Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  Could a Hesperine’s immortal mate sustain him even better than a mere human could? Did that mean a mortal could never compare? “So, there is one kind of blood that is…superior to a mortal’s?”

  Lio dawdled his fingers on her shoulder, toying with the neckline of her dress. “You know, I must admit, my first taste of mortal blood was not remarkable, as everyone said it would be. The brief time I spent drinking from the guests before my departure for Tenebra was unimpressive. But then…” He held her gaze, running his hand down her throat. “I tasted you. I think you know how that affected me.”

  “Perhaps that’s because you took more than the Drink from me.”

  “You know what the first swallow did to me, even before we kissed. A mere drink would never have been enough. You remember what I said to you the night of our first feast.” He murmured in her ear, as he had then. “You are the best.”

  She reached up and brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead, and the warmth within her gave way to alarm. “You’re freezing! Hesperines are supposed to be impervious to cold.”

  “This is a normal hunger chill. I feel like I’m burning up, actually. There’s nothing to worry about now. This is no comparison to how I felt before you arrived.”

  She ran her hands over his shoulders. “But you’re shivering. It’s as bad as when we were on the ship.”

  “It has been some time since we made the crossing.”

  Grace must be a powerful bond indeed. Cassia had not even been able to tell Apollon and Komnena’s fast was troubling them. But then, they had only done without one another for a few nights out of a lifetime, Cassia reasoned. Lio had fed on animals for half a year, then had only a few nights with her.

  “You also used a great deal of magic tonight,” she pointed out. “Do not take this question to mean I doubt you, Lio, but are you all right?”

  “More than all right, as you said. Thank you for your concern. I needed to use my power to help. That was…cleansing. In any case, you know I would push my magic to the limit to honor my bond of gratitude with your rescuers.”

  “And now you need to replenish. I will give you what you need,” she assured him. She would. She could.

  He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of her wrist. “You priced your name at a kiss. What shall I pay you for a sip?”

  “Nothing, my champion. For you, I shall give freely, and more than a sip.”

  He let out a little groan against her skin. “You sweeten our arrangement indeed, my lady.”

  He stood, pulling her to her feet with him, then held her close and drew her with him across the Ritual Circle. When their feet left the floor, she couldn’t stifle a gasp.

  “Should you be levitating in your state?”

  “With you here to rescue me from my state, I cannot keep my feet on the floor.” He danced with her in the air, spinning them in a turn.

  She put her arms around his neck and held on tight. Her stomach dipped, and her head spun, and she treasured the astonishing sensation of standing on nothing but his magic. It wasn’t until they reached the double doors at the far end of the Ritual hall that he set her down.

  “Allow me to invite you to my residence.” His half-grin belied the formality of his words.

  “I’ve looked forward to seeing your rooms,” she admitted. And fantasized about them.

  He led her through the halls, some softly lit, others shadowed. There were black floors like marble night skies and carpets soft and thick as snow. At every turn, stained glass windows pulled in moonlight and cast translucent, shifting colors under their feet. When a statue emerged suddenly from the darkness, Cassia caught her breath. A face of brilliant crimson stone looked at her with a seductive, laughing smile.

  “Who is that?” she asked Lio.

  “Hespera. One of Father’s visions of her.”

  “Oh, I see now. She has one white eye of a different stone.”

  They passed through a courtyard, where there sat cross-legged a rotund, wizened man of dull green stone, his beard and belly overgrown with moss and lichens. Like a delighted child who had just made a discovery, he peered at the weeds before him with one white eye and one red.

  “But who could this be?” Cassia wondered aloud.

  “Hespera,” Lio answered again.

  Back into the house, down a staircase, into a long gallery. Here were some of the elusive fountains. They played all around Hespera, who danced through the corridor as a barefoot youth of river stone, whether male or female, Cassia could not tell.

  Cassia was glad Lio held her hand, for she soon lost her way in the rambling halls and hidden pockets of courtyards. “The whole house is like a spell. A magical labyrinth, where I expect to stumble upon a goddess around every corner.”

  His hand tightened on hers. “When you are here long enough, you get to know every twist and turn. It comes to feel like home.”

  “Does it not still seem magical to you, although it is home? Does the wonder wear off?”

  He paused, as if considering his answer. “No. No, it doesn’t.”

  They came to what appeared to be an exit hall with modest double doors flanked by more of Lio’s windows. A side table held someone’s gloves and a half-open scroll. On the rug in front of the door, a pair of wool slippers of Zoe’s size lay cast aside.

  “Here we are. The back door.” Smiling, Lio retrieved the stray shoes.

  Cradling her new betony plant in one arm, Cassia ran her fingers over the two small slippers Lio held in one hand. “You’re a wonderful brother.”

  “Thank you.” The sincerity in his voice gave weight to the simple words. “After all she’s been through, I just want to shower her with everything good. Can you imagine, before the Prisma’s mages rescued the children, they were struggling on their own? In one of the Eriphites’ refuges, a cave where they had hidden their little ones and their last surviving elder. But Bosko and Thenie’s grandmother died, and with her, much of their cult’s stories and traditions. Bosko and Zoe salvaged what they could use from her body and blocked off that part of the cave with stones and branches to deter scavengers and the other children.” He gazed down at his sister’s shoes with her pain in his eyes. “They foraged as best they knew how for themselves and twenty-two others, but they wouldn’t have lasted much longer. They were probably already sick with frost fever before they were discovered. All it might have taken was one more hard freeze, or a lone predator.”

  “To think, they escaped that only to nearly die because of Tenebran superstition. Nearly. But they didn’t.”

  Their gazes met over the shoes. Neither of them said it, but Cassia knew they didn’t need to. He held in his hand the greatest trophy of all their victories.

  “How did you resist adopting all of them?” she asked.

  Lio grinned. “As my mother is the chamberlain, many new arrivals to Orthros stay right here with us in House Komnena while she helps them find a permanent place, and the children were no exception. We got to enjoy all of them while prospective parents came to visit and discover who was a good match for whom.”

  “I imagine it helped their adjustment a great deal to remain together at first.”

  “Certainly. Javed and Kadi even left Bosko and Thenie here while they all became more comfortable with each other. But from the moment I came home with Zoe, Mother and Father’s minds were made up she would stay for good. I didn’t know they’d already been talking about another child. When they told me they wanted Zoe, it was the best news. The only good news. That last night in Tenebra…” He shook his head. “When the embassy met the Prisma to get the children, we were all just trying to keep the little ones awake and reassured long enough to get them home to Orthros. The scent of your betony charm led me to Zoe’s side. And in trying to ease her fears, I found as much comfort as I gave her.”

  “I understand.” Cassia swallowed. “Can you really provide for her better because of my help?”

  He gave her another speaking glance, as h
e had when Zoe had taken the Drink from his blood. From their blood.

  “Of course,” he answered. “Keeping up with young Hesperines’ appetites is a challenge, and usually only Graced pairs have the strength to properly nourish a suckling. It’s customary for the whole family to assist. Drawing my nourishment directly from you, I have the strength to lend a hand.”

  “I am…honored…to help sustain your little sister.”

  “Thank you for striving to put her at ease. Your acceptance means so much to her.”

  Cassia searched for words to describe her encounter with the child. The ones she found surprised her. “I…” she tried. “I love her.”

  Lio’s gaze softened. “She is fortunate in your love, Cassia.”

  “I do know how,” she said with all the force of her conviction. “I have not had much in my life to learn from, but what kindness I have known, I hold all the closer. I am capable of love.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Flavian may call me his Lady of Ice, but I’m not cold. I have been so, but I have been warm and giving too. No matter how I harden myself to achieve what I must, it’s not at the expense of—of love.”

  Lio placed the shoes in her hands. “Cassia, love is the very reason you fight.”

  She held Zoe’s slippers to her. “It is.”

  That power inside her, which she called anger, or a thirst for justice. It was not that. Those were mere signs of what it really was.

  It was love.

  Lio took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. “Flavian is a blind fool. Any name he calls you preceded by ‘my’ is an offense. But as for the ‘ice’ part, well, ice and snow are home and hearth to Hesperines, aren’t they?”

  Lio turned Cassia around and stood behind her, wrapping her in his arms once more. The back doors sailed open to reveal what lay beyond.

  Ice and snow and green. As far as Cassia could see.

  “Shall I show you the garden?” Lio asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  They put Zoe’s shoes away under the side table, and Cassia’s cloak appeared in Lio’s hand. He bundled her up, stealing kisses in the process, and took her outside.

  Cassia came to a standstill on the back steps. “This is the garden?”

  “You have discovered the dark secret of House Komnena. We are all useless with a spade.”

  The garden walls rose tall, their color lost under lichens, mosses and rime. Enclosed in their imposing embrace was a rampant tangle as untamed as the grounds beyond the house. Tufted flowers Cassia had never seen choked the beds, and every open space was covered in snow-dusted willows no higher than her knees.

  From sharp, bare tree branches and twisted thorn bushes hung long icicles, crystalline twins of the spines that armed the thickets. Drops of rich red were bearberries, hanging taut and succulent on their vivid green bushes. The lush, pungent growth and fragrant branches and fresh, chilly scent of snow inebriated her.

  “It is beautiful,” she said.

  Lio huffed a laugh. “I’m afraid we’ve let it go for ages. Father built the house anticipating a vast bloodline, then had it all to himself for fifteen hundred years. He couldn’t bear to set foot in it for a long time, until Mother.”

  “He gave her name to the house.”

  “And our bloodline, in defiance of the tradition that elder firstbloods’ dynasties bear their names. Such is his love for her. Together they have finally made the house a home. But the truth is, the one thing Mother cannot abide is gardening.”

  Cassia walked down the steps and waded onto an overgrown path. She ran her hand along the tops of the willows, collecting sparkling, soft snow on her gloves. “I can’t even count how many plants there are here that I’ve never seen. Others I know well from northern Tenebra but have never seen in such abundance. I can just imagine how things I’ve struggled to grow would run wild here under the ward.”

  Lio followed her, levitating occasionally to keep his robe from snagging on thorns. Cassia admired spines as long as her fingers, but from a safe distance. Knight stayed close by her, leaving paw prints behind in the snow like markers to point the way back out of the dark wilds. But snowflakes began drifting down from the clouding sky, promising his trail would soon disappear.

  Lio pointed ahead through an iron gate. “My residence is this way.”

  Past the gate, an arbor of intertwined vines swallowed them on all sides. Cassia couldn’t see above or below, ahead or behind. Cold and verdure weighed on her chest, and she drank them down in great gulps. She could disappear into this and never be seen again. Let herself get lost in it, never to return.

  The arbor ended, and they came out onto a flagstone terrace. Cassia gazed up a flight of stairs to a pair of iron doors, then upward still.

  The white marble tower seemed weightless, like an illusion cast by the Light Moon. At the very top, archways stood open to the night, and the polar wind piped through the tower’s hollow peak.

  “You live in a sorcerer’s tower.”

  “I suppose you could call it that, yes.” He wiggled his fingers. “There are even heretical incantations and bloodstained scrolls.”

  But his teasing did not reach the corners of his mouth and eyes. She took his hands again. His skin was colder than before, but he wasn’t looking at her with hunger. He studied the tower with the critical eye of an artist unsure of his creation.

  For the first time, something occurred to Cassia. Could Lio be as anxious about her first visit to his home as she was?

  She almost laughed. How could he be worried about how his glorious, ancient house seemed to her, a waif from Tenebra who had lain her head in every backwater palace where the king stashed her? How could he ever doubt where he laid his head was more precious to her than any other place in the world?

  But this was the earnest young Hesperine who had so carefully explained every detail of his people to her in their long walks at Solorum, clearly hoping his next remark would not be the one that drove her away. As much as he had worked to make her see Hesperine life through his eyes, it had always been the details of his own life he was most hesitant to share—and most relieved to discover did not send her running.

  “I love it here,” she told him simply, sincerely.

  His gaze came back to hers, and his candid face told her everything. That was exactly how he had hoped she would feel. Well, for a mortal with no Blood Union, she was quite the mind mage herself, wasn’t she?

  He scooped her up in his arms and carried her across the terrace.

  Moonflower and Sandalwood

  How satisfying it was to hold Cassia this way, completely in his arms. This time in safely and leisure. She held onto his neck, resting her head on his shoulder.

  He took her up the stairs, which climbed past the ground floor to the first floor entrance. He Willed the doors open ahead of them and carried her over the threshold into the warmth of his residence. The doors shut behind them with a gentle clang and closed out the chill of the garden, but not its fragrances, which always seemed to creep into the tower. She would like that.

  Lio swept her through the polished entry hall, which was bare but for his Gifting chart and Ritual tapestry. The inner doors let them into his room that occupied the rest of the first floor of the tower. Cassia leaned her head back. Her gaze traveled up the tall windows, bookshelves and scroll racks to the high ceiling to drift among the ribbed vaults.

  “You live here? Lio, it isn’t a room, it’s—a library. Or a temple.” She sighed. “It is you.”

  It was also where he had slept without her for half a year, and his thoughts at the moment were anything but scholarly or prayerful. He didn’t want to put Cassia down. He wanted to carry her right to the bed. But now was the time for a more thorough and seductive invitation into the home he had to offer her.

  “I’m very happy it pleases you.” He gave her one more squeeze, then set her gently on her feet.

  “It is yours. Therefore, it pleases me better than anythin
g.”

  Yet again she read the worry on his heart and spoke aloud the answer he longed for in his thoughts. She was his Grace. Although still a mortal, she already knew him better than anyone. It shouldn’t surprise him.

  But it did surprise him. Because it was entirely, wonderfully new. He had spent a lifetime with people who knew and loved him well. But after the short time he and Cassia had been together, no one knew him as she did.

  “Is the tower very ancient?” she asked.

  “A project of Father’s and mine, actually. We started it when I was a student. I needed a place to practice my magic away from the main house, where I wouldn’t disturb anyone.” He cleared his throat. “If an experiment went wrong, you know.”

  Cassia’s tone was light-hearted. “Were there many explosions?”

  She made it so easy to jest about his youthful accidents, as if those were the worst close calls he’d had in his magical career. “Mostly just a lot of shattered glass. We built my glazing workshop on the ground floor. That makes repairs easy.”

  He took her cloak, letting his hands slide slowly over her shoulders. She tilted her head back, and he almost gave into the temptation to kiss her neck. But he was trying to seduce her, not tempt himself.

  He gave her only a smile and sent her cloak to hang on the iron stand by the door. Next he tugged off her gloves. One finger at a time. Then he levitated them away, and they landed on the table by the cloak stand.

  “I have a confession,” he murmured. “I intend to have my way with you tonight in utterly indecent ways. Do you think we can distract your escort so he is none the wiser?” Lio gestured to the place he had prepared for Knight by the tower’s side door, below an empty window seat.

  “Let us see how fast I can distract him.” Cassia called her dog over to the blanket. “Look at this, Knight! Lio has gone to all this trouble just for you.”

  Knight sniffed the bowl of fresh water and the promising, empty food dish. He nosed around in the wool blanket, finally discovering the Imperial rubber chew buried in its folds. He gave the unfamiliar material an experimental gnaw and wagged his tail. A few words from Cassia, and he accepted his new place.