Blood Mercy (Blood Grace Book 1)

by Vela Roth

  “I know.”

  But one thing mattered more. “I want to do what’s best for you.”

  “You always have.”

  “Tell me what is best for you now, and I will do it.”

  He heard her breath hitch. Her jaw trembled. A crack in the stone. No. A glimpse of the real granite beneath.

  “Go,” she told him. “Be safe and happy in Orthros while I stay here and fight.”

  “I will do as you say. But do not ever imagine I will be happy.”

  “But we were happy. Lio.” That catch in her breath again. Her eyes gleamed. “There are so many things I need to say. But I only have time for one. Thank you.”

  He had made a promise to go. He didn’t know how he would keep it. How was he going to do this?

  He made a move toward her, to touch her, hold her.

  “Lio?”

  They both jumped at the sound of the voice on the other side of the door. Javed. They were out of time.

  “Coming,” Lio called.

  A pause. “Is everything all right?”

  No. And he didn’t see how it would be ever again. “Fine. Just a dream. No, I don’t want you to come in. Yes, I’ll be a moment late.”

  “Easy, Cousin. Take your time.”

  Cassia was shaking her head. “No time,” she whispered.

  “You’re not going back the way you came, not after those bruises. At least let me help you out of here.”

  “Won’t someone sense you use your magic?”

  “It won’t take much. My magic flows in you now.”

  She held out her hand. He took it and pulled her into his arms before she could protest. Just one more time.

  He was astonished his power even obeyed him and took them out of the fortress, when everything within him rejected the knowledge he was helping her leave him.

  The moment they were amid the trees, she slid out of his arms and fled.

  Their last chance to touch, to speak, slipped out of his grasp.

  He was Hesperine. He could catch up to her on a thought. It took every scrap of Will he had to watch her go.

  He would watch her go. He would keep his promise to leave.

  But not while she was throwing herself into a war mage’s trap.

  Deukalion’s Address

  Lio had never imagined the most crucial negotiation of his life would be with his own people. With the Queens’ hand-chosen embassy, no less.

  When he entered the common room, their concern enveloped him. He halted by his seat but did not take it. Their worry intensified. He could see it in their eyes and feel it in the Union, and it stung like salt on an open wound.

  Cassia had no one to worry for her, except him.

  Lio wanted nothing more than to tell these loving people, his people, about her. She deserved their love. She should be here beside him, receiving their gratitude. He wanted them to know she was the hero of this hour.

  But there was no time to make them realize that. Lio knew precisely what he must and must not say to this audience to win them to his point of view. He could spend what little time they had attempting to persuade his war-weary elders that Lucis Basileus’s daughter was trustworthy, and the youngest member of the embassy was not blinded by his infatuation with her. Or he could build his argument on their trust in their own Lio.

  He would say or withhold whatever he must in order to succeed. Cassia had risked everything to make sure the embassy could escape, and she was determined to go to the Summit to cover their departure, even if it cost her life. He would not allow his plan to fail and make her sacrifices mean nothing.

  “Lio.” His uncle studied him. “What could it be that you wish to say?”

  I am not ashamed of anything you and I have done.

  Lio would treasure her in secret. He would inform the embassy of every risk he had taken and every injunction he had violated. He would accept whatever judgment his Queens passed upon him, for he was not ashamed.

  To think, his diplomatic ambitions had been what mattered most to him when he had arrived in Tenebra. His future as an ambassador meant so little in comparison with all that might be lost tonight.

  “I have a course of action to propose,” Lio announced.

  Uncle Argyros set down the scroll he held and let it roll shut. “What is wrong?”

  “Twenty-four fugitive children, the last surviving members of the Cult of Eriphon, are hiding in the Temple of Kyria. The Prisma has agreed to let us bring them home to Orthros, but we must do it tonight, for Amachos is out for their blood—and ours.”

  Utter silence met his pronouncement. The Blood Union clamored with their reaction.

  Lio pressed onward. No time. “Amachos has concealed his true identity. He is really Dalos of the Aithourian Circle. He’s planning to assassinate us and the entire Council of Free Lords at the Summit. Tonight.”

  The Union roared. Uncle Argyros was on his feet. Aunt Lyta and Kadi had beaten him to it by a heartbeat.

  Aunt Lyta braced her hands on the table as if the map of the battlefield in her mind were spread out before her. “How have you learned this? How certain are you?”

  “Certain enough to stake all our lives on it, or I would never have spoken.”

  “Explain,” Uncle Argyros commanded.

  “I’ve been trespassing inside the palace.”

  The storm in Argyros’s aura faltered. All he said was, “Lio.”

  The shock and worry and love that emanated from his uncle in turn was more difficult to bear than any anger. Lio searched the Blood Union for what he dreaded most: disappointment. But his uncle’s response was too complex, and there was so little time to read him. Before Lio could be certain, Basir’s anger consumed his focus.

  “How long has this been going on?” the Master Envoy demanded.

  “Since we arrived.”

  “Your Queens have not authorized you to engage in subterfuge, youngblood. That is the duty of the envoys. You are a diplomat, an initiate, I might add, in whom they have placed extraordinary trust. This is what you have done with it?”

  Kumeta joined in her Grace’s outrage. “You simply decided one night you would become the Queens’ spy? With no training and no one at your back? You could have gotten yourself killed.”

  Or he could have killed the king.

  Lio did not confess this temptation. Nor did he engage in a petty defense of his abilities. He stood tall under their scrutiny.

  Aunt Lyta’s gaze was keenest of all. “We might all have gotten ourselves killed tonight, I take it, if Lio had not appointed himself to eavesdrop on our enemies.”

  “The king’s daughter,” Uncle Argyros cut in.

  Lio met his gaze without hesitation, prepared for him to make the connection. His uncle would not arrive at the truth.

  “That is how you were aware of her presence here,” Uncle Argyros said. “Also the rumors about the epidemic of frost fever in the east. All this you have learned not from conversations you overheard during your nightly drink, but from deliberate trespassing?”

  “Yes,” Lio confirmed.

  “Here I’ve been,” Kadi burst out, “sitting on my hands and struggling to behave! All the while I was longing to see action, Lio was taking the lead. You could have asked me to come with you.”

  Javed covered his face in one hand.

  Kadi’s eyes flashed, and Lio was no longer looking at his cheerful cousin, but a Master Steward of Hippolyta’s Stand. “Why didn’t you ask me for help? You know I am not so fastidious about the rules as you yourself are. You know what it has cost me to wait in Orthros with my hands tied for nearly a century, uncertain whether Nike needs my aid. While I walk her patrol night after night, I wonder if I fail her again each time by not going errant to find her. See now what good it has done our elders for me to hold myself back to soothe their hearts.” Kadi brought her fist down on the table, and her parents jumped. “What wouldn’t I give for a chance to act, just once?”

  Javed rested his hand over her fi
st. “Are you holding yourself back when you save lives at the border? How many would have died before I had a chance to heal them, if you had not acted?”

  She uncurled her fingers and held fast to his hand.

  “Kadi,” Lio said, “don’t doubt for a moment I hold two sisters’ love for one another in reverence. I wasn’t trying to exclude you—only protect you and everyone else.”

  “You, little cousin, trying to protect me? And all of Orthros too? When did it become our youngest diplomat’s duty to take up the calling of the Stand and the Charge?”

  Power and emotion quivered in the air around Aunt Lyta. “I want to know why my youngblood nephew discovered a war mage in our midst, when we who have faced Dalos’s kind in battles to the death have not sensed a trace of his magic. To hide that much power takes a ward of equal power, which gives away the caster’s strength and defeats the purpose. The ward he carries about is not that strong.”

  Kumeta shook her head. Lio had never seen her look so haunted. “It seems we must consider the possibility the enemy has developed new workings unknown to us. If anyone could achieve such an innovation, it would be the Aithourian Circle. There is a great deal of their secret research into which we have no insight, even those of us who are active in Cordium.”

  Basir exchanged a glance with her, clearly holding two conversations at once. “Regarding Dalos’s power, we can no longer make conjectures with any degree of confidence. Argyros, we advise you to proceed under the assumption the war mage possesses any number of abilities of which we have no knowledge. Expect him to take us by surprise.”

  “Understood. Nephew, there is more you can tell us.”

  “A great deal more.”

  Lio delivered the finest address of his career. He informed the embassy of everything Cassia had overheard and made sure not a single lie passed his lips. It was true he had infiltrated the royal wings; the conversation between the king and the royal mage had really taken place. It grated on his conscience to take sole credit for everything, but for her sake, he would say anything he must.

  Uncle Argyros put him to the test. “What you have said still does not explain how you came to have personal dealings with the Prisma of the Temple of Kyria.”

  “After the king refused to accept our gift of medicines, one of the temple’s representatives approached me when I was alone on the grounds. I was astonished at her daring…” He had been, that first night when Cassia, so proud and fearless, had come to find him. “…and even more so that she set aside her prejudices for the chance to help others.” Lio had seen it when no one else had, her desire to act that she hid so well. “She negotiated a direct exchange of the rimelace.”

  “I’m not missing any herbs,” Javed protested. Even as the words came out of his mouth, a startled expression crossed his face. “I’ll be sunbound. Those are an illusion, Lio?”

  “I’m sorry my deception has burdened you with grief.” One apology Lio had no qualms in offering his friend. “But do not despair of the children, Javed. The Prisma knows as well as we do there is no epidemic of frost fever in the eastern Tenebrae.”

  Javed grimaced. “The children. Of course. The malnourishment and exposure to the elements they must have suffered as fugitives and orphans would make them prime targets for frost fever. It’s a wonder any of them survived long enough for the Prisma to take them in.”

  “I don’t know how the mages of Kyria managed to locate the Eriphites ahead of the mages of Anthros and get the children to safety, but I am certain the Prisma has her own sources of information. She learned just in time that the royal mage is planning an imminent raid on her temple. The Kyrians’ representative approached me again to inform me we may Solace the children.” She came to my room. I made love to her. I will never taste her again.

  And she was about to sit down at the Summit across from a war mage who looked forward to committing murder.

  Lio laid out the details of the Prisma’s plan to meet at the Grove. “She would rather surrender the children to Hesperines than see them suffer the punishment for heresy.”

  “Deukalion, your passionate determination to help does you great credit.” It was the kindest thing Kumeta had said. “That is what we all believe in. But you are young. Your upbringing in Orthros predisposes you to trust. Here in Tenebra, you must consider less benevolent motivations. It’s possible the Prisma’s seemingly compassionate proposal is a trap.”

  “I spoke in detail with the Prisma herself when I delivered the rimelace to her vestibule. I found her to be a great mage and a woman worthy of respect.”

  “You went inside?” Basir hissed.

  There was no mistaking the wonder in Javed’s voice. “You’ve been inside a temple of Kyria.”

  “And I came to no harm.”

  “She could have planned the encounter to build trust with you,” Basir said, “to make you believe it would be safe to bring the rest of us to her later. The children could be a tale she offers up as bait—”

  “I felt each one of them dying. They are no tale, and our herbs are the only reason they still live.”

  “They may still be bait,” Basir returned. “It would be a master stroke for the Prisma if she delivered the Eriphite heretics and the Hesperine embassy to Dalos in one move. The Order of Anthros’s favor would secure her future and that of her temple.”

  “He doesn’t need her to deliver us to him. He thinks we will be at his mercy tonight.”

  “She doesn’t know that,” Basir said. “To escape Dalos’s trap—provided we succeed—only to go willingly into an encounter with another powerful mage would be a shameful risk of precious lives.”

  Lio looked the Master Envoy in the eye. “Do not imagine for a moment that I would ask all of you to take such a risk if I did not cherish those lives.”

  “Deukalion.” The gentleness in Kumeta’s tone made Lio look at her in surprise.

  She rounded the table and came to stand beside him. He stood still, feeling as if too fast a movement might banish a gift.

  Her hand came to rest on his arm. “Basir and I are not the gentlest protectors. That is because we have borne too many losses already. The Blood Errant was acting on our information when the war mages captured Prometheus.”

  “You cannot hold yourselves responsible for what befell him! Everyone knows your information is the only reason any of the Blood Errant survived that night.”

  “Yes. Basir and I provided the very best information possible, and still we lost Methu. We did not make a single error, and still we live with the knowledge that we could not prevent his capture. In our dreams, we watch him suffer the fate we know awaits all Hesperines the Aithourian Circle takes to Cordium as prisoners. A heretic’s public torture and execution on the Akron’s Altar. How do you think we feel at the thought of you wandering alone in the palace with Dalos looking over your shoulder?”

  Lio bowed his head. “Devotion like yours is exactly what makes me regret nothing I have done.”

  She let him go. “I know. You are so much like him, bloodborn.”

  Lio had listened to the tales about Prometheus all his life and heard that title of bloodborn laid upon them both. He always heard he reminded them of beloved Methu, and he always answered that he would strive to be worthy of that praise.

  No one had ever said he was like Prometheus.

  Tonight Lio answered, “Thank you.”

  “There is time later to debate the wisdom of Lio’s actions.” Uncle Argyros’s gaze lingered on the closed scroll in front of him. “For now, we must reach a decision.”

  Lio knew the reckoning would catch up to him later, but it seemed so distant as to be unreal, separated from him by the Summit pavilion where Cassia would soon take her seat with the intention of paying with her life for his people’s safety.

  Aunt Lyta stood in silent council with Uncle Argyros, then looked to Basir and Kumeta. “Your recommendation, then, is not to trust the Prisma?”

  Lio felt Basir study him through the U
nion.

  “We advise you to consider both possibilities,” Basir said. “We are ourselves uncertain.”

  Kumeta’s bitterness returned to the fore. “We must choose to stake either our own lives or those of twenty-four children on our uncertainty.”

  The Blood Union shivered with Aunt Lyta’s anger. “Already Dalos puts us right back in the Last War.”

  “Rudhira would want a say in this,” Kadi broke in. “He should take part in any conflict with the circle that took Methu. The Blood Errant may have disbanded after they lost Prometheus, but you know our prince still craves justice. He will hold any Aithourian accountable, though he and Nike and Uncle Apollon tracked down the war mages personally responsible for Methu’s defeat.”

  At the mention of the infamous crusade, Lio tensed. He and Kadi watched Argyros flinch.

  “No.” The Union rang with the finality of Uncle Argyros’s refusal. “We cannot afford for the prince to escalate the situation.”

  “Methu was Rudhira’s Trial brother, and Nike their Trial sister,” Kadi protested.

  “Listen to your father,” Aunt Lyta said. “Even if we could risk communication with the prince, we cannot risk exposing him. Think how he would react. He would give no thought to protecting the ruse under which he lives here in Tenebra.”

  “And he would regret it later,” Kadi conceded, but her expression hardened. “We shall have to deliver justice on his behalf.”

  “I’m afraid I agree we should not attempt contact with the prince,” Basir said. “Orthros Abroad is his domain, and we should by rights seek his sanction. But with an Aithourian just outside the fortress walls, we must not risk magic we once assumed was safe.”

  “We must act without our prince’s counsel,” Kumeta agreed.

  Uncle Argyros spread his hands to indicate the seven of them. “Our Queens have empowered us as their ambassadors to use our judgment. It lies with us to determine if we should meet with the Prisma and how we will respond to Dalos’s threats.”

  Lio must work harder to convince them of the truth. Goddess, let him not lose the ground he had gained. He had told them all he knew, and still they feared a trap awaited them in Kyria’s Grove. What else could Lio say, short of exposing Cassia as the mediator who had negotiated his truce with the Prisma? Cassia, ever wary, had judged this worth the risk.