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“Who went to battle to pair us off,” Cassia added.
Mak held out a hand to Lio. “Where’s my getaway invitation to use on Lyros?”
“A scroll in the fighting ring?” Lio inquired. “Could be an interesting battle, but I think that would be disqualified as a weapon.”
“To use to convince him to leave the ring,” Mak clarified, “and take a romantic leave of absence with me.”
Lyros looked at him. “I don’t need a fancy invitation for that, my Grace. Just tell me you want to do it.”
Mak was about to steal a kiss from Lyros, when Lio cleared his throat. “I do have gifts for you, of course.”
“After the celebration,” Cassia said, “let’s all go over to Lio’s residence.”
Lio wrapped his arms around her. “Ourresidence.”
After they had seen the last of their guests to the door, said their good veils, and helped tuck in the sucklings, they retired from the main house with their friends. Talking and laughing, they all sneaked through the garden together, as if they too were playing a game of veil and step, perhaps with the Goddess, who spied them with her half-lidded Eye of Blood.
In the library, Lio put on the coffee he had waiting for them and pulled their gifts from the storage basket underneath the coffee table. He set the five identical silk-wrapped parcels before his Trial circle and watched them unwrap the glass seals he had made for them bearing their private glyphs.
Nodora held hers before her face so the engraved lyre caught the light. “They’re beautiful!”
“The thoughts they carry, still more so.” Kia smiled at her scroll. “These will mark momentous correspondence between us for many centuries to come.”
“Thank you,” Xandra said happily of her silk moth seal.
“I don’t usually go in for those fiddly scholar gifts,” Mak teased, “but these matching speires are all right.”
“They don’t fit together like two halves of a heart,” Lio added, “like those metal ones you made for each other when we were students.”
“Thorns.” Lyros covered his face. “I’m sorry for trying to tell the story about your sixtieth Gift Night!”
Laughing, Lio reached into the basket for the last gift and set it in front of Cassia. She glanced at it in surprise.
“You thought I wouldn’t give you a present tonight?” Lio asked.
“I thought your promise to give me a certain Gift was my present,” she answered.
He smiled. “You can have this, too.”
She gave him her secret smile in return, then unwrapped her gift. She cradled in both her hands the glass seal engraved with the image of a spade.
“Perfect,” everyone agreed.
Cassia finally gave Lio the kiss he’d been wanting. “With this to inspire me, I’ll learn to write in record time.”
He reached into the basket one last time and pulled out his own seal and a piece of fine paper. Pricking his thumb, he dripped his blood into the grooves of the seal, then stamped his moonflower glyph on the paper.
He extended a hand toward Cassia. “Allow me to do the honors.”
She held out her seal, and he pricked his healed thumb once more, covering her seal in his blood, which carried hers. She stamped her glyph on the paper. One by one, their friends followed suit, until their symbols, once six, now seven, marked the page in a circle.
Lio presented the paper to Cassia. “Let this serve as your invitation to our Trial circle.”
She looked around at each of them. “I didn’t participate in your Trial of Initiation, though.”
“For Hesperines who accept the Gift as adults,” Kia explained, “the Gifting itself is considered the Trial.”
“We’ll be here to support you on your Gift Night,” Mak promised.
