Page 76 of Bound Paths
Arie coughed. “Well,” he started, “I guess we know why Cassandra dislikes us so much.”
Rose searched his features. Regret and remorse were plain to see, but something like fear etched the lines of his face. Her mind called forth their conversation over breakfast. She didn’t know all he’d done—and he wasn’t sure he wanted her to. This was part of that history, she guessed.
He feared her reaction.
She meant what she’d said. He was different now. The way he carefully considered her reaction showed it. A god so separated from the continent, incapable of noticing his people in need, or this level of blood magic enacted—he was nowhere in the god before her.
“That’s generous phrasing, Arie.” Rose smirked, reassuring him in the only way she knew how. The situation wasn’t funny. Rose couldn’t imagine the weight that led to Celeste’s actions. She seemed to understand what her decisions would cost but was more than willing to let her sister pay the price.
Rose nodded at Arie in reassurance as she teased him. He smiled softly in return.
The god had plenty of faults, but he wasn’t the same as the callous god not even described on the page because he was so remote. He hadn’t let Rose be alone on this continent. He’d supported her when she had no one else. She respected that he was trying to do better.
Cassandra though… This didn’t help their dealings with Cassandra, but at least it made them make more sense.
“What would emptying that lake of spirits have done to the realm beyond the veil?” Rose asked, already fearing the answer.
Arie and Aurora’s gazes met in silent conference. It was one of shared guilt. “It would not have been good,” Arie said.
Aurora flipped through more pages in the journal. “We obviously don’t have Cassandra’s perspective after the act. It appears she visited her father once after the lake was emptied, but wasn’t in a sharing mood.” Aurora closed the book for now.
Rose nodded. She knew blood magic could be powerful, but what Celeste described was more than power. It was an explosion of hope and desperation. Her words indicated it combined all four of the god’s elements to protect a single village. Rose hadn’t heard of anything like it. Though, looking at the god’s faces in this room, the shock still plain in their features as they read, it was clear it was a well-kept secret from all.
“We didn’t intend to keep it a secret,”Luc said.“I don’t think I’ve read all of this—I’m not sure we knew that blood magic and spirits saved the village.”
Rose believed him. Without a connection to the realm beyond the veil, the information in the journals added little value other than the earth magic farming techniques the Suden fae had pulled from the pages. “I know. I also don’t know what anyone would have done with the information up to this point.”
“Cassandra had to have given herself to the land to save it. It must have been another twist on a blood magic offering like her sister describes, with the land soaking up Cassandra’s blood when they visited together.” Neither sister had been in a particularly good situation, but reading Celeste’s account, she knew the consequences of her decisions—she made them anyway.
“I agree with that,” Arie started, pulling Rose’s focus. “I assume, on some level, she would have had to offer her entire human life. I’m not sure what Cassandra is, but I assure you, she’s no longer human.”
“Would that have been enough to save the realm?”
Arie shrugged. “I don’t know. I think the fact that it still exists proves she figured it out. Whatever price she had to pay, she paid it.”
“At least the reasons she hates you are becoming clear,” Rose said wryly.
“This does bring back the question of why she let Zrak stay,”Luc added. He was right. It wasn’t just dislike Rose could sense between Cassandra and the Osten god.
“He promised her someone would come. Someone who could help.”
“Whatever she did could still be some kind of temporary solution. She could be holding her realm together through sheer force of will; she seems capable. The important part is that Zrak promised her some kind of relief. She is waiting for…something.”
“Zrak seems to do that a lot.”Rose let the words sit in her mind. How could he always gain others’ confidence in his plans and ideas? He must have built enough credibility with Arie and Aurora over the years that, eventually, he’d been correct enough times for them to believe him. But how was he always right? So many things about the Osten god didn’t add up. He might be on their side, but his secrets seemed more abundant than gusts of wind across Compass Lake in the autumn.
“The realm doesn’t seem ruined,” Rose stated the obvious as she stood. It reminded her of Zrak’s words from Luc’s memory.
“You’re so well adept at preventing ruin.”
Her fingers opened and closed into fists at her side, itching to be interlocked with Luc’s as she thought. His voice in her head was a balm. It soothed her nerves to have him there—but his physical presence was a grounding force—one she desperately missed. If Cassandra’s fix was only temporary, had she held it in place for over five hundred years on her own?
“I know,” Aurora said, her forehead scrunching with thought. “I knew she was powerful, but this is something else.” Rose watched as Arie’s hand rested gently on Aurora’s lower back as she thought.
“It makes sense, at least, why she closed her borders,” Arie said. “If Celeste’s villagers tried to capture a veil cat, likely to help with the collection of spirits for magical energy…that was another level of betrayal for Cassandra.”
“Especially given that Cassandra was the veil cat in that case.” Rose didn’t discount the connection between Cassandra and her cats. “Do you think they helped her?”
If Cassandra tying herself to the land wasn’t enough, maybe the veil cats had also done so. Celeste’s journal didn’t focus much on the cats other than to say they had already considered Cassandra their leader before Celeste emptied the lake.
