Hope smiled. “Perfect. The last piece of heart destroyed in the Core means we’ll be close to the Organ House and the throne room, and hopefully to the Queen herself, so we can kill her body and start fresh. Talking about starting fresh…Thyrian society probably does not know the old Organ Mandor is dead, nor that the flying sangins they see are the Queen’s army. Give me a second.”
Hope’s red sparks flew across every single direction before disappearing, and all of them received the same ink with her Cardinal-red handwriting, no doubt sent to every single being in Thyria.
It was Nina who read the message on her forearm aloud:
“My name is Hope Nevada and I am Rhei Coralt’s daughter. My father is now dead. I have Core female blood and have been blessed by the Cardinals to be your new Organ Mandor. To ensure the preservation of your lives, do not fight the flyingcreatures invading our skies. I vow to protect Thyria and its society with my life. Please take care of your safety and security while I get rid of the murderer currently sitting on my throne.”
Hope cleared her throat dismissively, as if hundreds of thousands of beings hadn’t just found out that she was their new leader. “So, we were saying—”
“I wonder if they’ll be too busy loving your no-nonsense approach, or if they will be too astonished with the fact that your ink is the only one that has been Cardinal-red ever,” Lenna interrupted her.
Ciaran cracked a laugh. “My beauty, you’re not even going to take a moment to digest that you’ve just presented yourself to your nation?”
Hope pressed her lips in a tight line, only one corner tilting slightly upward. “No time to waste, remember?”
She stretched her hands in front of her, tapped her fingers on the belt that held some of her daggers, and then spoke again. “So, Indianna and Stevian, you will remain based in this safehouse. Ayla and Nina, to the North Petal to get a piece of heart. Lenna, to the East Petal, where Jake is, to get another piece. Ciaran and I will start finding pieces of heart on the South Petal, then go to the West Petal, then the Core, and after that we will kill the Queen. Any questions?”
All the questions, Lenna thought, but she was too busy thinking about how to make Jake accept her as a guest in his House to voice any of them out loud.
She was going to use whatever weapons she had in her arsenal to get Jake to welcome her back in his life, in whichever way or form she could, for as long as she could, while she figured out how to get him to be able to love again.
He couldn’t love; that much was clear. But he was still a man, and as such he surely could still get horny as the biggest Cardinals-damned fuck.
15
Hope
Ciaran embraced her from behind, trapping her body against his with the only belt she would ever allow herself to be restrained with—his strong arms.
Corentre lay below them, multiple straight streets converging in the very center of the island, where the Organ House occupied a sizeable area of the city capital, and in its very middle, an enormous dome begged for everyone’s attention. It felt like five years ago when she had seen the Cardinals’ Temple for the first time.
“Do you think she is there right now?” Hope asked in a low voice, almost as if she didn’t want the Queen to hear her.
“It wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, I would be shocked if she dared leave the throne room or the Organ House at all. She’s probably scared of you, Hope. And if she’s not, she should be.”
She turned her head to look at him, her nose briefly touching the line of his jaw as she leaned back, the back of her head perfectly fitting in the space between his shoulder and his face. “If you say so,” she murmured.
“You were discarded by your father when you were born. Yet you survived that island of death and traveled the world when you wanted to get answers to your questions.”
“I didn’t get any answers from him, though, did I?” She swallowed. “I got my mother killed, that’s all.”
“No, bloodrose, that’s not all. He sent your mother and you to Verdania to feel abandoned and overpowered when you died. You not only endured such a life for almost a quarter of a century, but became survival in female form. Your return, your appearance in his territory, was probably one of the biggest shocks of his life. A female with Core panom blood in Thyria? Such powerful magic was unheard of for centuries, since he assassinated his sisters and his own mother. You were the biggest threat to his rule, and I will thank Llunal and all his stars every night that he was too slow to react.”
“Or he would have tried to kill me too.”
“And hetriedto, Hope, multiple times.” His breathing was faster, his voice grave. “He displayed corpses of women who looked like you to tease you to him. He sent you bleeding ink hoping you would lose your mind and find him. You stayed strong, with your cold-blessed mind I love so much. You didn’t lose focus or patience in his attempts at getting you killed. Fuck, even immediately after meeting you, straight after killing your mother, he threw the Black Lawful Stab at you.”
“And you moured us away,” Hope recalled, a knot twisting rapidly in her stomach as she remembered how her mother’sbody fell limp on the floor. “You’ve saved me, Ciaran. Not just from death—but from the loneliness I never admitted I carried. From the battles I had to fight alone. Since the first day, you’ve been the one constant in the chaos. I don’t say this lightly—you are my salvation. My only genuine hope in a world that never gave much reason to believe in anything.”
“If I couldn’t save you, then all I’ve endured—all these centuries—would mean nothing. You are the heart of my purpose, Hope. Without you, my life is just shadow and steel.”
Ciaran caressed her cheek, kissing her softly on her forehead as his arms held her even tighter.
“The Cardinal Queen should fear you with every feather of her wings. You wished to get the Fifth Power, so you did. You wanted to avenge your mother, and your father is not alive. Now you want to destroy her? She'd better fly.”
“A Queen sitting on a throne of black feathers and bones will not fly away, Ciaran. Queens aren’t made to fly away.”
“Queens are built to fight,” he agreed, interlacing his metallic fingers with hers. “That’s what you always do.”
