“Of course there is no bloody plan,” Marcus laughed out loud.
“This Queen has appeared out of seclusion with a full-on army of flying beasts, stolen my throne, and started killing everyone who poses a threat to her. I’m going to kill her. That’s the plan. The question is how,” Hope explained.
Ciaran’s side smile sent an extra beat to her heart. “Marcus, last time we spoke, you said you couldn’t come to the Fifth Crusade with us because you had an awful lot to do here in Thyria. Can you please enlighten me on what exactly courtrades need to do so badly on this panom island? Why are there so many of us on this star-cursed place? And Elara, what have you been doing all these years based in a land of magic that is not your own?”
Elara’s lip pressed to the side as she let out a low chuckle. “He isn’t dumb,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.
“I told you,” Marcus said, his eyebrows raising with mischief.
“So?” Ciaran insisted, shadows trailing up his metallic finger as his impatience built.
It was Elara who spoke next, and in her voice was the excitement and passion of someone who has waited a very long time to say a secret out loud.
“We’ve been following Llunal’s direct orders all along, Commander. He instructed us to research every inch of this land, every House and every Petal, every type of panom magic, and every single one of its powers. He asked us to analyze itfrom every angle, through every lens possible. Our god wants us to deeply understand the roots and the meanings and the connections between the geography, the magic, and the Cardinal goddesses. Llunal wants us to comprehend, because he said when the time comes, knowledge will be the only thing to save the world.”
“What does that have to do with killing the Cardinal Queen?” Hope asked.
Elara’s chest inflated as she filled her lungs with a deep breath. “It haseverythingto do with killing the Queen, Organ Mandor. If the Queen ever returned from her curse with the will to fight, Llunal expected her to protect herself by doing something unheard of. Something that would break her beyond repair, but would keep her alive and reigning.”
Hope didn’t doubt for a second that such a clear insight on how the Cardinal Queen would protect herself came not from Llunal himself, but from his lover, the Core Cardinal. Only a sibling of the Queen, one who had taken part in the curse that had revoked her freedom for two and a half centuries, one who had seen the perversities of the Queen’s black heart and how far she was willing to go to wear her crown, could predict her next steps.
The most frightening part of this was that Hope believed with her whole heart in the Core Cardinal’s foretelling ability. After all, the goddess had predicted Hope’s own future and faith, waving her path to bring her here.
“What has she done?” Hope asked, fearing what a desperate Queen could do to claim what she believed was her kingdom.
“The Cardinal Queen cut five pieces of her heart off when she regained her freedom. So that if the main part of her heart dies because her body is killed, her sangins can bring her back to life with any of the five spare parts of her most vital organ.”
14
Lenna
“Are you taking the fucking piss?” Lenna shouted when Hope repeated what Elara had told them.
“Very much not,” Hope sighed.
“That Queen is so stupidly nuts that she butchered her own heart?” Lenna asked, her eyebrows so furrowed they looked like one instead of two.
“She is so stupidlydesperate, it seems,” Ayla clarified. “Not nuts at all, as this complicates our lives a whole lot more.”
“Did she cut her heart in slices? Big chunks? Star shapes? Surely not in four-petal flower shapes,” Lenna continued,shaking her head as question after question piled up in her mind. “How could she even do such a thing?”
“The darkest of dark magics, I reckon,” Ciaran murmured.
Hope nodded, staring at Ciaran as her eyes narrowed. “Whatever the reason, whichever the way, the fact is she did it, and now we must destroy the five parts of her heart and kill her. Well, in fact, we must destroy thembeforewe kill her. So, the earlier, the better.”
Lenna snorted. “Once upon a time, the Fifth Crusade seemed a deadly threat to our lives. Not even a month later, here we are planning to destroy random heart pieces of the Queen of all Cardinals. Bread and butter, I kid you not.”
“I never liked butter anyway,” Hope said distractedly as she paced around the room in the Crystal Clear safehouse.
“Any clues as to where to find the charcuterie hearts? We can’t just go around the island lifting every rock and digging holes hoping to find a desiccated part of an organ.”
“The courtrades who led the investigation believe each of the five pieces will be hidden in each of the four Petals in Thyria, as well as a piece in the Core.”
Lenna’s right eyebrow shot to the roof. “They researched for so many years—decades if not centuries, you said?—to get to that mind-fucking-blowing conclusion? They deserve a rightful pat on the back, don’t th—”
“Beware where you channel your rage against the world, Lenna,” Ciaran cut her short, dead serious, and a sharp shot of embarrassment filled Lenna. Damn if the man was not right—there was so much anger and frustration piled up inside of her she was begging for any reason to let it go. “My courtrades’ research is some of the most thorough ever undertaken, and it’s purely because of that that we stand any chance at defeating this Queen and winning this war. Their lives have been dedicatedto this, working in the shadows night in and night out, and for such, I will never be more grateful.”
“I’m sorry for being an angry twat, okay? I didn’t mean to offend them; well, yes, I did, but not actually. Anyway,” Lenna sighed. “We are all grateful for their work. But my question stands: where do we find the heart pieces?”
