Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2) Read online

  BLOOD SOLACE

  Blood Grace Book II

  VELA ROTH

  CONTENTS

  Blood Solace

  Content Note

  Migration Night

  Ambassador's Watch

  Divided Minds

  Weddings and War

  Off Course

  Training

  Hylonome

  Oathbound

  Zoe

  The Brave Gardener

  Breaking Point

  Eve of the Autumn Equinox

  A Lady's Weapons

  The Flower of Cordium

  Silent Roses

  Autumn Equinox: Tenebra

  Cassia's Gauntlet

  Not So Fragile

  Promised

  Fit for a Queen

  In the Footsteps of the Goddess

  Capable Hands

  Anthros's Sickle

  Kyria's Bounty

  Crossing the Feud

  Bonfire Dance

  Sabina's Favor

  The Hawk and the Owl

  Autumn Equinox: Orthros

  Call to Action

  Cut from Experience

  97 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Heroism or Infamy

  To Make this Era

  Silk and Glass

  96 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  The Wisdom of the Ancients

  Ambassador Deukalion's Proposal

  95 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  The Vote of Blood Argyros

  The Future of Orthros

  94 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  The Resources for Victory

  The Cost of Passage

  93 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Farewells

  85 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Hypnos's Bastard

  48 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Into the Storm

  Ckabaar

  Blizzard Wraiths

  Thelemanteia

  Trial of Discipline

  Waystar

  Survivors

  Disarming

  Tolerance

  Message

  Libation

  Blood Shackles

  47 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Battle Scars

  First Maneuver

  Lady in Crimson

  Rescue

  Reunion

  46 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Morning in Orthros

  The Most Powerful Temptation

  Uncharted Sea

  Words Unspoken

  45 Nights Until Winter Solstice

  Harbor

  Hespera's Invitation

  The Sanctuary's Keeper

  Absolution

  The New Plan

  The Summit Begins

  Veil Hours

  The Best Part of Home

  Betony

  Bedtime Stories

  The Ritual Circle

  Echoes

  Ice and Snow

  Moonflower and Sandalwood

  The Endless Sky

  Thank You

  Blood Sanctuary

  Free Book

  More Books by Vela Roth

  Dedication

  Copyright

  CONTENT NOTE

  Blood Solace portrays some medieval fantasy violence, an emotionally abusive parent, and conversations about attempted sexual assault.

  In particular, in “Blizzard Wraiths” (48 Nights Until Winter Solstice), villains make verbal threats regarding sexual violence. “Battle Scars” (47 Nights Until Winter Solstice) shows women confiding in each other, without graphic detail, about past close calls with sexual predators.

  The novel confronts these topics to show women supporting each other, finding courage and fighting back.

  MIGRATION NIGHT

  Hesperines shall have the right to children who have been exposed, abandoned, or orphaned without anyone to take them in.

  Hesperines shall have the right to the dying whose own kind give them no succor and to the dead whose kin and comrades fail to collect their remains.

  —The Equinox Oath

  Ambassador's Watch

  A gust of wind whipped across the deck of the Observatory and struck Lio head-on. He sucked in the bracing air, hungering for any hint of scent from the south. But all he smelled were the fresh snows and evergreens, ice caps and ocean depths of Orthros Boreou. Not enough to give him relief from the aftertaste of his last drink. The fetid remnants of deer blood threatened to gag him. He kept swallowing and focused on the horizon.

  The Umbral Mountains stood sentry on the rim of the world, guarding the border between Orthros and Tenebra, between his nocturnal homeland and the mortal realm. Polar twilight cloaked the range in indigo, while the snow on the peaks gleamed under the lights of Hespera’s night sky. Vivid aurorae veiled the constellations named for those whom Orthros had lost, who would have lived forever with their fellow immortal Hesperines had they not given their lives for others. The Goddess’s Eyes, the twin moons, looked on. The shadow of her lashes had just begun to descend over the smooth white orb of the Light Moon, while the Blood Moon was a crescent iris of liquid crimson.

  No fire lit the mountains.

  At this great distance, the Summit Beacon must appear as nothing more than a candle flame. But the bonfire the Tenebrans lit atop their fortress on Mount Frigora was visible to keen Hesperine eyes from Hypatia’s Observatory, the tallest tower in the capital. Orthros’s ambassadors always came here to look for the Beacon.

  Tonight, only Ambassador Deukalion. Alone, Lio stood his elders’ watch and saw no fire. The King of Tenebra had not ordered the Summit Beacon lit.

  Yet.

  A few hours remained before dawn. The Beacon might yet appear. There was still time for Lio to behold the sign he prayed for: an invitation from the king for the Hesperine embassy to return to Tenebra in the spring and reconvene the Equinox Summit. Another chance to renew the Equinox Oath that would secure peace between their two peoples.

  Lio’s chance to keep his promise to Cassia that he would return to her.

  The Tenebrans would light the Beacon before the night was through. They must. Because she intended for them to, and Lio had never known a plan of hers to fail.

  He looked again at the scroll in his hands. It was the best portrait he had of her. Not nearly enough to remember her by. But he added each additional detail with great care, as if he could make this some kind of antidote to the months, the miles…the hunger. As if the cure for that was not out of reach.

  The Goddess’s Eyes looked with him, illuminating the paper with moonlight. Lio re-read the neat, black lines of his own handwriting in search of one more pattern he might have missed, one more revelation that had not yet struck him.

  He was sure there were many who would not feel particularly flattered if a lover immortalized them in a list. But somehow he thought Cassia would appreciate this effort far more than any work of art designed to capture the physical beauty she worked so diligently to hide. Here in this documentation of seemingly unconnected events lay her true beauty, which Lio had beheld with his own eyes.

  Each of the events he had recorded here, which he had meticulously gleaned from the reports trickling in, had occurred in Tenebra in the last half year. To the Queens of Orthros, their envoys and every diplomat besides Lio, these were political developments of great import, but of no specific significance except for their potential impact on Hesperines. Lio, however, could see Cassia’s hand in each and every one.

  What tantalized him was the knowledge he had missed some. No doubt word of many of her deeds simply never reached him. And in the piecemeal information he did manage to gather, more developments
for which she was responsible might lay hidden, while he lacked the insight to recognize them. She only became more creative; there was no telling what she might try next. These were only the events he knew of and felt certain he could attribute to her, and it was already a generous list.

  Her clandestine victories against her father reassured Lio time and time again. The king did not suspect her.

  Lucis Basileus, the cleverest and strongest king to rule Tenebra in generations, had no idea the most dangerous traitor in the land was his own daughter. He saw his late concubine’s bastard as nothing more than a spare tool that might prove useful to his ends, while she defied his vision of her more and more. It was she who sabotaged his attempts at alliance with the Mage Orders in Cordium and stoked the nobility’s resentment of his tyranny. The Council of Free Lords pressured the king, but it was Cassia, unseen and unsung, who pressured the free lords. If she had her way, Lucis would have no choice but to break ties with the Cordian mages and seek a peace treaty with Orthros instead, lest he lose the Council’s mandate and his grip on his frightened subjects. The king must soon bend to the will of his people…to Cassia’s will.

  The reflections of her that Lio saw in the tales of her achievements were nothing like enough. They did not sate his hunger. But they were all that reminded him he had done the right thing when he had left her half a year ago.

  Six months or two seasons according to the Tenebran calendar. Four lunar months or one season according to the Hesperine calendar. The vapid numbers amounted to an eternity of agony by Lio’s reckoning. But Migration Night had come at last, when his people returned from Orthros Notou in the distant south. As of tonight, the eve of the Autumn Equinox, the Hesperines were once more in residence here in their northern home that bordered Tenebra, and Cassia knew it.

  For the first time in half a year, they were not on opposite sides of the world.

  Lio looked again at the horizon as if his Will alone could light the Summit Beacon. But the absence of the fire drew his gaze back from the mountains, over the dark line of the sea at their feet and the white landscape at his own. All of Selas lay spread out before him, a city of snow and marble built in a crescent around the bay. No railing stood between him and his people’s northern capital. The vast drop was no threat, only a thrill to every young Hesperine when he or she first learned to levitate high enough to reach the top of the Observatory. From here Lio could count all the stained glass windows, including the ones he had contributed to their number.

  Cassia felt as far away now as she had last night and every night before, even here in the one place he might glimpse some sign of her. The viewing deck’s circular white expanse was only stone, a tribute to the Eye of Light, but Lio might as well be standing on the real moon, cradled in the Goddess’s serene sky, while Cassia must live down in the tumultuous, dangerous world.

  A polar wind stirred his robes, from the north this time, tugging silk and embroidery out over the rim of the deck. The icy scents of Orthros drowned out the fragrance of the talisman Cassia had made him to ward off ill dreams, although he wore the charm filled with dried betony around his neck.

  All he had of her were a few mementos and these lines of ink on a scroll.

  What else she had given him, he must not dwell on. He had tamed his hunger for a precious hour, perhaps a few if he was fortunate. And careful.

  The text before his eyes quivered. Lio’s gaze darted to his hand. Shaking like a leaf. He tightened his grip on the scroll’s roller of cassia wood.

  The Summit was their best chance. He could see in Cassia’s actions how hard she pushed for her people to reopen negotiations. How could there be no Beacon?

  Nothing had happened to her. By all accounts, Orthros’s envoys brought only the same dire tidings everyone had come to expect from Tenebra, nothing worse than usual. If any devastating events had occurred, the Queens’ Master Envoys would have brought word right away. It was a good sign that the murmurs among the Firstblood Circle, however grim, had not changed, and that Basir and Kumeta were keeping to their schedule.

  Lio had come to mark his own calendar by Basir and Kumeta’s. He knew they were in the city at this very moment.

  The Queens’ spymasters would bring a warm welcome back to the north, affectionate greetings from the First Prince and news of whether or not Lio’s world was coming to an end. Everyone would make sure Lio was not privy to the conversation.

  He would have to be creative, like Cassia, and bring the information to himself by other means.

  “Lio,” said a voice behind him. “Never one to take an ill-considered step. When your deliberations are complete, note that I am here and would have a word with you.”

  Divided Minds

  Lio made himself turn around slowly, instead of spinning about like a startled prey animal. He rolled up his notes on Cassia and slid them into the scroll case at his side in one smooth motion as he faced his uncle.

  Uncle Argyros looked like a statue one shade darker than the tower. Only his silver silk robes and his pale blond braid moved, whipping about him in a gust of wind, then swinging to rest at his heels. There seemed no color about him but the thin streak of dark auburn in his hair, his Grace’s braid woven into his own.

  “I knew I would find you here,” Uncle Argyros said.

  “It seems I will require still more decades under your mentorship before I am no longer transparent.”

  “I hardly need thelemancy to see through you. I’ve known you since before you had teeth.”

  “A fact I shall bear in mind.” Lio never forgot who was the greatest threat to his secrets. He and Uncle Argyros were the two most powerful thelemancers in Orthros, but this was not a contest of mind magic. Uncle Argyros was more likely than anyone to discover Lio’s relationship with Cassia because he was Lio’s mentor. He knew Lio through and through.

  Uncle Argyros watched Lio with dark eyes that had cowed many a warrior, mage or foreign diplomat with a mere glance. An instant too late, the elder Hesperine’s worry crept into Lio’s awareness and weighed upon him as if it were his own. If he had been paying attention, the Blood Union would have warned him of his uncle’s approach. His effort to make those he loved believe they had no cause to fear for him was not going well tonight.

  Lio reached for the magic than ran in his veins, inseparable from his own blood, and strengthened the veil spell he now kept around himself at all times. His Gift came to him sluggishly, then spiked without warning. He struggled to apply his Will. If he could not sustain his concealing magic, his uncle was sure to sense through the visceral empathy of the Blood Union that Lio felt like a mortal about to be led to the gallows. He had made too many mistakes tonight.

  “I relieved you from your duties for Migration Night,” Uncle Argyros said. “The only assignment I have given you is your proposal on the potential applications of Hesperine light magic and glassmaking for improving reading comfort in Imperial libraries. You told me you would finish in time to present your recommendations at the first Circle of the season three nights from now. That will allow ample months for the firstbloods and the Queens to deliberate before we return south and present a plan to our Imperial allies.”

  “My proposal takes shape apace.” Lio kept the defensiveness out of his voice and resisted the urge to rub a hand over his itching chin, certain the nervous gesture would betray him.

  Where had he packed his proposal? He hadn’t left it on his desk in Orthros Notou, had he? No…it was here in Orthros Boreou, in one of the scroll cases he had dumped in his rooms before coming up here. He had remembered to bring the proposal with him. All two sentences of it.

  Uncle Argyros continued to scrutinize him. “Since you personally attended to the Empress’s Vice Administrator of Library Improvement during his visit to Orthros Notou, I thought you would be enthusiastic to write an opinion and propose it before the Circle.”

  “Indeed I am. Although I admit my enthusiasm would be still greater if my first independent assignment had b
een in the Empire.” With authorization to cross the border of Orthros and the protective magic that guarded it, he could have gone much farther than the Empire. All the way to Tenebra, in fact. But instead, his elders had kept him at home, where he must play nanny goat to the Empress’s visiting administrator.

  “At this time, the Queens wish to limit all but the most necessary travel outside of Orthros, for our safety,” Uncle Argyros reminded him.

  “The Empire is safe for our people. It wouldn’t have been the least bit dangerous to send me along with the other Hesperines whose work there was deemed necessary.”

  “If the Queens were less judicious with their permission, there would certainly be youngbloods who would visit the Empire on pretense, in order to indulge heroic notions about returning to Tenebra at this time of crisis. Their urge to help might cloud their judgment and motivate them to act in defiance of the royal decree that all Hesperines must return from Tenebra to stay.” Uncle Argyros wore his blandest smile. “Of course no diplomat I trained would ever consider such a course of action, least of all you, my upstanding nephew. You know you have our complete confidence. But naturally the Queens must hold everyone to the same rules, and all of us who are in their service must set an example for others.”

  “Of course. The Queens were right to strengthen their ward on the borders of our southern home to match the fortifications here in the north. Only their magic is enough to prevent our idealists from going errant.”

  “And coming to harm.”

  Cassia might come to harm at any moment. She didn’t take a breath without risking her life, while Lio sat in Orthros scribbling documents. The Queens’ ward kept every threat out and him in. “No one is safer than Orthros’s youngbloods.”

  “Lio, your libraries proposal could reach the palace scribes and might even earn a glance from the Empress herself. If approved, it will take her administrators years to fulfill such an ambitious program of library improvement. This is an advantageous, long-term opportunity.”

  “Indeed, the sum total of all the skylights, windows and reading lamps in the Imperial libraries is considerable, and of course they must all be replaced with the latest advances in light magic and glazing. No telling how many years I will spend here at home in my workshop, working up panes and spells to ship to our neighbors.”