43. Lenna
43
Lenna
L enna’s mind kept spinning around even as the floor settled under her feet. She was barely aware of Jake moving her into a black armchair, forcing her stiff body to sit. He kneeled in front of her.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft.
The fucking Organ Mandor had taken her powers away. She was not a panom. She would never be anything of worth again. She could never help Raoul, or any other innocents in this broken society. Lenna clenched her fists, ignoring the pain as her nails dug into her skin.
“Brachyan,” Jake said firmly, putting a cautious hand on her thigh.
Her golden eyes met his silver ones, and she acknowledged her surroundings at last. A luxuriously black and navy bedroom with the shape of a petal that could only be in his private chambers.
She was still in the House of the motherfucker who had taken her heirloom and her powers away. The heirloom part she would have felt relief for, were it not for the absolute emptiness and sorrow she felt at losing the biggest part of her identity that had come with it.
“I don’t want to be here,” Lenna said, swallowing her hatred and revulsion to talk as if nothing was happening. As if her entire world was not falling apart.
“You want me to take you to your chambers?” Jake asked.
Theon would probably be there, and she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone.
“I don’t want to be in his fucking House. In his city,” Lenna said. Even if the entire island of Thyria belonged to this man that she hated so much, and she could see Jake thinking precisely that too. “I just want to go home,” she whispered.
“I can take you to the North House,” Jake said. Lenna nodded, silently putting a hand on top of his. A hand with no magic on top of the hand of the most powerful heir of Thyria.
A hand on her neck. The floor disappeared from under their feet again, and Corentre was gone.
The wooden walls of her room in the North House were warmly familiar, and the wide panel windows opening to her balcony let her breathe in the much needed fresh air. Her bed, her things, her heart had been here all those years, and even the smell seemed to welcome her back home. She silently thanked the epitellia wards for allowing Jake to moure her there because of her identity.
“Don’t let this make you miserable, Brachyan,” Jake said.
“Said the most powerful panom heir of Thyria to a panomless former heir,” Lenna snorted. “Seems like a Cardinals-damned grim joke.”
“Your inner fire doesn’t depend on your powers,” he said, and she turned to look at him. His face was serious, and his eyes lined with anger and determination. “You are much more than a panom.”
“You don’t need to be here anymore. You are no longer my Panom Guidor,” Lenna said, turning to look at the gardens in front of her. And before he could say anything else that would make her reconsider, she added, “I want to be alone.”
She was home, and yet she had never felt such loneliness and emptiness invading every single part of her being.