Chapter 45
Hope
The words had barely left her mouth when the air split. A shriek pierced through the Cardinals’ Temple dome, rattling the crystal above their heads.
Four Cardinal goddesses in female form burst through the light, their wings slicing across the sky, their feathers blazing like crimson storms. They landed with a thunder, shaking the Temple, the ground, Thyria itself.
“Sisters,” the Core Cardinal called, her voice fierce, unyielding.
The Temple was full of an oppressive, suffocating presence. Even the Queen paused, her lips curling at the sight of her four younger sisters.
The North Cardinal moved first. She wore a white diadem in her red hair and a familiar green necklace that sent shivers up Hope’s spine. It felt like a lifetime ago when she had seen Ayla’s eyes in the Fifth Judgment for the last time.
The Northern goddess bent low, kneeling by Ayla and Nina’s lifeless bodies, gently closing their eyelids. Her wings spread wide, shielding them from view, as if her feathers could cover death itself.
Both women were dead. Dead.
Hope swallowed bile. It was no easy feat to contain the painful grief in the tightest knot inside her chest, not allowing it to overtake her composure. Not yet. One distraction, one wrong movement, one wrong thought, and the Queen would take advantage.
The West Cardinal crossed to Ciaran. He did not move from his stance by Hope, his firm hand on the small of her back. The Cardinal’s hand brushed his shoulder, steadying him, though her eyes never left the Queen.
The Core Cardinal strode forward, taking her place at Hope’s other side. Her red feathers brushed Hope’s arm, her presence like a second heartbeat inside her ribs.
On the other side, Jake and Lenna were alone, standing at the West petal on the four-petal mark under the dome.
The South Cardinal moved toward them. Lenna stiffened, hands rising as she saw the Queen move. Jake shifted to shield his wife.
“Don’t,” Hope whispered, but her words were too late.
The Queen struck.
Faster than a blink, black wings whipped forward. A single feather, sharpened like a blade, flew across the chamber. It cut through the South Cardinal’s throat before she even finished her first step.
She collapsed in silence, red wings crumpling, her life extinguished.
Lenna screamed, the sound shredding her voice raw.
The Queen laughed. “I once committed the mistake of not killing my sisters, and they cursed me into a void for two hundred fifty years. That time is over.”
Hope’s stomach turned as cold horror gripped her. If the Queen could slay her sisters like this, then what chance—
But then she saw it.
Not strength. Not true power. But rot. The Queen’s body shook as she pulled another feather from her wing, stained with weakness. Every kill cost her.
She was feeding on her own decay.
Still—she turned, eyes black fire, and with another flick of her black feathers, she cut the North Cardinal where she kneeled. The goddess fell across Ayla and Nina, lifeless red wings blanketing their bodies. The black feather turned deadly weapon struck the Cardinal’s forehead.
“No!” Lenna lurched forward, but Jake caught her by the waist, dragging her back. Her sob turned into a roar that shook the air.
Hope felt Ciaran’s grip tighten on her back every time she contained her gasp. His shadows hovered around Hope’s ankles, circling her limbs like smoke.
The Queen smirked and raised her arm again.
Before either of them could move, the West Cardinal choked as the black feather struck her heart. She fell into Ciaran’s arms, her red blood spilling across his shadows. His roar joined Lenna’s, shadows whipping the walls like storm waves.
Hope’s jaw clenched in anticipation and dread. The Queen and her weaponized feathers were too fast. Way too fast.
“Three sisters dead,” the Queen said, turning to Hope. “Only one left for you to watch fall before you bow.”
The Core Cardinal’s voice cut through the carnage. “You will not touch me. And the Daughter of Red will not bow to your blackness.”
The Queen snarled. “Allow me to sort you next, Core, before I deal with your chosen one and see her die.”
The crystal dome above them trembled, light cracking through its seams.
And then—broken glass rained down.
Llunal, god of whispers and night, tore through the dome in a blaze of darkness, shards of crystal falling like a broken sky. He landed beside the Core Cardinal, darkness blazing around him. His metallic, crescent-shaped weapon burned like the night itself, carved into shadows and starshine.
“You will not touch her,” Llunal thundered, covering the Core Cardinal with shadows thicker than stone.
The Queen hissed, feathers snapping as she created an invisible barrier surrounding where she stood. “Then, if you refuse to bow, Hope Nevada, step forward. If it’s the throne of Thyria you want, come and claim it.”
And it was then that the world broke.
The Core of Thyria shuddered.
Hope didn’t need to see it to know, to feel in her bones what her island suffered. After their goddesses’ deaths, the West, North, and South Petals were tearing free, breaking apart from the Core, drifting like islands into the powerful waves of the Radel Sea, where the East Petal already was.
The air howled as reality itself fractured.
“Daughter of Red.” The Core Cardinal’s voice was a command, raw with grief and fury. “Save us.”
Hope had already decided.
She inhaled sharply as her chest constricted.
Her breath stuttered. The Red and Black Lawful Stabs burned in her hands.
The five stars Ciaran had gifted her along with her new chance at living shone inside her body, in the Core of her panom mark.
As if switched on, her Fifth Power felt like it was running inside her veins, awaiting, awake.
She looked at Ciaran, and the world seemed to stop spinning so they could savor this moment. She could fall into the blue depths of his eyes, into the embrace of his arms and shadows, into the security of his heart and company.
But they both knew it. Everyone in this Temple knew it.
This was a battle between the Organ Mandor and the usurper of her throne.
“I’ll be right back,” Hope said, low enough so that only Ciaran could hear her. She wasn’t strong enough to tell him to wait for her while she was in the grip of death. Again. So instead, she said, “Tell your shadows to wait for me.”
Ciaran’s jaw clenched as he acknowledged her request, his shadows untangling from her limbs one by one. Each time one abandoned the reassuring presence in her limbs, she felt exposed, unprotected, incomplete.
But she wasn’t incomplete. She had her own blades and the Lawful Stabs; those the Cardinals themselves created centuries ago with their own blood.
She had a nation fighting, bleeding so she could ensure a better future for them.
She had her own panom army and the courtrade army behind her.
She had her family in this Temple, trusting her with their lives and their future. She had him.
She had her magic, determination, and a goal.
She had everything she needed to kill a Queen. Especially a Queen with only a fifth of her heart beating.
“Do your worst, bloodrose,” Ciaran said, pressing a kiss on her lips.
Hope turned to face the Queen, her steps steady and firm while she let her veins light with starshine and red sparks, her skin trembling with the force of it. Her body crossed the invisible barrier where the Queen and she were separated from the rest of the world.
The moment she was in, the Queen lunged, wings outstretched, feathers flying like knives towards Hope’s chest and face.
Hope moved faster than she ever had, dodging the killing feathers, preventing them from striking her sacred organ and her mind.
She couldn’t Take the feathers away, and the half a second she spent trying was all the Queen needed for two black feathers to touch Hope’s skin, ripping her arms open, her red blood staining the ground of the Temple.
As she dodged, she ran towards the Queen, head-first, both Lawful Stabs in her metallic hand, Harming with her biological hand. What a joyful discovery the black blood of the Queen dripping from her cheek was. The feathers could not be Taken, but the Queen could be Harmed, and she could bleed.
So, Hope Harmed, and she made her bleed.
Their magics clashed, red against black, the sound like thunder splitting the Temple.
The Queen struck feathers with fury, every blow meant to kill.
Hope Harmed, slicing her pale skin open, still holding the Lawful Stabs dear in her hand.
Hope’s stars burned brighter inside her body, fueling her to move at the speed of magic.
Each strike sang with the strength of the Core, the memory of Ayla, the faith of every Cardinal sister slain, the justice of every innocent life the Queen had claimed.
“You are nothing,” the Queen spat. “You are a child with borrowed blood.”
Hope’s smile cut sharper than her blade. “No. I am the Daughter of Red. I was forged to end you.”
As if the name Fate had given her awoke an unknown force, her stars erupted.
A force made of the Fifth Power and the stars burst from her chest and her panom mark, flooding through her arms, injecting the sacred crystal blades, and irradiating towards the goddess.
The Queen staggered as the starshine hit her, her black feathers burning, her wings tearing apart.
She screamed, black ink spilling from her veins, her heart beating its broken fifth.
The staggered step back was all Hope needed to run towards her and strike, cutting her wings from her spine with the star-infused Red Lawful Stab. The sound of the Queen’s pain was a musical melody.
The Queen’s scream shattered glass, rattled bone, shook the very Core. Her wings convulsed as they broke, her feathers crumbled to ash, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“No crown. No heart. No Queen,” Hope whispered, as she pressed the Black Lawful Stab into her chest.
Blood called to blood. The crystal blade holding the Queen’s blood collided with the very same blood inside the Queen’s chest. The claws of the goddess holding onto Hope’s arm seared her skin, opening five long gashes that made her red liquid spill.
The Fifth Power blazed from her hands through the Black Lawful Stab, the light from her five stars collapsing into the blade. The Queen’s body split with light, leaking darkness, her scream torn into silence.
And then, she was gone.
Ash floated where the Cardinal Queen had been, black ink pooling on the floor of the Temple. The Core shuddered once, twice, like a final breath, and the Temple fell silent.
Hope dropped to her knees, lungs tearing for air, the Lawful Stabs in her hands guttering to dull crystal before they shattered into a million crystal pieces.
Behind her, Lenna had collapsed over Ayla, fingers tangled in her twin’s hair, pressing her face to her cheek as if she could breathe her back to life. Jake’s hand shook where it rested on her spine, his silence heavier than any scream.
With the Queen dead, the invisible barrier faded, and Ciaran rose from where he crouched beside the limp West Cardinal, crossing to Hope like the darkest night, pulling her into the strength of his arms. She let herself fold into him, trembling.
Home.
She was home. He was her home.
Stars still glimmered faintly inside her chest, dimming. Hope raised her head, meeting the eyes of the Core Cardinal and Llunal as they stood before her, grave and relentless.
“Welcome to your House, Organ Mandor,” the Core Cardinal declared. “This nation is yours now.”