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“I owe you anapology.”
Lio looked up at Prometheus. The crimson veins in the black stone pulsed. As Father had crafted the statue, how much of his own blood had he shed to pour life and magic into this portrait of his friend and Ritual son? Father swore this work was no memorial to Methu’s death, but a tribute to his life. Father had not relegated Prometheus to Bloodborn’s Path.
Lio had.
“I was so preoccupied with how you died,” Lio confessed, “I failed to heed how you lived.”
He pulled out a votive beeswax candle. He had commissioned a small fortune in them for the Tenebrans’ comfort during their stay. It was so much like the one Cassia had lit for her sister during their vigil in the princess’s garden.
He pulled back his arm and hurled the candle over the cliff into the sea.
“You lived with all your spirit. You loved with all your heart. Youneverlaid down and surrendered. You went down fighting.”
Lio reached into his pocket again and pulled out Skleros’s tinderbox.
“There should never have been an inquisitors’ prison. The people there should never have been doomed to die for their beliefs. Your life should never have been the price of their freedom. But it was. You chose to pay it. You are the best of us.”
Lio struck flint against steel. Over and over again. Anthros’s element resisted him. But he shielded his tinder from the wind with his hand, and at last, a spark caught.
“Because of you, Methu, we are here. We are here to tear down the walls of the prison. We are here to make it safe for everyone to worship as they choose. We are here, living in freedom.”
From his scroll case, Lio took the document the Dexion had presented to the Firstblood Circle.
Lio set fire to the scroll and watched the war mage’s terms go up in flames.
The King of Tenebra’s blue wax seal dripped onto the snow. The emblems of the Synthikos and the Akron burned away in their own fire.
“Because of you, I am here to change the price.” Lio dropped the flaming offering at Methu’s feet. “We will live.”
VIGILOF THE
GIFT
1 Night Until Winter Solstice
A SAFE PLACE
Lio knelt on thesilk cushion across from Kassandra and placed his present before her. “Good Vigil of the Gift, Ritual Mother. I hope you like what I came up with this year.”
With a smile, she crossed her legs on her cushion and pulled the gift box of opaque glass to her. The box was nothing more than a basic piece to draw out what little surprise remained regarding what lay inside, but he knew she would store yarn in it. Lio and his Ritual mother had their private traditions, as he and his uncle did.
“You always know what I’m going to give you,” he said.
“But it’s the design that’s new each time.”
“I think you know that, too.”
“I make a point never to foresee gifts. It ruins the fun.” She opened the lid of the gift box, and her face lit up. “Ah, Lio, you have outdone yourself this time.”
“Thank you, Ritual Mother. I’m glad it pleases you.”
She lifted out this year’s stained glass lantern and turned it each way, studying the designs he had crafted on its four sides. “The finest ships in my fleet, sailing in miniature. Such perfect detail. I shall treasure it.”
“Shall we light it?”
She placed the new lantern on the coffee table beside his previous gift. Last year’s round globe painted with silk moths gleamed with a golden spark of her spell light. She opened the tiny door in the sides of both lanterns and moved her hand, coaxing.
The light inside the moth globe flared, and a new bauble rose from it and floated over into the ship lantern. Light shifted across Kassandra’s weaving room and shone across her loom in ocean blues and the scarlet of her fleet’s sails.
