Chapter 34
Lenna
The Ruining Flame lived here, in the East Ruler’s office—if flame could be said to live.
It stretched from floor to ceiling, an eternal pyre that circled the room, licking at the edges of the ceiling with eager tongues.
It wasn’t a hearth; it wasn’t warmth. It was a prison of fire, a cage of bargaining heat.
Lenna swallowed hard, her throat as dry as if ash lived inside it.
Memories clawed up her skin—skin that had once blistered, cracked, and scarred under fire.
She had known flames before. She had screamed under them.
She had thought they would swallow her whole.
And yet here she stood, her spine refusing to bend to fear. She had never been a coward.
Her heart thundered as she stepped closer. Sparks leapt free, dancing on the air, and when one landed in her hair, she slapped it down with a hiss. The scent of singed strands filled her nose. She forced herself not to flinch again, not to run.
Her voice was steadier than she felt when she spoke.
“You have something I want.”
The Ruining Flame stirred as if it had heard, though its roar did not change. Still, Lenna felt the vibration in her bones, an acknowledgment.
A question licked across her mind like a heatwave: “Is a heart that beats no longer a heart worth burning for?”
Her lips twisted. “Perhaps.” She began pacing in a circle, eyes fixed on the shifting fire. Her skin prickled with each step, sweat breaking across her temples. “You wanted me to learn about your wicked trades and your harming desires, East House. Now tell me—what is it you so desperately want?”
The flames brightened, flaring like a breath sucked in. The voice that followed was not sound but pressure, carried in the crackle of fire.
“The broken corpse of Harming abomination.”
Lenna’s eyes narrowed to slits. Fuck. Her stomach dropped like a stone. Could the House even exist without its original creator alive? She wet her lips, a bitter laugh threatening to escape.
“You want the Cardinal who created you dead.”
The fire hissed in approval. “The wretched villain has lived too long.”
It was almost funny. Almost. The Harming House wanted to Harm the Harming Cardinal. If irony had a throne, it would sit right here in this room.
Her voice was steel when she asked, “If I give you her wings, will you give me the heart of the Queen?”
Behind the flames, something solid emerged—something the fire did not consume but cradled like a lover. A chunk of dark, burned flesh, blackened at the edges, glowing faintly with a deep pulse that was not light but memory.
“Untouched and safe, just as Her Majesty wanted me to keep it.”
Her throat tightened. That piece of the Queen’s heart was what Hope and Ciaran needed to beat the Queen, for Thyrian society to have a better future. Not that she needed any more motivation to kill a Cardinal. She didn’t let herself hesitate. “Then it’s a deal.”
The fire screamed. And then the world shifted.
The East Cardinal appeared before her, as sudden and absolute as if she had always been standing there. Fuck her life, Lenna had not been expecting the House to claim its due right there and then.
The Cardinal’s wings unfurled, vast and gleaming, every feather as sharp as a blade.
Her red eyes burned with the weight of ages, cruel and cold.
Her lips curved into something that was not quite a smile, revealing blood-stained teeth.
The innumerable white scars filling every inch of the skin on her face were the purest depiction of Harming.
“You dare,” the Cardinal hissed, her voice low enough to scrape bone, “to trifle with trades you cannot begin to understand? Do you not think I know what you plan? Do you not think I can see what happens in my House?” Her wings flexed, crimson feathers crackling with embers.
“You scratch through books like a starving rat, you gnaw at the edges of magics that would hollow you out, and still you dream of undoing me. One more step, one more attempt to twist what I have decreed, and I will tear your heart from your chest and feed it to the Ruining Flame myself.”
Out of nowhere, the biggest panomquake she had ever experienced shook the ground, throwing Lenna to the floor; too close to the Ruining Flame, she smelled her own skin about to be roasted. Right when she stood again, Jake entered.
His eyes widened, pupils contracting as they landed on the Cardinal, then on her.
“What on Cardinals-damned Terrha is happening here?” His voice was hoarse, nearly swallowed by the roar of flame. His gaze cut to Lenna, then back to the goddess standing before them.
His voice threaded through Lenna’s mind, sharp and fast. “You need the Lawful Stabs right now. Do you have them?”
Damn. His voice in her head again—how she had missed that. She shook her head ever so slightly, panic tightening her chest. At the same time, she sent her ink outward, clawing for Hope.
No answer.
Her ink sharpened, frantic.
Still nothing.
Jake shifted, one hand moving subtly behind his back, and she realized he must be sending his own desperate inks.
Someone else. They needed someone else. Her gut twisted as her ink leapt unbidden toward the courtrade.
Jake’s jaw tightened. He turned and left the East Cardinal and Lenna alone, and a fragile inch of hope bloomed inside her chest that he had gone to moure straight to Hope, to get the blades the Organ Mandor always carried on her.
The East Cardinal’s attention returned to her like the weight of a mountain. “You think you will have him?” Her voice coiled with venom. “Jake belongs to pain. And pain belongs to him. Pain is and will always be the only true love of his life.”
The ink scar carved on Lenna’s forearm, the one that tied her to Jake, did not read the same.
Then Jake was back. His face was bloodless, his eyes ringed with horror. He slipped behind her, and in one swift motion pressed something into her hand. Smooth hilt. Razor weight. The Red Lawful Stab.
Her fingers curled around it with instinctive greed. The blade glowed faintly—red crystal, forged from the blood of the five Cardinals. Its twin, black crystal carved from the blood of the Cardinal Queen, followed, pressed against her other palm. The Lawful Stabs.
The East Cardinal sneered, pinning Jake down with her fatal stare. “You couldn’t resist, could you? You swore obedience to me, Jake Coralt, therefore you will suffer the consequences.”
Jake’s body convulsed as blood spilled from his nose, his mouth, his skin itself. Every drop of him that dared rebel against the Cardinal’s curse fell, staining the ground.
Lenna’s breath caught, fear stabbing sharper than any blade. Jake was choking, falling to his knees, drowning in red.
“Such a disappointment of a man,” the goddess spat. “I believed you stronger. I believed you worthy of my Harming Petal.”
Jake’s chin dipped. He stepped forward, closer to the Cardinal, his face shadowed, his hands trembling. For one wild, wretched moment, Lenna thought he might beg. But Jake Coralt was not a man who begged. He was the man others begged to.
And so he proved it.
He seized the East Cardinal’s hands and slammed them into the Ruining Flame.
The fire locked her there, wrapping around her wrists in front of her, like shackles. She shrieked, the sound rattling every bone in Lenna’s body.
“East Ruler and East House,” the East Cardinal thundered, wings unfurling in a storm of red feathers, “beware what you wish for. You cannot exist without me. You are nothing. You exist because I allow it.”
“Self-entitled bird with the audacity of a glorious ass,” Lenna spat, walking towards the goddess, raising the Red Lawful Stab high. She drove it down with all the force she had—straight into the joint of one massive wing.
The blade bit deep. Resistance like stone fought her every inch. Her arms shook with the effort, but Lenna pressed harder, gritting her teeth.
“You!” the Cardinal screamed, her voice fraying. “You vicious woman—you should be my Ruler. You deserve. Twisted and screwed up, full of pain and rage. You and I, my wicked soul, could go incredibly far.”
“Far enough to gut you,” Lenna hissed. She shoved harder, and the wing tore free with a sickening crack, falling to the ground in a heap of feathers.
The East Cardinal shrieked, fury boiling. She ripped one hand free from the fire, her fingers blackened, and wrapped them around Lenna’s throat. Pressure crushed down, steel-hard, unyielding. Stars burst in Lenna’s vision as her lungs begged for air.
On the floor, Jake writhed in his own blood. His eyes met hers, wild and desperate. And then—light.
Sweet Bitch leapt, a crackling storm of golden sparks, and bit into the Cardinal’s wrist. The goddess howled, loosening her grip just enough.
Lenna staggered, gasping.
Hope’s father had once said the daggers only obeyed the Organ Mandor of Thyria. Yet the blades did not fight Lenna. They thrummed in her grip, hot and hungry, almost eager. Using them burned her veins with pain, but she did not care. She was rage incarnate, dressed in hatred and broken feathers.
With the red crystal dagger, she tore the second wing away. With the Black Lawful Stab, she plunged into the East Cardinal’s heart.
The goddess screamed, a sound that shattered glass and bone alike. The Ruining Flame roared, swallowing her whole, devouring her body until nothing remained but ash. Ash and two red, broken wings lying limp on the stone floor.
Silence fell.
A panomquake thundered through the ground, shuddering the walls. Lenna staggered, clutching the Lawful Stabs. When she turned, Jake was looking at her—really looking at her. That was love in his eyes, raw and unguarded.
“My sweet, burning fire. My Lenna. My love.” The words poured into her mind.
Her heart stuttered.
And then Jake bled out.
The pool beneath him widened. His chest rose, fell—and stilled.