Chapter 14
Lenna
“Are you taking the fucking piss?” Lenna shouted when Hope repeated what Elara had told them.
“Very much not,” Hope sighed.
“That Queen is so stupidly nuts that she butchered her own heart?” Lenna asked, her eyebrows so furrowed they looked like one instead of two.
“She is so stupidly desperate, it seems,” Ayla clarified. “Not nuts at all, as this complicates our lives a whole lot more.”
“Did she cut her heart in slices? Big chunks? Star shapes? Surely not in four-petal flower shapes,” Lenna continued, shaking her head as question after question piled up in her mind. “How could she even do such a thing?”
“The darkest of dark magics, I reckon,” Ciaran murmured.
Hope nodded, staring at Ciaran as her eyes narrowed. “Whatever the reason, whichever the way, the fact is she did it, and now we must destroy the five parts of her heart and kill her. Well, in fact, we must destroy them before we kill her. So, the earlier, the better.”
Lenna snorted. “Once upon a time, the Fifth Crusade seemed a deadly threat to our lives. Not even a month later, here we are planning to destroy random heart pieces of the Queen of all Cardinals. Bread and butter, I kid you not.”
“I never liked butter anyway,” Hope said distractedly as she paced around the room in the Crystal Clear safehouse.
“Any clues as to where to find the charcuterie hearts? We can’t just go around the island lifting every rock and digging holes hoping to find a desiccated part of an organ.”
“The courtrades who led the investigation believe each of the five pieces will be hidden in each of the four Petals in Thyria, as well as a piece in the Core.”
Lenna’s right eyebrow shot to the roof. “They researched for so many years—decades if not centuries, you said?—to get to that mind-fucking-blowing conclusion? They deserve a rightful pat on the back, don’t th—”
“Beware where you channel your rage against the world, Lenna,” Ciaran cut her short, dead serious, and a sharp shot of embarrassment filled Lenna.
Damn if the man was not right—there was so much anger and frustration piled up inside of her she was begging for any reason to let it go.
“My courtrades’ research is some of the most thorough ever undertaken, and it’s purely because of that that we stand any chance at defeating this Queen and winning this war.
Their lives have been dedicated to this, working in the shadows night in and night out, and for such, I will never be more grateful. ”
“I’m sorry for being an angry twat, okay? I didn’t mean to offend them; well, yes, I did, but not actually. Anyway,” Lenna sighed. “We are all grateful for their work. But my question stands: where do we find the heart pieces?”
Hope opened her hand, Giving something atop the glass coffee table that seemed to weigh almost as much as the still-frowning courtrade jam-packed with muscles and metal present in the room.
It was a miracle blessed by the Fifth that the glass had not shattered under the weight of the five huge tomes that piled one on top of the other.
It was hard to tell which tome was the biggest, but all of them had to be at least a thousand pages, if not more.
“Is that dramatic noise the…research appearing?” Ayla asked, brushing her smooth hair back with her fingers.
“Gifted to us by the author herself,” Ciaran confirmed. “Elara Sinnatria handwrote from the first page to the last.”
“That is impressive, to say the least,” Nina muttered, her blue eyes still widened since the books had appeared in front of them.
Lenna’s nostrils flared with desperation and impatience. “For Cardinals’ sake, can we not have a summary?”
Hope chuckled. “I asked Elara the same. And she said… She said this is the summary.”
“You must be joking.” Lenna approached the table, her fingers touching the spines of the leather hardcovers of the tomes that—fuck, they seemed even bigger up close. Perhaps a hundred odd pages more than a thousand.
The covers of the five tomes were exactly the same, made of burgundy-bound leather, each title engraved with light cream, elegant letters. As Lenna read each title, goosebumps rose from her thighs to her spine to her arms.
The tome on top of the pile read Of Western Petals and Savage Healing, the second, Of Eastern Petals and Twisted Pain, the one in the middle was Of Core Magic and Destroying Balance, the following one, Of Northern Petals and Bloody Generosity, and the final one, Of Southern Petals and Wicked Greediness.
Healing, Harming, the Core, Giving, and Taking.
Every Petal and every panom power, brought to life in five books.
“Fifth guide us all,” Lenna whispered, as she finished reading the last title.
Hope and Ciaran looked at their arms at the same time, and Lenna saw shadow words with the same handwriting as the titles in front of them form a message:
For a brief moment, the recipients of Elara’s shadow message interchanged stares, and then Hope nodded.
“We have a mission, so we need a plan. Ciaran and I can go one piece of heart by one piece of heart, but the reality is that would take us longer than we ideally want.” Her dark eyes made a stop at Nina’s new black streak amongst her otherwise snow-white hair.
“My eyes were taken, but the lives of the people I care about will not be,” said Ayla, pursing her lips. “Plus, if I don’t use the Fifth Power eliminating part of a heart of a Queen, then I cannot think when else I would.”
“I’ll go with you, Ayla. We can be a team. I will be your eyes,” Nina affirmed.
“And I will be your magic.” Ayla caressed Nina’s cheek ever so softly, with such precision no one would have noticed she couldn’t see. Lenna didn’t miss the blush on Nina’s face before her pale fingers touched Ayla’s.
“You know the North Petal and the North House better than any others, so it would make the most sense for you to go find the piece there,” Ciaran said.
“Have fun meeting Mother and Father, sister,” Lenna spat. “If they remember they have another daughter and ask for me, tell them I am still alive, apologies for their disappointment and thanks for not giving a shit.”
Hope nodded, turning to her. “Lenna?”
She inhaled sharply. “I can take care of the East Petal’s heart piece. I was planning on going to the East House to fight for Jake and whatever the Cardinal-damned hell is going on with him, but at least with this I have a superb excuse so he can’t kick me out of his house straightaway.”
“You go get your man and the sliced heart,” Hope said. “I hope you can find a way to get him back without killing one of the Cardinals. But if you don’t, and you come across the East Cardinal and need my Lawful Stabs to rip her wings off, send me an ink and I’ll moure there straightaway.”
“Deal.” Her golden eyes narrowed as Hope’s looked at her with even more intensity.
“Try not to lose your mind in your pain and wrath, Lenna. When I regain my throne, I will need a First Feather to rule this society, and there is no one else I would rather take on that role.”
Lenna put her hands on her waist, inhaling deeply as multiple images of herself desperately sobbing in loneliness crossed her mind. She didn’t allow herself to stop and feel anything within her right now. Now it was more important than ever to have—or pretend to have—her shit together.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I don’t think I’ll be of much use anywhere else but here, to be honest,” Indianna said, scratching her ear behind her bob.
“I’ve started some experiments that could prove useful in the near future, and if anyone is injured, you could moure here and I’ll attend to you as well as I can without being in an actual Center for Injured Beings. ”
“I will also stay here,” Stevian said. “Life is too short to live it alone, young lady, and the stars shine bright from the patio at the back.” Was Lenna imagining the way Ciaran and Stevian interchanged stares, as if there was more to it than what he had just said?
“Hope, you and I stick together,” Ciaran declared, and the look on Hope’s face showed she did not want it any other way.
“I think we should start in the South Petal. From there, go to the West Petal, where I spent my life. My father is the West Ruler, and he will help us in whatever we need. We close the search in the Core, where your blood belongs.”
Hope smiled. “Perfect. The last piece of heart destroyed in the Core means we’ll be close to the Organ House and the throne room, and hopefully to the Queen herself, so we can kill her body and start fresh.
Talking about starting fresh…Thyrian society probably does not know the old Organ Mandor is dead, nor that the flying sangins they see are the Queen’s army. Give me a second.”
Hope’s red sparks flew across every single direction before disappearing, and all of them received the same ink with her Cardinal-red handwriting, no doubt sent to every single being in Thyria.
It was Nina who read the message on her forearm aloud:
“My name is Hope Nevada and I am Rhei Coralt’s daughter.
My father is now dead. I have Core female blood and have been blessed by the Cardinals to be your new Organ Mandor.
To ensure the preservation of your lives, do not fight the flying creatures invading our skies.
I vow to protect Thyria and its society with my life.
Please take care of your safety and security while I get rid of the murderer currently sitting on my throne. ”
Hope cleared her throat dismissively, as if hundreds of thousands of beings hadn’t just found out that she was their new leader. “So, we were saying—”
“I wonder if they’ll be too busy loving your no-nonsense approach, or if they will be too astonished with the fact that your ink is the only one that has been Cardinal-red ever,” Lenna interrupted her.
Ciaran cracked a laugh. “My beauty, you’re not even going to take a moment to digest that you’ve just presented yourself to your nation?”
Hope pressed her lips in a tight line, only one corner tilting slightly upward. “No time to waste, remember?”
She stretched her hands in front of her, tapped her fingers on the belt that held some of her daggers, and then spoke again.
“So, Indianna and Stevian, you will remain based in this safehouse. Ayla and Nina, to the North Petal to get a piece of heart. Lenna, to the East Petal, where Jake is, to get another piece. Ciaran and I will start finding pieces of heart on the South Petal, then go to the West Petal, then the Core, and after that we will kill the Queen. Any questions?”
All the questions, Lenna thought, but she was too busy thinking about how to make Jake accept her as a guest in his House to voice any of them out loud.
She was going to use whatever weapons she had in her arsenal to get Jake to welcome her back in his life, in whichever way or form she could, for as long as she could, while she figured out how to get him to be able to love again.
He couldn’t love; that much was clear. But he was still a man, and as such he surely could still get horny as the biggest Cardinals-damned fuck.