Chapter 31
Lenna
The tome lay heavy on her lap, its ruined spine digging into her thighs as she sat curled against the headboard.
The guest room in the East House was too still, its silence clinging like smoke.
The torches in the corridor hissed now and again, as if their flames bent toward her door, as though listening.
She tugged the blanket higher around her bare shoulders, golden sparks seeping from her skin to spill across the parchment.
The title flared faintly in her vision, as though the words themselves had been waiting for her. She leaned closer, her breath shallow, her chest tight. Weeks of chasing broken information and charred half-truths—and at last, something.
“Know then, seeker, that the East House was birthed in fire not of warmth, but of bargain. The Ruining Flame is no servant. It is no hearth. It is the ash-pit of desire, wherein the living cast their secrets and the dead are given rest only at a cost. Its embers are wise, but treacherous, and its hunger eternal.”
Her lips curled into a humorless smile. “Eternal hunger. For pain and blood, definitely.”
She turned a few more pages, frowning at the smudged ink.
“The Flame takes not with hands but with longing. To offer is to bind; to bind is to lose. Beware, for the ash remembers all it consumes and keeps its trophies close. If thou wouldst have what lies in the ash, thou must offer in turn.”
Bargains. Always bargains and trades. She rubbed her temple and let her head fall back against the headboard. Weeks of endless, half-useless research—until now. This felt like the book itself had forced itself into her path.
“East House, East House,” she murmured, eyes narrowing at the hole from the arrow still cutting through the pages. A hole like this across the East Bird’s heart would look so very pretty. “Is this what you wanted me to find?”
The torches in the corridor outside hissed, a faint swell of heat brushing against the door. She pressed her lips together, sparks twitching over her fingers. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if the damn House was actually listening.
Her jaw clenched, her thoughts snapping instantly to Jake. His eyes the other night, hollow with resignation. You deserve someone better. His voice, quiet and breaking. Stay alive, Lenna. Do me that favor.
She dragged her nails across the margin, leaving faint streaks of gold. She didn’t want better. She wanted him.
She blinked against the pull of exhaustion, but forced her eyes over the last, half-burnt line at the bottom of the page. The ink darker here, sharper, as though written by a hand that wanted to scar the paper:
“The East House keeps what is broken, binds what is willing, and bargains with no regret. To call upon its fire is to stand before ruin itself.”
Her vision blurred. She tried to reread the words, but they swam, doubling and vanishing. Her hands slackened, the tome sliding against her hip. She lay back against the pillows, her fingers brushing the burned cover, as though unwilling to let it go even in sleep.
Golden sparks dimmed across her body until only faint threads curled upward into the dark.
Her eyelashes fluttered closed. Jake’s face lingered behind her eyelids, silver eyes that no longer burned for her, lips that whispered of a love stolen from him.
Her rage, her grief, her want, her hope—they tangled until she could no longer separate them.
And then—
The shriek tore the night apart.
Golden sparks smothered her skin like a second flesh, rippling down her limbs until she blazed with light. Her head jerked up. Her breath stilled. In her hands—impossibly—navy sparks glowed, slipping like sand through her fingers no matter how she tried to hold them. His. Jake’s.
“No,” she whispered, clamping her palms tighter. Every spark lost was another piece of him gone. I must protect them. I must not lose him.
Above, the sky split, crimson wings unfurling across a void. The East Cardinal goddess descended with a cry sharp enough to rattle bone, her beak a gleam of polished death. She slammed into Lenna’s golden body, knocking her breath to shreds.
Lenna staggered, but she did not fall. She turned—and she ran.
Her golden sparks burned brighter the faster she moved, scattering light across the ground, but the navy bled away quicker, thinner, until only trickles remained. She pressed her palms together, frantic, but the sparks hissed out all the same, dissolving before her eyes.
The goddess’s voice ripped through the dreamscape. “His love is gone. I plucked it clean. What you clutch belongs to me.”
Lenna spun, her teeth bared. “Over my dead body.”
The goddess dived lower, wings stirring a storm so fierce it nearly flung Lenna off her feet. Still she clutched the dying sparks, her chest tearing with grief so sharp it felt like a blade.
The goddess laughed, a scream sharpened to cruelty. “You think you can keep what I have claimed? Foolish child. You will hollow yourself until nothing remains.”
Lenna’s lips curved into a feral grin. “Then you’d better try harder.”
The beak slashed close, grazing her cheek, and Lenna fell to her knees. Her fingers almost opened—almost—but she forced them tighter. When she dared to look, only one navy spark remained. One. Fragile. Trembling. But alive.
A sob ripped through her chest, but she pressed the ember to her heart, her body blazing with gold. Mine. He’s still mine.
The Cardinal’s shadow pressed down, her wings blotting out all else. “Release him. This is your final warning. Or I will end you.”
Lenna tilted her chin, blood dripping from her cheek, her smile sharp as steel. “Come and try.”
The goddess screamed, crimson feathers tearing the sky apart. The dream cracked open, shattering beneath Lenna’s feet—
And she fell through, his last spark still burning in her fist. She had not let go. She would never let go.
A loud noise made her jump in the bed, and when she opened her eyes, navy sparks inundated her guest room in the East House. The door hung broken from the hinges, wood splintered where force had struck—the force being the man standing at the end of her bed.
Lenna opened her hand and Gave some golden sparks herself, letting Sweet Bitch form from them.
She had fallen asleep reading Chapter 55 for the fifteenth time, her mind too tired to even realize she didn’t have the lynx cub’s company for the first time in weeks.
Sweet Bitch stroked her snout against the palm of Lenna’s hand before giving an incredibly human-like bad look at Jake.
She paced to a corner of the room, where she sat and started cleaning her head with her paws.
“Are there no locks in this House? Why are you in my room? What time is it?” Lenna demanded. After rubbing her eyes and examining him under the brighter golden sparks, she added, “Why are you so angry? What happened? Stop looking at me like that and answer, will you?”
“If you shut your pretty mouth up and give me a fucking chance, I may.” He got closer to her, his hand pushing her chin upwards until he stared down at her.
It had been so long since he had towered above her while she laid down on a bed.
“This is my House. I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, to do whatever I want. No locks, no chains, no barriers.” His eyes lowered to her breasts, and he pushed down her black lingerie shortie, exposing a peaked nipple and pinching it as she gasped. “Why were you calling me?”
Her eyes widened as her eyebrows shot to the ceiling. “I wasn’t—fuck. It was just—Excuse me, that’s my nipple.”
“They’re mine to play with, sweet fire.” He pinched her other nipple at the same time, making her back arch. “Why did you call me in the middle of the night?”
“It was a nightmare.”
“Am I in your nightmares?”
He very much had not been in it, even if his sparks had, which meant she somehow must have been screaming his name unconsciously, which was way worse.
She had been trying to wake from there, she had been trying to escape from the East Bird’s grip, by calling his name, by begging for his help without even knowing it.
Definitely worse than him being in the actual nightmare.
She put her sass night-mask on before he could realise.
She winked at him as she side-smiled. “I have nightmares about strangers coming in the middle of the night and pinching my nipples.”
Jake clicked his tongue as his silver eyes darkened a tone. “I am no stranger. I am your lover. You’re only allowed to have nightmares about me, and these,” he pinched them tighter, “are mine. If another hand dares touch your precious body, I’ll break every single one of its twenty-seven bones.”
The East Cardinal very much did not agree with the Jake-nightmare clause. Lenna pressed her lips together as her jaw clenched. “My lover cannot love me, but he can break bones possessively.”
“I can break much more than bones,” he said, tracing his nose up her throat.
She nodded slowly as her own thoughts echoed in her mind. Hearts. You can break hearts, Jake.
“Trust the Harming Ruler to be highly skilled at breaking,” she said instead.
“Who else was in the nightmare?” he asked, his jaw clenching harder, as he released the pinch of his fingers to stroke the skin of her breasts, pulled the clothes over them and let his hands trail down her waist softly.
“Magical creatures and lots of sparks.” She looked around, pointing at his still-inundating navy sparks sea filling her room.
Sweet Bitch was bouncing a navy spark between her paws, trying to catch it with her golden mouth but every time missing.
“Not that different from this exhibition.” Except it had been full of golden sparks, and the navy ones were precious, disappearing, escaping from her grasp. “I have a question.”
Jake lifted an eyebrow. “I have more than one.”
And here was her leverage. “I said it first. You answer three truthfully, I will answer three truthfully. Deal?”
He extended his hand in front of her, and she placed her palm against his, interlacing their fingers and letting both their golden and navy inks mark each other in a truth-binding oath before they both let go.
“Truthfully,” he repeated, and she nodded. “Go ahead,” he said as his chin dipped in agreement.
“The people you wanted to get rid of because they were useless politically—you said the House disposed of them. How?”
“I think the House burned them down,” he said briefly.
Lenna smiled as a rush of excitement built up in her chest as her lungs expanded. “Where?”
“I guessed on the walls of my office, because it smelled like rancid feathers for days, but I didn’t really ask.”
Lenna’s jaw dropped as she covered her wide-open mouth with both hands. Of fucking course the Ruining Flame had been in front of her eyes since day one. She almost burned herself in it more than once. By the time she collected her surprised shit together, he had asked his first question.
His chin tilted upward before he shot it. “Why did you ask those two questions?”
“I have been searching for a magical place linked to the East Cardinal and the East House, important enough for the Cardinal Queen to hide a piece of her own heart in it. I believe I have now found it. Thank you.” She blew him a kiss.
He bowed without removing his piercing stare from her eyes. “That was one of your missions here, then. What was the other?”
Lenna crossed her arms in front of her chest as she inhaled deeply, clenching her jaw so hard it hurt.
His navy ink still trailed around her fingers, palm and wrists, smoothly but incessantly, the oath demanding the truth.
She looked at the sparks behind him while she replied, because looking at him while she admitted her purpose and her failure was too painful.
“Finding a way for you to love again,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the last two words.
Jake’s whole body tensed, and Lenna had a feeling his breathing had sped up, but perhaps she was wrong.
Perhaps it was her own breathing along with her heartbeat, losing control.
Before Lenna could look at him in the eyes again, she saw goosebumps up his arms, trailing from his muscled wrists up to where his skin disappeared under his sleeves.
It took him a while to ask his third and last question. “The magical creatures that made you scream my name in your nightmare tonight—what did they want?”
“The East Cardinal threatened to kill me if I didn’t give up.”
His sharp inhale was loud, and many of the navy sparks started moving so fast he lifted a hand and Took them away at once, leaving only her golden magic illuminating the room.
He looked out the window to the night sky above the East Petal, staring at the moon as if its redness was the reflection of the East Cardinal’s wings.
From the look on his face, one would think his ability to hate had multiplied exponentially for every bit he could no longer love.
“You have one more question,” he muttered.
Lenna didn’t need any reminders. She had been saving the most important question for last. It was now or never. It would give a lot up, it would throw part of her facade away, but she needed to know. She needed to know whether risking everything was the right choice.
“Do you wish you could love again?” She bit her cheek while she waited for his answer.
He narrowed his silver eyes, staring at her golden ones.
“More than anything I have ever wished for, but I am not willing to put you in danger. My love is not more worthy than your life. I don’t wish my love back if the person I loved isn’t alive anymore.
” Her chin trembled as his voice spoke the truth.
“Let it go, Lenna. You must let me go. Now.”
Never, she promised herself, clenching her fists as she inhaled deeply. This was all she needed. This was all the information she needed.
The last navy spark she didn’t let go of was the one for which she was willing to set the whole fucking world on fire.