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Chrysanthos held out his hands to the crowd. “Does a relic leave behind a grieving family? Does a relic satisfy the thirst for justice? How many tears will you shed over the loss of Prometheus’s prize? Think how many more you will shed over the loss of your last bloodborn.”
Lio leaned his fists on the podium. “You would sacrifice your Order’s greatest relic?”
“Oh, no. We will want that, too. We revise our terms. Not only will you and the rest of the Hesperine embassy surrender, but you will also restore the Akron’s Torch to us, if you wish your Hesperines errant to live.”
“The Queens have spoken. They will not pay in the blood of their people. This is the only offer they will condescend to make. Take the Akron’s Torch or nothing at all. What is your choice, Dexion? Will you take your relic in place of the embassy and free the hostages? Or will you sacrifice this chance to regain the Torch?”
“The Queens have heard my Order’s terms. Seven lives for seven lives. Return the Akron’s sacred relic as well, unless you wish us to exact justice for the theft.”
“Hold to those terms, and you will find yourself empty-handed.”
“I have nothing more to say, except this, bloodborn. One day you and I will meet with that Torch between us, and not for a negotiation. You will not be so proud of it when I use it to immolate you on the Akron’s Altar.”
SOLSTICE OATH
Aunt Lyta was suddenlystanding before the Dexion. “I will take him.”
Mak started forward, his fists clenched, but she planted a hand in the middle of his chest. She and the Dexion disappeared.
Everything after that became a blur to Lio. He didn’t know how Cassia got from her seat to the podium, only that she slid under his arm so he could lean on her. Her glyph shard was back around her neck. Kassandra closed the Torch inside the silk box.
“We have more than one chance at this,” Cassia was saying. “No agreement was ever reached on the first negotiation. We’ll try again with Chrysanthos. We may yet persuade him to accept the Torch.”
“There’s still his secret box.” That was Nodora. “We could bargain with whatever power is hidden inside.”
“We won’t give up trying to open it,” Kia promised. “I’ll take it around to all the scholarly circles again.”
“We need more information about his brother.” Xandra was at the podium, too. “Personal information. His weaknesses.”
Mak pulled Lio into a hard embrace and whispered, “Next time you ask me to negotiate with my fists while you break his mind, I won’t refuse.”
Lyros pulled Mak away. “Don’t say such things. Especially not when Lio has been starving for three nights.”
“We’re leaving now,” Cassia announced.
“Can you step, Son?” Lio’s father asked.
Cassia touched Lio’s face and turned him to look at her. “My Winter Solstice gift is waiting for you. Let’s go home.”
Lio needed no Will to step them to their residence. Home pulled at him. When they arrived, the empty silence he had left was now filled with Cassia’s aura. Knight plopped down on his blanket under the window seat.
Lio went still in the middle of the library, all his senses honing to the beacon at the top of the tower. “Cassia…is that…?”
She took his hand and led him to the stairway. “Come to our bedchamber.”
They climbed the stairs together, round and round. Lio could not find the strength to carry her or levitate them. They came out in the unfinished loft that occupied the top level of the tower, and Cassia guided Lio to stand in the center of the room.
The two stained glass windows he had already installed cast the room in color, red from his tribute to their roses and violet from the betony flowers that warded off nightmares. But through the six cavernous, empty window frames, no frigid polar air swept in.
She faced him with the full Light Moon behind her and the Eye of Blood’s half moon over her shoulder. Not a breath of wind stirred her robe. Sanctuary magic winked at his senses from within her shadow and sent silent echoes up to the vaults of the unfinished roof.
He could scarcely believe it. He reached out and ran his power over the fusion of familiar light magic and elusive warding. The working pulsed silently in his awareness with two different rhythms. As he listened, he realized one beat in time to his heart, the other to hers.
“Cassia, you crafted a Sanctuary ward—here!”
“The magic responded once more in my hour of need. It must have sensed how much I needed to do this for you.” She lifted a bundle from the floor and held it in her arms for him to see. “Lio, I’ve brought a gift. It’s for you. And for myself.”
He took a step toward her. For the first time, he caught the other odors that lingered in the room beneath the fragrances of living roses and the fresh blood she had shed for her spell.
