41. Lenna
41
Lenna
L enna was trying to force her still very heated blood to chill the fuck down after almost breaking Thyria in half because—
No, better to not remember precisely what had been pressed tightly against the apex of her legs, if she truly wanted to cool down. Shame she didn’t have access to a cold shower.
They needed clothes, because she was not going to go around with her peaked nipples covered by the blanket around the cell underneath the Organ House, and because if those strong muscles on Jake’s chest were not covered, it was very hard to resist touching them again.
With a couple of hand movements, she Gave herself a black top, and Gave a shirt with the usual style Jake dressed in, putting it into his hand instead of straight into his body for some sense of normalcy.
“I was wondering,” he started, “since my dear father will keep us here for the Fifth knows how long, if you’d like to learn the last Cardinal power.”
Lenna blinked. “I’m not Harming you,” she said, twisting her mouth to the side.
“Yet you must feel the horizontal balance scale of your petal tilting towards the Healing, after you worked on my back for so long. Am I right?”
Lenna nodded, lifting her eyebrows. “Still, I’m not Harming you. I’d very much rather have the balance uneven.” Which meant she felt like she had been drinking myster since she had Healed him, a feeling she enjoyed often enough, if it was in the right measure.
Jake frowned slightly, some confusion crossing his eyes. “So kind of you, golden heart. Let me at least tell you the theory. So if you ever need to do it, you know where to start.”
Jake lifted a hand in front of him, all his fingers straight and together as he said, “In a similar way as when you Heal, when you Harm, you must visualize the desired outcome.” He moved his hand down in a straight line, as if he was cutting with the side of his palm. “Harming can bear many forms: from a plain cut, to locking limbs, to internal organs damage, to breathe-holding… As with Giving, Taking, and Healing, Harming only has the limits of its wielder. Which can be many, or can be close to none.”
Lenna avoided a shiver as a never-ending list of atrocious possibilities crossed her mind. How cruel must the East Cardinal have been to own this power in her soul? To think such a limitless hurting potential was in the hands of any experienced panom… “That’s some scary shit.”
Jake nodded in silence. Lenna asked, “Is that how you discard people? Is it a way of Harming them?”
Jake stared at her, as if he was considering answering honestly or not.
“I don't like to talk about the details of... my duties. But no, it's not Harming. Harming always involves a very unpleasant feeling, usually pain, agony or misery. I would never Harm the babies and children that sometimes I have to discard. In any way.” If that was not deep relief in Lenna's chest, only the Fifth knew what it was. Jake continued, “Discarding is painless. It's more similar to mouring somebody away.”
“So you do have some sort of incredibly relaxed and blurry ethical limits.”
“You didn’t seem too concerned about my ethical limits a few minutes ago, Brachyan.” Jake lifted his eyebrow, and that slight curl of one corner of his mouth did things to her core.
“We went further than what two responsible heirs of the Houses should have ever gone. I bet you are happy with the panomquake that came out of your brief experiment,” Lenna said, tilting her head. Good thing both knew they were quite far from being responsible heirs.
“I’d be much happier if we had continued.”
“Shame the rocks falling on top of us didn’t agree,” she said. “Can you not moure out of this cell?”
“It has epitellia wards that prevent mouring in or out unless ordered by the Organ Mandor,” Jake said. “Sorry, you have to be stuck with me for a while longer.”
“I’m sorry too,” Lenna sat down, her back against the curved wall of one of the petal shapes of the cell.
“Maybe we should find out at exactly which point the land breaks in half,” he said, standing up and walking towards where Lenna was. “If it is when I lick that wetness between your legs dry,” his voice had dropped an octave, “or when I fuck you as deep as I know you want it. You know, for experimental purposes.”
An experiment that had the risk of killing hundreds of thousands of people when the land truly broke in half, for Cardinals’ sake.
Lenna looked up to him, past the massive bulk in his pants that was very difficult to ignore, and found Jake looking at her with the dark gray tinge in his eyes.
Before she could reply, someone appeared next to her and touched the skin on the back of her neck. Jake grabbed the arm of this being half a second later with preternatural speed, Jake’s own hand on the back of this being’s neck as their bodies left the floor, and they were moured away from the cell.
Lenna landed on her ass in the throne room, and stood up as soon as she could, all the heat inside her body cooling down instantly, as if drowned by a gigantic iceberg. Because touching her neck was the Cardinals-damned Organ Mandor, Jake removing his own hand from his neck, and next to Lenna—
Ayla was standing next to her, a confused look on her face, as if this had been an unexpected mouring summoning for her too. Ayla’s green eyes kept looking up and down Lenna’s back, as if she couldn’t believe she had recovered so quickly.
“Change of plans,” Rhei Coralt said, mouring into his throne and facing the three of them. “Women with defiant attitudes keep proving to be a vast annoyance later down the line. Despite a variety of punishments, some women don’t seem to learn. Maybe some aren’t capable of learning. And I have a feeling, Lenna Brachyan, that you are one of them.”
“What do you want?” Lenna spat.
“I want you to prove here and now that the five Stabs helped you understand who is the only true Ruler in Thyria. Who you must listen to, obey and respect.” Rhei Coralt’s eyes were as bright as if a black silver fire was igniting them. “I want you to apologize for being rude and disrespectful towards the Law, and to swear your complete loyalty to me. On your panom blood.”
A blood swearing that only death could break.
“You represent all I have ever hated from this putrid nation of yours.”
Ayla gasped, and Jake kept quiet, even though she felt a hint of amusement and deep fear coming from his body. She hated his motherfucker of a father so much.
“The discarding of innocent people at your mercy, under your orders,” Lenna added, and her heart thundered in her chest with anger. “The roixers roaming free and killing whoever they want, whenever they want, with no consequences, because they have your permission to use brute power to impose their laws, your laws. The degradation you need to inflict upon others to place yourself above them. Because that is the only thing you truly have: an evil, wicked mind that cares about nothing and nobody other than your damned self.”
Lenna’s body was trembling with anger, her teeth clenching anytime she shut her mouth, so instead she continued, “And you want me to learn what , from your punishment? You want me to learn to behave when your fucking exemplar behavior is making us bleed? I thank you for your punishment, because it has clarified any small doubt I could ever have about who the fuck you truly are, and how you want to rule over us. And as for what you want from me… I will never apologize to a piece of shit with powers.”
Rhei Coralt clapped his hands three times, the sound echoing in the throne room. “Very clarifying for me too, Lenna Brachyan, to hear your list of torments. To see that, as I had rightly believed, you are incapable of evolving. Some beings are narrow minded like that.”
The Organ Mandor moved his silver eyes to Ayla, who was quiet as dead next to Lenna, probably not even daring to breathe too loudly.
“Lucky me, I have an alternative option for the Heir of the North House. A much more suitable option, according to what your parents have told me. An option that, according to the Librarians of Time, is close enough that shouldn’t alter the flow of the magic within the land too much.”
Rhei Coralt continued, “Why complicate my life with a rebellious little panom heir playing empowered woman when the panom you shared your womb with can obey my rules? Why should a few minutes of difference at birth make any difference twenty-five years later?”
“Since I have memory, I have wished to not be the heir of my House. You’ll be doing me a favor,” Lenna winked.
The Organ Mandor smiled, and Lenna wanted to take her eyes away from him, but couldn’t. Not as he extended his arms and a continuous arrow of black sparks flowed into Lenna’s chest, extracting a small North Petal golden shape from it that floated in the air until it penetrated Ayla’s chest, who inhaled sharply and went extremely pale.
A panomquake followed, much smaller than the previous one when Lenna and Jake had interacted, and the only panom that didn’t move his position was the Organ Mandor, his ruling ass on his ruling throne. Ayla, Lenna and Jake readjusted their positions.
“Happy heirloom-stealing day, sister,” Lenna said. “Your wishes come true at last.”
“True destiny always delivers, Lenna Brachyan,” Rhei Coralt said, still smiling. Ayla said nothing, but her body shaking next to Lenna’s probably meant she was holding her happy tears in.
“Destiny is a piss-taker. I only believe in the twisted minds of the Cardinals,” Lenna said. She didn’t feel any different now that the actual North Petal that she didn’t know was stuck in her chest belonged to her sister.
“Twisted indeed. Female minds, twisted indeed,” Rhei Coralt nodded.
Lenna was hoping for a dismissal, so she didn’t have to see his wicked face for a second longer. But that horrific grin appeared on his lips again, as if he had had some sort of last-minute revelation.
“I think it’s time to leave problems knotted properly. You and your also twisted mind, Lenna Brachyan, are one of my unforeseen problems that I have no time for. Since you haven’t liked the peculiarities of my punishments so far, I would like to try something I haven’t used in a long, long time. Will I be doing you a favor if I take your panom powers away?”
Lenna’s heart stopped, the sound on her ears blank as time seemed to stop. “You can’t do that,” she whispered.
“Incapable minds don’t learn,” Rhei Coralt kept grinning. “I can very much do that, girl.” He extended his arms in front of him again, the blackness coming out of his hands aimed towards Lenna’s chest again. She covered her panom mark with both hands, golden sparks flowing from her hands as she Gave herself a barrier against the Organ Mandor’s power.
The golden physical barrier made of her magic was translucid, allowing her to see the delighted face of Rhei Coralt as he welcomed the challenge with open arms. The golden colour of the barrier was now interlaced with navy laces, reinforcing it. Lenna was busy enough concentrating on keeping the black strikes away from her chest to look at Jake. But him standing up for her against his father again did something to the rhythm of her heart.
The barrier became all navy shortly after, golden sparks and black sparks flying around it. And the navy sparks sucked the black ones, making them disappear. The barrier was gone.
Lenna stopped, feeling the black pressure against her source of magic on her chest. Her panom mark. She couldn’t lose her panom mark, her panom abilities. It was the only thing she had. The only thing that truly mattered.
“Touch her and you will regret it,” Jake spat, his silver eyes penetrating his father’s, navy sparks emanating from his hands, his body, his hair.
The Organ Mandor was not smiling anymore. “You don’t want to become another problem of mine, boy. Your mind is capable. It’s just as stubborn as the Fifth itself.”
The black arrows made of sparks shoot through Lenna’s chest before Jake or she could put another barrier up, and she felt the ink on her skin diluting as the black sparks erased her panom mark from her. The power balance that had felt so uneven at the high effort of Giving so much trying to keep the barrier in place—
The magical balance didn’t feel uneven anymore. Because there was no balance. No magic.
Lenna Brachyan was not a panom.
Lenna crumpled into the floor, her mind fogged with fear and frustration and anger and fear. Fear, so much fear. She opened her hand, willing her sparks to appear. Emptiness was all she had left. In her hands, her mind, and her heart.
Lenna didn’t know if things happened in her head or in reality, when she saw Ayla with tears in her eyes saying, “Sorry.” When Jake placed a hand on her neck and they moured away, the surroundings spinning almost as much as her own thoughts. As her own life.