I’ll make you the same offer I made him. Would you like to help me break Chrysanthos? I won’t deny I could use your help. This won’t be easy. But you can’t tell me we have another option.”
“We aren’t going to tell you that,” Lyros said. “Mak and I don’t have another option for you.”
“Lio.”
At the sound of Cassia’s voice, he spun away from his Trial brothers. She stood behind him, looking for all the world like a goddess who had manifested out of the moonlight and foliage.
“Cassia is going to tell you,” Mak clarified. “While you were escorting Rudhira to the circle, we called in reinforcements.”
She held out her hands to Lio. “We can do better than this.”
“Do you really think we can?” Lio asked.
“I’m out of ideas,” she said. “But if you come away from here and we try together, perhaps we will find a better one than you throwing away everything you’ve worked for.”
He took her hands and pulled her to him. “I’m so sorry about Alkaios and Nephalea.”
“So am I.”
“This is how I repay them for keeping you safe. By playing ambassador with Nephalea’s captors while she and Alkaios waste away.”
“Destroying one of the Aithourian Circle’s key mages while he’s on a diplomatic mission to Orthros will only bring more retaliation upon all our Hesperines errant. Don’t give up on your path of peace, Sir Diplomat.”
“It has accomplished nothing.”
“You saved your Ritual father’s life tonight. Is that nothing?”
“Listen to your Cassia,” Lyros said. “And hold fast to her.”
“She’ll set you to rights,” Mak agreed.
With that, his Trial brothers left him and Cassia alone, wrapped in his shadows and the garden.
“Come to the circle,” Cassia said. “Then come home and tell Zoe a story. Then come to bed with me. Because Lio, I need you to hold me tonight.”
With Cassia close against his side, Lio turned away from the door that led to the mage and didn’t look back.
PRISONERS OF WAR
