Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  “He’s not going to sniff my whole room for hidden danger? I do feel appreciated.”

  Cassia turned back to Lio. “He has learned that your scent means safety. Let me say thank you for both of us.”

  “I’m glad he approves.” Lio gestured at the side door. “Outside in the cold vault, I have much better meat for him than the embassy’s provisions. We don’t have trouble keeping things fresh here.”

  She knotted her hands. “You didn’t have to do that. How did you bear it?”

  “There are a few Hesperines in Orthros who keep cats, dogs and other animals whose natures have different requirements than our own. Veils go a long way against smells. We trade with the Empire for the meat. They care for their animals well.”

  “You really did think of everything.” She set the potted betony on the window seat Lio had so hastily cleared before her arrival. “The light is certainly good right here.”

  He went to her side. “You know, the same thought occurred to me. Plants might even do well here. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone interested in providing me with some house plants, would you?”

  She returned a knowing smile. “You are in luck. I have a gift for you.”

  With careful, almost reverent fingers, she unfastened a small pouch from her belt. She opened it and showed him the small, golden treasures within.

  “Rose seeds,” he said in recognition. “There is only one place you could have gotten them. The glyph shard is not the only treasure you brought from the shrine.”

  “I shall plant these for you if you find me a few pots and some good Orthros soil. I know roses grow on every corner here, but—”

  “Not our roses. This gift is inimitable. Irreplaceable.”

  Emotion came to a head inside her, but just as quickly sank back down beyond the reach of his senses. He thought she might speak, but she pulled back with a playful smile. “They’re vigorous climbers, I’ve found. We shall need some strong stakes to encourage them upward and keep them from overgrowing your bookcases.”

  “I hope they take over the whole room.”

  “Is there a safe place you can keep the seeds here until we have what we need to plant them?”

  From the shelf under the window seat, Lio pulled out a storage basket.

  She unfastened the pouch from her belt and tucked the bag of rose seeds inside the basket, eying the rest of the empty shelf. “There’s enough room here for potting tools.”

  “Why yes, there is, isn’t there?”

  “Thank you for doing all this for me, Lio. If not for polar night, I would ask you when you took time to sleep.”

  “Veil hours without you have been magefire,” he admitted. “I’ve tried to keep myself as occupied as possible. Doing things for you was a way of shaking my fist at despair.”

  “I felt the same way about caring for our roses.” She took his hands. “No more solitary veil hours.”

  He drew her closer to him. “The guest house will do for keeping up appearances, nothing more. My residence is where you’ll actually be staying. I want you to make yourself at home.”

  Now her feelings were clear in the Union, a bright bloom of happiness, fragile and ready to scatter in a puff of wind. She ran a hand down the front of his robe, as brazen outwardly as she was tentative within. She drifted past him, her silk-shod feet whispering across the marble floor, and he followed her.

  She took a step down to the lower center of the room to meander across the rug between the benches and chairs of the sitting area. With one hand, she teased a tasseled pillow. The pillow he had spilled Polar Night Roast on one night when he and Kia had been arguing so long about dung beetles, he’d shaken with laughter.

  Cassia passed the seat that was Nodora’s favorite, which Lio had moved to the precise spot his Trial sister said made her songs sound best in the room. Cassia studied the low table and the Prince and Diplomat board, the only field where Lio could beat Mak and Lyros two against one.

  “This is where you entertain friends?”

  “You can join us for music and a game one of these evenings.”

  She paused to admire the glass coffee service, then opened a jar of fresh grounds and lifted it to her nose. “Mm. This smells like you.”

  “For my Initiation gift, my uncle generously created a new coffee to my taste and gave it my name, Deukalion’s Blend.”

  “I can’t wait to try it.”

  Lio could hardly believe his eyes. Here was Cassia, in his room. In his life. Meeting with all that was familiar to him, making him see it all anew. He felt he was living a waking dream.

  And yet this moment could not be more real, exciting his senses as she left her scent on his things with her exploratory touches and soft breaths, as she filled his space with her aura. Cup and thorns, he had thought a handkerchief stained with her blood arousing. Now traces of her were all over his room, surrounding him everywhere he turned.

  He had intended to give her a tour, a carefully planned introduction to the residence that would hopefully make it seem appealing to her. But she seemed to know precisely where she was going, and he followed after her to see what captured her interest.

  There was a questing look in her eyes, and it was not with aimless leisure that she put the coffee jar away and turned to face the back of the room. She ascended the step on the other side of the common area and went to stand behind Lio’s desk.

  She folded her hands in front of her. “This is where you wrote your initiation treatise, which inspired you to first come to Tenebra. And your proposal for the Summit, which made it possible for me to come to Orthros.”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to ask you your opinion while I was drawing up the proposal.” He gave a soft laugh. “I even conjured an illusion of you to recite the wisdom I heard you speak in Tenebra.”

  She looked at him in surprise, then glanced over the books and scrolls on his desk. “You seem to have plenty of ancient wisdom to see you through.”

  “Nothing so relevant as yours.” At least he’d managed to restore some semblance of order here before she’d arrived. His desk was still cluttered with the sources he’d used for his proposal, but he’d stacked the scrolls and tomes close at hand in case Cassia showed interest in any of them.

  But what she picked up was a blank scroll he had set out for whatever he next needed to write down. She sniffed the wooden roller. “I’ve never smelled this before, either. It’s lovely. What wood could this be?”

  “Imperial cedar. We use scrap wood or gathered limbs to make things like scroll-ends.”

  “Coffee and cedar, and…” She scanned the desk, fiddling with a couple of quills, then shook her head. Finally, she uncapped a glass vial and smiled to herself. “Ink.” She sniffed again and followed her nose to the candy tin. “A hint of these, too.”

  “Those are Zoe’s sweets. She sat under my desk while I wrote the proposal.”

  “Then you had the best of company. I’m sure Moonbeam and Aurora were valuable contributors.”

  “Yes, they volunteered to eat the passages that weren’t any good.”

  Cassia grinned and straightened, then turned in a circle. Her gaze fell to his dressing screen. She continued her mysterious search behind it at his washing area.

  “What could a Hesperine need with a wash basin?” she asked. “Aren’t cleaning spells more efficient than water, soap and towels?”

  “Ritual ablutions are a surviving tradition from the temples. We still have a custom of washing at the beginning of moon hours.”

  “This must be it.” She picked up his soap and took a deep whiff. “Ohh. Yes, this is definitely it.”

  “What?” he finally asked, smiling in puzzlement.

  “The verdant floral note in your scent. I have never been able to put names to what you smell like.”

  So this was the tour Cassia had embarked on! A tour of…him. “Well, we draw the scent of our cleaning spells from our favorite things, and things we use often sneak in on accide
nt.”

  “From what wondrous flora is your soap made?”

  “Sandalwood and moonflower.”

  “There’s such a thing as a moonflower?”

  “They bloom only at night, big white flowers the size of my hand. They’re a symbol of the diplomatic service. You’ve seen them embroidered on my uncle’s tablion. I promise you shall see the real thing when we take our tour of Selas’s greenhouses.”

  “I have never heard of a greenhouse, but it sounds like something lovely.”

  “It is a building constructed entirely of glass to serve as an indoor garden. Like the courtyard at Rose House, but on a grander scale.”

  Her face lit up. “A whole tour of these greenhouses?”

  “I put it on the Summit itinerary. Interesting the free lords in beneficial agricultural exchanges seemed a good excuse.”

  “A customary handful of flowers would have been enough, and yet you offer me gardens and greenhouses.”

  “You have made do with enough for too long. I shall see you enjoy plenty.”

  At that, she slid her arms around him, resting her face against his chest. “I shall forget how to fast.”

  “I hope you do.”

  “Where am I to banish the memories of your fast?” She lifted her face to look at him. “I have seen where you relax and work. But where do you sleep?”

  He gave her a rueful look and gestured behind her.

  She turned around and saw the other window seat, with its blue damask coverlet and pile of cushions.

  “I have another confession,” he said. “When I turned eighty and moved into the tower, I regarded it as something of a temporary arrangement. I didn’t intend to establish a proper residence until after my initiation. By the time I finished Trial this past winter, I still hadn’t really settled in here. I’m afraid I don’t have a bed yet.”

  She looked at him again, not with amusement or surprise, but with warmth. Understanding. “You found yourself unexpectedly not needing a bed to share with anyone.”

  He sighed. “The truth is, I expected to establish my residence with Xandra. Before that, I always went to her family’s House, and we didn’t require a bed in any case. Need I say how glad I am things didn’t turn out the way I expected?”

  “So you, suddenly an initiate errant, chose to remain in the tower and establish your residence here…”

  “Instead of a cozy wing in the main house, yes. Father was delighted our tower project wouldn’t go abandoned, but I think Mother was disappointed.”

  “…and you decided the window seat would do well enough for just you.”

  “There you have it. This is my errant Sanctuary.”

  She slid back his coverlet and hopped up to sit on the edge of the window seat, her purple velvet backside sinking into his black silk sheets and the wool pallet beneath. She swung her feet, which didn’t touch the floor by far.

  The stained glass panels behind her cast shards of multicolored light around her. Lio watched the vision from his fantasies without breathing, trying to keep his thoughts from plummeting downward with his blood flow.

  “It’s a very comfortable window seat,” she said.

  “Not as comfortable as your bed at Rose House.”

  “My bed at Rose House does not have this.” With a fond smile, she tugged at the Tenebran army blanket hidden between the coverlet and the sheets. “You kept it.”

  “I sleep under it every night.”

  She patted the pallet. “This is wide enough for your height and deep enough for two. Well, one and a half. Scrap that I am, I fit conveniently anywhere. I should tuck nicely in beside you and you still have room.”

  He closed the small distance between them and braced his hands on either side of her thighs. She sat there with her hands in her lap and her short nose a finger’s breadth away from his, swinging those feet. Her toes brushed his legs through his robes.

  “You have no idea,” he murmured, “how many times and in how many ways I have imagined this moment.”

  “Oh, I do. Although your window seat seems a much nicer place to imagine it than my bed back in Tenebra.”

  He slid his hands up her thighs, crushing layers of violet and lavender skirts so he could ease between her freckled knees. “Would you like to try imagining them again now?”

  She coaxed her foot under his robe and along the inside of his leg. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

  A hunger chill made him shake before her. Goddess, but he wanted her slow and satisfying. When would he once again find the strength to go slowly? “I’m at a loss as to where to start. I want you in more ways than there are hours in the night.”

  “It’s a good thing we have many, many nights, isn’t it?”

  For those words, he gave her a kiss, long and leisurely, to tell her she was right. If she kept slaking him with such words, he would become drunk. Drunk on the antidote to all the nightmares that had haunted him in his empty tower.

  He had resolved to seduce her tonight, not lose his head to her seduction. But she kissed him deeper, stroking his tongue with hers as she tightened her knees on either side of him. That was all it took for his purpose to waver and his kiss to turn hungry and eager in answer. She only pulled back to breathe.

  He rested his face in the curve of her neck, feeling her pulse against his skin, and his gums throbbed. “I’ve imagined your heartbeat filling this room until you echo all around me. Illusions don’t have heartbeats, Cassia. All I’ve had of you for months is illusions.”

  “Then I’m not the only one who’s been longing after light and wishing I could touch it.”

  “The portraits I’ve conjured of you when I’m alone are anything but innocent bedtime stories. I swear, never a dishonor to you. Only my tribute.” He slid to his knees in front of her.

  She ran her hands through his hair, flushed and looking pleased. “Actually it is among the most flattering compliments anyone has ever paid me. No one has ever longed for me, and yet now a powerful, immortal blood mage with a dual affinity conjures illusions of me to tide him over.”

  “Was there anything to tide you over, my rose? Did you ever find some solace in fantasies of me while you slept alone?”

  “Well.” Her flush deepened. “I don’t sleep alone, you know. Knight is just right there. It doesn’t make a very inspiring setting for such explorations.”

  They laughed together, and Lio kissed the inside of her knee. “You needed to use your few hours in bed for sound sleep, in any case.”

  She frowned in frustration. “Sometimes I was awake all night feeling like I wouldn’t last till morning without you. Other times…” She made a noise of disgust. “I hated that exhaustion.”

  “It’s natural to feel less desire when you’re that tired.”

  “Remarkably, I haven’t felt tired since I set foot in Orthros.”

  “You will never need to worry about finding the enthusiasm when you’re with me. I will see to that.” He slid her skirts still further up her legs.

  She tugged on his shoulders. “No. No cold, hard floor for you tonight, my champion. Come up here in this bed with me. It may be a window seat, but it’s our bed.”

  Our bed. Cassia didn’t need him to show her in, only to throw open the doors and let her make her way. She didn’t need him to seduce her, only to let her seduce him. To feel her power over him.

  What better way could there be to bring her into his world than to let her make it her own?

  And what a sweet conquest she seemed to have in mind. He got to his feet as she had bade, and she began disrobing him. They helped each other out of their garments, touching, reminding, appreciating with mouths and hands as they went. When she was wearing nothing but her shoes, she pulled him into bed with her.

  He braced himself over her on his arms and looked down at her hair tangled across the embroidered pillows and her brown, freckled skin against the black silk sheets. “You are the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld.”

 
She reached up and touched a hand to his cheek, and blue and red moonlight played between her fingers. “So are you to me.”

  He lowered his head and drank the light from her skin. Crimson on her lips, brilliant white on her throat, silver black on her breast.

  She traced her fingers down his back. “Did you and illusory me do very exciting things together?”

  “Nothing so exciting as a single kiss from the real you.” He lipped her nipple.

  “Then doing imaginative things with the real me would surely prove very exiting indeed,” she tantalized him.

  He devoured her in kisses and nips, long strokes of his tongue and grazes of his teeth, all the way to her lower belly. “The positive side of all this time apart,” he said to the inside of her thigh, “is that I had ample opportunity to devise solutions to dilemmas that have troubled me. Such as, how can I best enjoy your feet and your blood at the same time?”

  She gave a breathless laugh. “You must show me your answer to this pressing problem.”

  He knelt between her legs and kissed his way up the inside of her calf, propping her ankles on his shoulders. He undressed each of her feet in turn, caressing and massaging as he freed her from her shoes and stockings. While he paused to admire one of her ankle bones with his tongue, she rubbed the side of his face with her big toe and treated him to one of her hiccuping laughs.

  “Mm,” he encouraged, nuzzling the bottom of her right foot. Taking it in his hand, he held it to him while he laved his tongue along the sweep of her arch. He slipped his free hand between her thighs again, all the way to her curls.

  As he covered her krana with his hand, she hooked her left heel over his shoulder and scooted herself a little closer to him. He murmured another encouragement and began to stroke her krana. She flexed against him, tangling the toes of her left foot in his hair.

  He grinned. “Shall we work on your Divine?”

  She laughed again. “Of course. We should continue in the setting where we first began.”

  He dipped a finger into her krana and teased her most sensitive place. “Kalux.”