Chapter 36
Lenna
The Ruining Flame had kept its word. From the ashes of the East Cardinal’s ruined body, it had given Lenna the burned, harmed piece of the Bird Queen’s heart. The piece was blackened, cracked, still whispering with remnants of fire.
A Cardinal’s life for the heart of a Queen. The bargain was sealed. She’d take care of that piece of harmed organ later. For now, all she cared about was another heart. One that beat no longer.
“Give me a Ruler,” the House whispered through the Ruining Flame. Demanding, always demanding.
Lenna put both hands on her hips, hair sticking to her bloodied face. “Shut up and give me a second.”
She didn’t have seconds, not really, when her man was lying limp behind her.
The room was still aflame, walls breathing smoke, but she didn’t hesitate. Closing her hands to Take, everything inside vanished—tables, chairs, the stained remnants of the East Cardinal’s presence—until only a black crystal altar stood at the center.
Lenna turned back. Jake was sprawled on the ground, pale as chalk, lips already losing color.
Her throat tightened, but she forced her hands steady as she slid her arms under him and dragged him to the altar.
He was heavy, dead heavy, the kind of weight that wanted to break her bones, but she didn’t stop until his body lay across the crystal slab.
She stripped him without hesitation. Boots first, then the leather, the shirt, the trousers.
All of it gone until he was bare under the firelight.
Her Jake, her impossible, reckless man, looked like a carved statue.
She swallowed hard. If she thought of him as gone, she’d shatter. And shattering wasn’t an option.
Lenna picked the broken wings of the East Cardinal from the floor, one by one, holding them against the Ruining Flame, so close the heat threatened to burn her own fingers, until—
She gasped. From the burning red feathers, a thick, dark red liquid started dripping, a product of the wings melting.
She collected every single drop in a Given crystal vase, wishing the process was faster so she could move on to the next step.
Eventually, the last few remnants of the East Cardinal’s wings lay in liquid form in her hands.
She stirred the mix with a crystal spoon, movements sharp, decisive. She knew she was taking an enormous risk by using dark magic, but she didn’t give a fuck, nor did she have time to waste looking for a fuck to give.
She Gave her satchel from her room, every forbidden scrap she’d taken from the East libraries spilling across the cracked tiles.
Pages of dark spells, recipes scrawled in blood.
Her fingers went straight to the one she needed—the resurrection chant.
Her eyes skimmed the words again even though she already knew them by heart.
Dark magic had its own little list of sins. Don’t kill without Harming. Don’t raise the dead without Healing. Don’t touch life-binding curses unless you’re Giving or Taking. And the dirtiest rule of all: don’t mess with Cardinal or Ruler flesh. Blood, bones, or feathers. Not even a speck.
And what was she about to do? Cross many of those lines.
She should have cared. She didn’t.
The East Cardinal was dead. Jake could not be dead too. It was simply not a fucking option. End of.
So if she had to gamble her soul, fine. If she had to carve centuries off her life, fine. If she had to risk blowing herself up in a blaze of magic exhaustion, also fine.
Jake was not staying dead.
She built the fire higher by feeding it the final five feathers of the East Cardinal’s broken wings.
They curled, shrieked, and collapsed into ash, thick smoke filling the room until her lungs screamed.
She didn’t care. She bent close, watching as the ashes melted into liquid, deep red and sticky, like blood boiled down to syrup.
The smell of melting Cardinal feathers was vile. Not just smoke and blood. It smelled like something sacred breaking.
Disgusting burning Bird smell, but also the most important ingredient she needed. Practical magic, thank you very much.
She stirred the mix. The liquid clung to the spoon like tar, bubbling, spitting sparks of black light.
She dipped her finger into the mixture. It burned, searing through skin to bone, but she clenched her jaw and turned back to Jake.
Her first stroke dragged across his chest, thick red on white skin.
The ink hissed faintly, sinking into his flesh as though it had always belonged there.
She wrote in the shapes she had memorized—the twisted sigils that had made her skin crawl when she first saw them.
Symbols for life, for return, for binding.
Every symbol was a detailed, precise variation of the original four-petal panom mark.
One trace gone wrong, and she would fuck the whole thing up.
Her hand shook, but she did not stop. Line after line across his chest, his arms, his ribs.
The more she drew, the more the molten-wing ink burned. She felt it digging into her own veins, too, as if the spell demanded her blood as well. She kept going.
Her lips shaped the chant before she realized she was speaking, her voice hoarse, rising with every line.
“Feathers to blood, in fire they burn. From death’s cold grasp, to life return.”
The air shifted. Heavy. Watching.
She dipped again, drawing faster now, until his whole torso was a map of curses and panom runes. Her throat shook, but she forced the next verse out.
“In flesh inscribed with ink of wings; a soul the price this binding brings.”
The words echoed through the chamber, bouncing back at her until it felt like the entire room was whispering along.
Her own blood pounded in her ears. Her knees ached against the hard stone.
Her tears blurred the sigils, and she had to wipe them away with the back of her wrist before continuing, smearing red across her own face.
Jake looked no less dead.
Her throat closed. Fear clawed up, hot and sharp, and for one heartbeat she faltered. What if she failed? What if this wasn’t enough? What if she had just desecrated him, covered the man she loved in curses, and still left him lifeless?
Her hands trembled. Not from fear—though it pulsed at the edges of her vision—but from the blood burning, racing through her veins, the spell clawing for her own life.
She remembered the warnings: every dark act carved pieces off the soul.
Shortened life. Made powers unstable. Could end in magic combustion.
Whatever.
She didn’t flinch.
Her tears hit his skin, streaking down his chest. Where they touched, the ink glowed faintly, drinking them in.
She grabbed the vase with both hands and lifted it to his mouth. His lips were slack, closed, uncooperative.
“Drink, Jake,” she begged, her voice breaking.
If she stopped to think exactly what she had to make him drink, she would vomit or faint in disgust, but it was the only way.
The only chance. She pried his jaw open with trembling fingers and tipped the cup.
The thick, dark-red liquid slid down, some spilling across his chin, staining his skin.
The rest went down his throat, slow, reluctant.
She forced more until it was gone, until the vase was empty and her hands were shaking too badly to hold it anymore.
The silence pressed in.
She stared at him, waiting for a cough, a gasp, anything.
Nothing. Just stillness.
Her breath shuddered. The edges of her vision blurred as panic clawed at her ribs. This was it. She had failed. The one thing she had dared to hope for, dared to gamble on, was gone. He was gone.
Her nails dug into her palms, cutting skin. She screamed then—raw, feral, a sound ripped from her chest until her throat burned.
The chamber shook. The air pressed heavy. And then—
A flicker.
The ink answered first.
One line across his ribs shimmered faintly, then another across his chest, glowing brighter with each second that passed. The light crawled across him, sigils waking like stars in the dark, one by one, until his whole body blazed in crimson fire and…navy sparks.
Lenna’s heart lurched. She scrambled closer, her hand holding his tighter than ever, voice breaking on the last words.
“Bound in ink, in flame, in blood, in me. Rise, my man, life forged anew.”
The words boomed, echoing back until she could barely hear her own breath.
Jake’s body arched. His mouth opened in a silent cry, chest heaving as if dragged by invisible claws. The ink bled deeper, disappearing under his skin, until every single rune she had traced was inked in his body, not with red liquid, but with his own, navy ink.
His eyes snapped open, blazing with a Cardinal-red light before fading back to his own—silver, wild, desperate, alive.
He gasped, dragging air into lungs that had been empty. His body shook violently, every muscle seizing as though fighting death itself.
Lenna caught his face in both hands, tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks.
“Jake,” she whispered, trembling. “Jake, come back to me.”
His eyes flicked to her, unfocused, then sharpened wildly before finding hers. His lips trembled, trying to form words, but all that came out was a broken sound. His chest heaved again, ragged breaths tearing through him.
Alive.
He was alive.
Lenna let out a laugh that cracked through her tears. Relief and terror twisted in her chest all at once. Her hands didn’t leave him. She pressed her forehead to his, clutching him as if he might slip away again, her voice breaking against his lips.
“You’re here,” she breathed. “You’re here. My man is back.”
All the rules, all the warnings, all the cost of dark magic—they meant nothing.
He was the only fight she would never surrender, the only stake worth risking everything for. She would tear the world apart with her own hands if it meant keeping him breathing—and with him in her arms, that was enough to set it all aflame.