by Vela Roth
“The Prisma mentioned some of the children at the temple were having nightmares,” Cassia explained. “I think she wasn’t talking about the orphans. I made a few dozen of these charms to ward off fever dreams.”
“That was very kind of you.”
“I fear the true horror of my sewing skills is painfully apparent, but the betony inside is the best remedy there is for nightmares. I grow it in my window boxes and dry an ample stock so I always have some on hand.”
On hand in her satchel, next to Solia’s secret, it seemed. “You are quite the alchemist.”
“The power is all in the plants. Betony has potent benefits, and not just for children. It works best when kept close during sleep, perhaps under the pillow or in a pocket. You must tell me if it works on Hesperines.”
“I look forward to finding out.” He fingered her gift, lifting it to his nose again. Almost to his lips. “Thank you, Cassia.”
“You’ll be glad to hear we finished preparing the first batch of rimelace at the temple today. The mages haven’t even stopped to sleep. Officially the Prisma is having the medicine delivered to the east, but the children already received it, I suspect. We were right that few mages in the temple know about their hidden patients.” Now she gave him her arch smile. “You’ve been trusted with quite a confidence, for a heretic.”
He smiled at that as well. “The rarity of my experience is not lost on me. If there ever comes a time when it is safe to tell others what we did, I may become the first Hesperine in history to write a firsthand account of the inside of a Kyrian temple.”
“You would write it down? Centuries from now, I suppose, when all the troubles of this age have been laid to rest, except between debating scholars.” She said it with the carelessness that defined her carefully fashioned court banter.
Lio’s thoughts shied away from her vision of the future. He could not bring himself to consider a time when he could no longer be near her except in the words of a history text. “I am writing an account of all my experiences here. A Chronicle of the Equinox Summit of 1595. It will be a continuation of the study I began in my initiation treatise.”
“Is that like your stained glass window of Hespera’s Rose?”
“Yes, just as the rose window secured my initiation in my craft, my treatise met the requirements for my advancement to initiate ambassador.”
“What was the subject of your work?”
Lio folded his hands behind his back before he could stop himself, then realized he must look foolish making such a formal gesture in his athletic attire. “The Reign of Lucis Basileus, King of Tenebra, and its Implications for Hesperine Diplomacy. You must understand, the situation in Tenebra is one of the most critical problems facing my people. I wanted to do something meaningful with my work by addressing an area where there is real need.”
She did not appear to take offense at his interest in the tyrant she hated. Far from it. She smiled softly. “I am not surprised, Idealist Ambassador Deukalion.”
He returned a rueful smile. “My chronicle of the Summit will be far superior to my treatise, for it will not rely on theory, but on firsthand research. I’ve always hoped to add original material to the diplomatic canon that provided my education. I never imagined I would have the opportunity so soon and such an incredible embassy to document.”
“Even after all that has happened, you are still excited to be here. Is Tenebra not enough to wear you down?”
“I would not trade this experience for anything.” He found himself looking at her a little too long and rather too honestly. Her pulse answered. Lio returned to the subject at hand. “You are welcome to read my chronicle, Lady Circumspect, if you wish to satisfy yourself I have left out all the details that may not be safely committed to paper.”
She gasped and covered her mouth. “You would teach a bastard girl the Divine Tongue so she might read heretical texts!”
“I would. Or you could simply read my parallel text in the vulgar. In fact, I would be glad to have a native speaker’s evaluation. My mother will read it later, of course, but her Vulgus is ninety years out of date.”
“I am hardly the one to ask for help on a scholarly matter.”
She hadn’t said it didn’t interest her, only that she didn’t consider herself qualified. That gave him hope she was not merely seeking a polite way to excuse herself. “You have more insight into these events than any scholar. I would value your opinion.”
“I am flattered. But I doubt I would get through it before current events become ancient history. I can read words on lips at a hundred paces, but words on a page?” She shuddered. “Takes an eternity.”
“I see.” Her intellect was yet another aspect of her that was going to waste. Lio tried not to let his disappointment show. “Reading was not deemed relevant to your education.”
“Not since I was seven.”
“I’m sorry. I had no intention of imposing such a task on you.” Nor of bringing up painful memories. Lio winced inwardly.
“No need to apologize. I certainly don’t regard your invitation as an imposition. I wish I could be of more help.”
“I value your interest alone.”
She pushed away from the tree, narrowing the distance between them ever so slightly. “Perhaps I can be of assistance in a different way. It’s the least I can do.”
“No exchanges between us,” he reminded her. “Only openness.”
“That Oath governs our speech, yes, but all you have done for me goes far beyond words. Words are not enough to thank you. I would do something for you in return.”
She did feel closer to him. She had not reequipped her armor after what she had shared with him last night. After their one, unforgettable embrace. Dare he hope that was not to be their only one?
Lio took a step forward, toward her offer of warmth. “There should be no debts or obligations between us. But a gift for a gift? Far be it from me to refuse your generosity.”
Cassia matched him, a step for a step, her small foot rustling in the grass. “You are thirsty.”
Her words thrust him into a fantasy world where she was coming to him with a single intent. To slide into his arms again, but with a different purpose this time. To lift her head and look into his eyes without any fear in hers. To bare her throat.
If only.
But of course that wasn’t what she meant. “I’m all right for now.”
“You must always be thirsty.” Another step toward him. She had to tilt her head to keep her gaze on his. More of her throat came into view. “Here you are, far away from home, forced to make do with deer.”
“No Hesperine shies away from a test of self-discipline. It’s good training.” And he was failing the test miserably right now. His control seemed unable to recover from that stray thought, that imagining of what he wished her words meant. Not even Knight’s gaze on him was threatening enough to banish his wishful thinking.
Cassia stepped closer still. Goddess help him.
“Human blood would satisfy you much better, wouldn’t it?”
Did she want to torture him? He stood speechless. He had no reply that would not betray him.
“But only if the human is willing,” she went on. “That is acceptable, according to your laws.”
“Of course,” he blurted.
She looked into his eyes. The liquid rhythm inside her undulated faster, harder. “I am willing, Lio.”
Offering of Blood
Lio’s thoughts ground to a halt. Then eased into motion again on the realization he had not been dreaming.
He dare not go a step nearer to her. Not till he was certain. “Cassia. You are offering…” Your blood. Yourself. To me. “…to share your blood with me?”
“Yes.”
She was. She really was. Willing.
Lio’s reality shifted. Cassia had just redrawn the rules of it.
Every rule he had agreed to abide by as an ambassador still stood. The rules that defined her life could still punish h
er. He was still a Hesperine, and she was still a mortal from whom the king, the gods and Lio’s duty to the Queens’ embassy forbade him to drink.
But Cassia no longer forbade him.
That changed everything.
She searched his gaze. “Are there other impediments? Or does my permission satisfy the requirements?”
They had taken the law into their own hands already for the simple rewards of companionship and the high stakes of frost fever. Would he draw the line here, at her blood?
Lio felt none of the caution with which he so often struggled. He did not need to deliberate. His decision was crystal clear to him.
“Yes, Cassia. Your consent is all that matters.”
“Then we are agreed?”
These were not the words he had imagined her saying to him on such an occasion as this, and that was not the expression he had envisioned on her face. But ardent words and declarations of passion were not Cassia’s way. It had cost her a great deal to even consider issuing him such an invitation, of that he was certain. Far more telling than the mask she wore was what lay beneath.
He let the Blood Union take him, and before he knew it, he had closed the distance between their bodies and all that lay within. He heard her gasp.
She lifted her face. Close enough to kiss. Her lips parted. “I am not suggesting anything indiscreet, of course. As you’ve so tactfully explained before, desires of the flesh do not accompany the Thirst. That is something else, which you call the Hunger.”
“You would not wish me to do more than drink from you,” he said softly.
“You know I do not find such activities prudent.” Her eyes widened slightly. “I assumed your perspective was the same.”
Her pulse beat a swift flourish to his slower, thundering heart. A flush glazed her cheeks, a mirror of the heat under his own skin. Yet she spoke of discretion. Of prudence.
Anger burned through Lio, but it was not his own. A dread for dawn overtook him. He longed to sleep and sleep and awaken when the coming day was over, as if it had never been. Then another day, another room loomed in his thoughts, awash in candlelight. A powerful presence hovered over him. He dare not lift his gaze from the fur-trimmed hem of the royal robe that filled his vision.
The voice above him spoke evenly, but seemed to boom around him. …it is necessary to remind all concerned your blood is mine to use as I see fit, and mine alone.
Lio backed away, and Cassia jumped. The vision broke, and he stood once again in the clearing under the Light Moon’s slim crescent and the burgeoning Blood Moon with Cassia awaiting his decision. To accept what he had wanted since the moment he had met her. Or to push that gift away.
This time the frustration that overtook him was entirely his own. So close. So far. Nothing would be truly shared between them, if she offered thus.
“Perhaps I have assumed too much.” Confusion flickered in her eyes. “I thought you thrive on human blood in general, but I did not consider the possibility your tastes are more particular. If you do not find my suggestion appealing, please, speak openly as we’ve agreed.”
Not appealing? Her blood, which tormented him in his dreams every Dawn Slumber, his deliverance from his nightmares? “You speak of agreements and what is acceptable, but to share your blood with someone is nothing so mercenary.”
“Mercenary!”
“If there was ever a time when there should be no negotiation between us, it is now. I don’t want you to share with me as a means to an end.”
She took a step back. “To what end would I make you a means? I have nothing to gain from this. I’m trying to do you a…”
Had she been about to say the word favor?
“I thought to do this for you,” she amended.
“I don’t want you to do it for me.” His teeth punished him for protesting such a plea from her. “If you share with me at all, it must be for both of us. But certainly not for the reasons you have in mind tonight. I want to be more to you than a means of revenge. More than a tool to spite your father.”
He had trespassed. All the anger he had felt within her surged to the surface. Her eyes flashed, and her blood raged.
Her words were longest in coming, but at last they too lashed out. “I try to do you a kindness, and you…accuse me of such a thing. You, Lio. Accuse me of trying to use you!”
He felt no triumph, although he had struck the mark. “I do not intend it as an accusation. It is simply the truth.”
“I’ll thank you not to claim you know the truth of my motivations better than I do.”
“I can feel it in you. Do you not feel it in yourself?”
“I’ll have none of your heartwarming magical truths on this occasion. The transcendent glory of your Blood Union has led you astray. He is not the reason. He has nothing to do with this. I am too wise to consider any act of revenge against him and too occupied trying to stay alive to engage in petty acts of spite. And even if that were not the case…”
Hurt welled out of her. Lio had endured a broad spectrum of her emotions, from her temper to her grief.
He’d never felt this hurt with the knowledge he had caused it.
“I do not want him here, Lio. He has no place here, tonight, with us.”
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to say. I don’t want this to be about him.”
“Will you not accept my assurance that it isn’t?”
“How can I, when you hear his voice in your head when I draw near?”
The flush drained from her cheeks. “How dare you? After all your claims you would never trespass on my mind.”
“I didn’t have to. You were shouting your thoughts as if they were a battle cry. You want me to drink your blood so you can have the satisfaction of handing a piece of the king’s property to the enemy. Merciful Goddess. That is not what I want for us. I will have no part in it.”
“Such high standards.” Cassia’s voice was cold as ice. “I see what I have to offer you is not to your taste.”
Lio fought to sever their Union. Her anger burned, even as she intoxicated him. If he went any closer to her now, he would not listen to his better judgment, but his aching mouth, hollow belly and everything southward.
Her aura sank under a lifetime of disappointment. “Of course. Who would want to drink the king’s blood? Now that I think of it, it makes me sick, too.”
“By the Goddess, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your blood is not his. Body and soul, you are not his. I will not help you act as if you are.”
“You deny I would taste like him?”
“You taste like…cassia and pure Will and your garden.”
She fell silent for a moment. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I have spent every night in Union with you and I know what’s in your blood. My taste is particular. I have never in my life thirsted for anyone as I thirst for you. It has been so since my first night here, when all my senses picked you out of the crowd on the greensward, and I longed to know who you were. I would have you share with me for the same reason. Because you want it. Because you, Cassia, want it for yourself.”
She held her chin high, and her pride was a thread inside her she clung to like a lifeline. “Well. I see I have overestimated my insight into Hesperine ways. Since I have so thoroughly misjudged, I shall leave you to your customary drink.”
She turned her back on him and marched off. At the edge of the clearing, she tossed back over her shoulder, “My offer stands, however misguided.”
Knight insulted Lio and his ancestors with an eloquent string of growls and escorted his lady away.
When Lio knew Cassia was out of earshot, he rammed his fist into the tree.
The bark gave a satisfying crack, the trunk a creak. His blood made a red stain on the pale aspen. The pain of his split knuckles distracted him from the rest of his body for an instant, before his hand healed.
It was a good thing she had left when she did. He couldn’t have said another word around his unshe
athed fangs. And he wore no formal robes that would conceal just how “indiscreet” he longed to be with her.
He could have said yes and backed her up against this tree. He could have his teeth in her right now. The taste of her, Cassia, on his tongue. Her blood pouring down his throat and heating him within. He could be showing her what it felt like. Finding out if she would ask for more than his fangs inside her.
And she would have been thinking about the king and her sister and revenge.
Instead of dealing the aspen another meaningless injury, Lio took off running.
21
Days Until
SPRING EQUINOX
Day of Mourning
Cassia woke to the thought of what his arms had felt like around her. The feeling had been powerful in its newness, astonishing in its potential to comfort rather than unnerve her.
She felt as if he had only just let her go. Perhaps she had dreamed of him. Or perhaps the memory of his embrace was just that strong, that it outlasted their angry, wounding words and held through the night, into the dawn.
Dawn. The realization fell upon her. Her moment of reprieve in the memory of Lio holding her was over.
The day had come. The day of her year that was, just as it had been twice-seven years ago, a trial by fire until tomorrow came and it was finally over. And here she was at Solorum for the first time since she had last been here with Solia.
Cassia did not want to open her eyes.
But she couldn’t close her ears, and they told her Perita moved about in the room beyond. There came the inescapable sound of the girl stoking the fire with an iron poker to keep breakfast warm.
Cassia wanted no food. She wanted no dawn. She would accept the gloomy dimness of her room, such as it was, over what awaited beyond.
Moments from now, the Sun Temple would be brimming with mourners. The black door to the tombs would be the focus of dawn rites. The highborn would descend into the crypt to offer gifts to the sarcophagus engraved with Solia’s face. They would pray over the vacant stone and believe they prayed over their lost queen’s bones.