Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  “How well I know it. But I’m not afraid of punishment. Or the one who would punish me.”

  “If you’re not afraid of that, my lady, what could you possibly be worried about?”

  “The things I must do to bring us together again. How much time that will take.” At last she confessed to her friend—and herself—the worst specter she envisioned ahead of her, looming even larger than the last resort, waiting for her on the other side of it. “What if I go through all of that, only to find it is too late for us?”

  Perita shook her head. “I don’t know anyone else like you, my lady. You can stand among kings and lords and Hesperines without twitching, but when it comes to your man, the thought he might have changed his mind has you wringing your hands.”

  “I—may I take that as a compliment, Perita? All things considered, I would be more dismayed to hear the opposite.”

  “You may take anything I say however you like, my lady. But it seems to me you’ve made up your mind.”

  “I made up my mind the night he left. I still dread what I must do to make good on my promise. But I will not give up. I will see him again.”

  AUTUMN EQUINOX

  ORTHROS

  Hesperines shall not set foot in temples, orphanages, or places of burial.

  —The Equinox Oath

  Call to Action

  Lio was waiting on his uncle’s terrace when Basir and Kumeta came out of Uncle Argyros’s library. Their sense of urgency rebounded through the Blood Union.

  “Don’t think you missed another conference,” Kumeta said. “There is no more time for discussion, only action.”

  Basir held out a hand. “If you have a letter for the prince, give it here.”

  Lio hurried to open his scroll case. “What has happened?”

  “War mages,” Basir announced, “wearing Aithourian colors and bristling with all the power Dalos sought to hide. They could not be more obvious.”

  “They arrived so near dawn,” Kumeta said, “we barely had time to confirm their presence before we had to make for Rota Overlook to Slumber. We are fortunate our Sanctuary there is old and well veiled, for Cordium’s so-called goodwill ambassadors are anything but farm mages.”

  “How many?” Lio asked.

  “A full war circle,” Basir answered.

  That meant Cassia had seven war mages breathing down her neck. “Do we know who they are?”

  Kumeta nodded. “When we returned to Solorum after dark, we witnessed the king allow the war circle’s leader the privilege of lighting the festival bonfire. The whole gathering was astir about Lucis’s new crony. It appears the Synthikos of the Aithourian Circle has finally appointed his Dexion, just in time to send him to Tenebra.”

  “The Dexion!” Lio echoed. “That is all but a declaration of war.”

  “The Synthikos has chosen Chrysanthos,” Kumeta informed Lio, “Dalos’s lifelong rival. The envoy service’s information on Corona’s inner workings is not what it used to be, but we do know both were born into the Cordian high nobility with an affinity for fire and taken into the Aithourian Circle as very young boys. They received the same training from the Synthikos, always competing for his favor, and became notorious for sabotaging each other at every turn. While Dalos made a name for himself as a firebrand, Chrysanthos is known as their generation’s foremost politician.”

  “Then he is sure to be even more dangerous than Dalos,” Lio said.

  Basir shot Lio’s scroll case an indicative glance. “We are out of time. If we do not find the rest of our people immediately, it will be too late. We are returning to the prince now.”

  Lio drew out his letter for Rudhira. “Wait.”

  “Ask your questions quickly,” Basir bade him.

  “Did you learn anything else at the festival?”

  “Nothing else of import.” Frustration edged Kumeta’s words. “After the dance, the king and the Dexion retired to a game of kings and mages in the Sun Temple, where we could not follow. We hardly know what they’re planning. Now, while the Dexion is busy blessing Lord Flavian and his bride-to-be, we must make use of what little time is left to us.”

  “Lady Cassia danced?”

  “Of course. Hurry now.” She gestured at the letter Lio held.

  He stood frozen. “She is really promised to Flavian?”

  “Promised and delivered, by all accounts,” she said. “After they played Anthros and Kyria in the dance, they wasted no time sneaking off alone without even her liegehound to supervise. When we left just now, Flavian’s comrades and rivals alike were still in their cups making bawdy speculations. We can thank the happy couple that Tenebra’s warriors will be too thick-headed in the morning for even the Dexion to muster them.”

  Lio stood there holding his letter, unable to speak. Basir took the scroll from his hand, and then the Master Envoys were gone.

  Lio made it to the woods beyond the terrace before his body got the better of him. His roar of frustration turned into a gag, and he made a mess of the snow at the foot of one of his uncle’s fruit trees. He braced his hand on the trunk and hunched on the ground, unable to do more than wait it out while the Craving ravaged him.

  “Lio,” he heard Mak say, “we know you’re here.”

  “Let us past your veil, won’t you?” came Lyros’s voice, gentle but firm.

  Well, at least Lio’s veil hadn’t failed him. Uncle Argyros didn’t know his nephew was out here yelling and defacing his trees. Lio attempted a cleaning spell, which left a hole in the snow and him crouching in a patch of unsoiled but soggy mulch. He sat down hard, put his head between his knees, and let Mak and Lyros through his veil. He heard them walk inside the reach of his concealing magic.

  Lyros sat down beside him. “Oh, Lio.”

  Mak knelt on Lio’s other side. “What did Basir and Kumeta say?”

  Lio shut his eyes. “Flavian danced with Cassia.”

  “Then that settles it,” Mak said. “You have to do something.”

  “I should have done something long before now. I swear, I am truly going to murder Flavian.” Lio’s fangs unsheathed, and he bared his teeth. He was beyond wondering at his thirst for violence or the way his Gift leapt within him, out for blood. He was beyond philosophy, and pure conviction drove him. “They went off alone together after the dance. They’re alone together right now. It’s unbelievable—for some reason she doesn’t even have Knight with her. If Flavian imposes on her in even the slightest way, I will start with his mind, and by the time I am done with him, he will be broken from the inside out.”

  And if Flavian didn’t impose on her? If she wanted a tryst with him in the woods she had once shared with no one but Lio?

  Helpless frustration gripped Lio as never before, and his magic flared so powerfully he shuddered.

  “Thorns!” Mak exclaimed. “Easy now.”

  The veil around them strengthened, but not with Lio’s power. Lyros and Mak bolstered his concealment with one of their own wards.

  The high tide of Lio’s Gift receded, leaving a well of hurt behind. Cassia was not bound to him by any promises, not until they acknowledged to one another they were Graced. She was within her rights to choose anyone, and after a lifetime of stifling her beautiful, powerful passions, she was all the more entitled to pleasure and exploration. Lio was not a Tenebran man who thought a walk in the woods meant he owned Cassia. He was not Flavian.

  But even in the absence of promises, if she did not feel her bond to him… Lio was immortal, not immune. He still wanted to kill Flavian.

  “It’s just gossip,” Lyros insisted. “Basir and Kumeta must pay attention to any information, from hard facts to rumors mortals swap in their privies. But don’t assume too much from the drunken jests of a lot of randy humans.”

  “You’re right.” Lio held fast to reason. “You’re right, gossip would blow it out of proportion, and I don’t know what really happened. I must withhold judgment until I have a firsthand account—firsthand reassurance. From Cassia h
erself.”

  Mak let out a laugh of relief. “You’re going to bring her home.”

  “I am going to bring her home,” Lio repeated.

  As he spoke the decision aloud, his relief was enough to make him shake.

  Lyros grinned. “You said your father already offered to take you to get her. Now we are jealous. Rescuing a mortal in distress from Solorum itself with one of the Blood Errant? That’s the stuff of legends.”

  Lio looked at his friend. “No, Father is not going to set foot in Solorum. Not when there are seven Aithourian war mages in residence.”

  Lyros cursed.

  Mak sprang up. “The Charge has a war circle on their hands? Already? It wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. They haven’t found everyone yet.”

  Lio staggered to his feet and put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “If there is one Hesperine who knows how to deal with war mages, it’s Nike. Don’t forget she has single-handedly defeated whole war circles.”

  “Goddess, I’d like to see that.” Mak held fast to Lyros’s offered hand. “Pray for my sister—and our parents.”

  “Don’t waste any more time,” Lyros urged Lio. “I don’t care how you’re planning to do it. Just get Cassia home. You can’t leave her sitting there now that the Aithourians have come, not a night longer.”

  “I know. But I have to find a way to bring my Grace home without starting the war ahead of time.”

  Mak eyed him. “If anyone can do that, Lio, it’s you.”

  “You are a diplomat through and through,” said Lyros. “Just as you promised, you’ll find a way.”

  Lio let his Trial brothers feel his gratitude through the Blood Union.

  He could only hope they were right.

  Cut from Experience

  Lio closed the door of his library and shut the veil over his residence with all the force of a portcullis. Zoe and the other children were oblivious in Slumber. All his loved ones who were Graced sought refuge from the world’s troubles in one another’s arms. Lio had what remained of Veil Hours to himself, and he was on his own. Which was precisely what he needed tonight.

  He was out of time, and he had to find a way to rescue himself and his Grace without destroying two kingdoms. He had to find the answer somewhere within these walls—or within the walls of his own mind.

  He sank into his chair and looked around him at his resources.

  He couldn’t even see his desk. The crescent of wrought iron had disappeared under his latest notes and research, which for the first time in his life he was not bothering to organize.

  The shelves that lined the walls to the vaulted ceiling held enough scrolls and books to educate him for eternity. The finest truths he had discovered therein, he had immortalized in glass on the brilliant windows between the shelves. Moonlight beamed through the ancient letters.

  Was this how he had found his answers last year in Tenebra? Had letters of glass delivered life-saving medicine to Zoe or defeated Dalos?

  Yes and no. Much of this study had led Lio to Tenebra, and he had carried all of this wisdom with him into the field.

  But how quickly he had realized preparation was only that, and not enough.

  What he needed now was a solution cut from his experience. Stained with the blood he and Cassia had shed.

  Lio gave into temptation and opened his scroll case. He drew out his papers and set them on his desk atop a stack of books that offered a nonhazardous position. Bracing himself, he reached into the empty cylinder and opened the small compartment that lay hidden at the bottom. He pulled out the handkerchief he had once used to bind Cassia’s wounded hand.

  Dried blood stained the white silk, caught in the black threads of an embroidered Rose of Hespera. The scrap of fabric felt heavy to his senses with the weight of the powerful veil he kept over it for the sake of his sanity. The smell of her blood was more than he could bear. But he could not resist.

  He lifted the veil. The fragrance of that remnant of her blood wrapped around him like whiffs of dying flowers and wrung a groan from him. Hunger roared to life within him.

  “Cassia,” he said aloud. “What are we to do?”

  Clenching her blood in his hand, he took hold of the moonlight that shone through the words on the windows and shaped a person. He had needed many nights of practice, but after all this time, he was finally able to conjure an illusory portrait that was accurate enough not to anger him with its insufficiency. He rode the erratic rise and fall of his Gift, and it served her image well. Flows of power made her gaze flash, ebbs sculpted the dark smudges under her eyes.

  Lio kept at it until Cassia stood before him, life-size and opaque, in her gardening dress, with her hair unbound. Just an illusion. But one that paid tribute to every freckle.

  “I do not rescind my protest of your effort to bring me to the table,” she declared. How good to hear an echo of her voice, however faint. “You should have asked me first. But if you had, I hope I would have had the courage to say yes.”

  “Would you protest such an effort now, my love?” he wanted to ask her.

  “What a momentous night, when a Hesperine heretic helped a bastard girl, his fellow godsforsaken, to the table,” her illusion reminded him.

  “I would do it again.”

  Hazel eyes made of pure light met his. “I was glad for my place at the Summit.”

  What better course of action could there be but to invite Cassia to Orthros, just as he had brought her to the council table? To put all the power and possibility of that invitation into her hands and let her go to work with it?

  But how in the name of the cup and thorns could he do that?

  He fueled his frustration into magic, his magic into Cassia, and he watched her lift a hand to the stone archway that was not there and trace the pattern of Hespera’s glyph.

  He did not have that many options. Whatever he attempted must, first, bring them together. Second, it must do so without inciting the Aithourians to violence any sooner than they already intended. Third, it must not, in one motion, destroy all she had built with such care, all that held the mages and the king in check.

  That third imperative was the most difficult to fulfill, for he was working blind. His insight into her strategies was warped by distance and secrets and the limits of his own interpretations.

  Ideally, whatever he attempted would buy his people time to keep looking for their lost Hesperines errant, rather than wasting what precious time still remained to them.

  What would bring Cassia to Orthros and delay the Aithourians? What would play to the strengths of her strategy, driving the wedge further between the mages and the king, swaying the free lords in favor of the Hesperines?

  What could Lio even do from here, with no influence upon events in Tenebra? If only there had been a Summit, he and Cassia could have attempted and, indeed, accomplished so much. But Lio no longer doubted the truth: the king would never call the Summit now.

  It all came back to that. No Summit.

  The Summit was precisely what they needed.

  Lio was exactly right. He did not have that many options. In fact, he had only, exactly, one.

  Shock at himself made Lio’s magic spike again. Illusory Cassia blazed into a silhouette of light and disappeared.

  Goddess, he said to Hespera, but stopped there, uncertain whether to ask for her benediction—or her forgiveness.

  Had he really just conceived of such a thing—was he seriously considering it?

  Did he really intend to make it a reality?

  King Lucis would not convene the Summit. But what if Lio did?

  97

  Nights Until

  WINTER SOLSTICE

  Hesperines shall not take to them children who are still under the care of their elders, regardless of the elders’ treatment of the children.

  Hesperines shall not disturb the dying who await mortal aid or the dead whose kin or comrades are coming to claim them.

  —The Equinox Oath

  Heroism
or Infamy

  Once Lio started writing, the words came fast and certain. He didn’t pause his quill even when he consulted one of his sources for facts to strengthen his argument. Without looking up from his work, he searched through his familiar shelves only in his mind’s eye and summoned the histories and treatises he needed to hand. When one hand got tired, he switched his quill to the other and kept going. When he filled the first length of scroll, he hastily appended more reed paper with an adherence charm and pressed on.

  He didn’t remember falling into Slumber. He woke in his chair with his quill still in his hands and ink stains on his fingers. A new night had begun, the one he had promised his uncle he would devote to finishing his Imperial libraries proposal. Lio wrapped his Tenebran army blanket around his shoulders against the Craving shivers. The wool still smelled like roses, blood and Cassia. He started writing again.

  When he heard a goat bleat, he altered his veil to allow for small visitors. It wasn’t long before he heard a pair of bare feet on the tile. He looked up to see Zoe with a goat under each arm and her mantle draped over them all. She didn’t say anything, just crawled under Lio’s desk. At ease beneath the shelter of iron, she uncovered her head and wrapped her scarf around her shoulders instead.

  Lio smiled at her and put down his pen. He fished under his literature to find the tin he always kept at hand when he was working. There it was. He got rid of the ink on his hands with a cleaning spell and plucked something out of the box for Zoe.

  When he handed the sapsweet under the desk, her eyes lit up. He watched her stuff the candy in her mouth, gnaw on it for a split second, and nearly swallow it whole. She was licking her fingers when he handed her another. It lasted barely an instant longer.

  After several more of the syrupy morsels, he handed her a gumsweet she could chew on for a while. She smacked her lips, and one of her pale cheeks puffed out around the big lump of candy. Lio would never get tired of watching his once-starving sister enjoy food not because she needed it, but only because it gave her delight.