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“We should keep him with us everywhere tonight,” Miranda agreed. “He’s good protection.”
Cassia took her other hand. “Thank you for this. I want you to know I’m on your side.”
“You’ve changed,” Miranda said. “The Cassia I knew would never risk her life to save a castle full of people who mean nothing to her.”
“Everyone here matters to me now.”
Miranda squeezed her hand. “I know.”
Her traversal spell took hold of them, a yanking sensation in Lio’s sternum, so much more difficult than an intuitive step through the world. So much magic. The wild magic of an apostate, wielded with the force of a great mage. She was more powerful than he had imagined. How had she hidden this?
The world went still, and Lio reached out to steady Cassia. They were in a courtyard, surrounded by walls in disrepair. The trees were dead. Skeletal vines climbed the stones.
He had an instant to take this in before magic erupted around them. He tasted death in his mouth. Necromancy.
Cassia was torn from his grasp. A blast of manteia threw him onto his back. His head cracked against broken flagstones, but he barely felt the impact compared to the spell-pain clawing at the rest of his body.
He focused all his Will on Cassia’s aura and tried to step them away. But his blood magic strained uselessly against arcane bindings. The harder he fought, the deeper the pain ripped into him.
A second blast of death magic sent him into oblivion.
23
Days After
AUTUMN EQUINOX
24 Kyria’s Bounty, 1597 OT
THE MASTER'S FAVORITE
Lio knew he was conscious when he felt pain again. On instinct, his thelemancy lashed out, reaching for Cassia.
His power collided with a chaos of Lustra magic. It circled her, howling, snarling. The Lustra caught him in its jaws and dragged his magic into her. He felt her heartbeat and heard her gasp for breath.
She was alive. Oh merciful Goddess, thank you.
The floor was hard under Lio’s knees, his arms shackled above him against a wall. Dull agony coursed through his veins. So weary, to his bones.
What—who could do this to a Hesperine?
A Gift Collector.
The Old Master’s Overseer must have been lying in wait at Paradum. What had he done to Miranda? Where was Knight?
Lio dragged his heavy eyelids open. He recognized this place. The small, shuttered windows. The bare stones of the ceiling Cassia had stared up at for days. He had seen this chamber in her memories and hated it as much as she did—the sickroom where she had nearly died of that fever eight years ago.
Where her bed had been, there was now a wooden table. He was chained to the wall alongside it, but out of reach, as if his captor wanted to taunt him with a perfect view of the person bound to the table’s surface by thick leather straps.
Cassia. His Grace, trapped in this place out of her nightmares. Lio wanted to destroy this room, stone by stone.
“Cassia?” he called. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”
No answer. She lay still, her skin ashen.
The Lustra shared his fury. He had never felt magic this raw and powerful, not even in the halls of Orthros, soaked in sixteen centuries of immortal power. It crawled up the walls like parasitic ivy and prowled the room like a pack of half-mad beasts. It was in every stone and breath of air, crying out its claim. Its lament.
This had to be the letting site. But there was something horribly wrong with it—and Cassia.
