“Do the roots extend all the way underneath the North House?”
“I believe so, yes. However, the importance was not only on the tree that grew, but on this ground, rich enough to let it develop and thrive, to welcome a life within it that would give a home to many others.” Ayla kneeled down, her hand feeling the rich soil underneath her skin. “The Granting Ground is the most sacred place in the North. It’s the center of life and the origin of the Giving magic, and my fear is the Cardinal Queen wants us to destroy it.”
Nina gasped, her voice suddenly a tone higher. “But it surely cannot be destroyed without destroying the North House.”
“The North Cardinal was one of the five goddesses who cursed the Cardinal Queen and locked her away for two hundred fiftyyears. I doubt the Queen is worried about offending her feelings and attacking her home. However, she hid a piece of heart without destroying the Granting Ground, the first yew tree, or the North House, indicating there must be a way to retrieve it. Please help me inspect every inch here and let me know if you find anything unusual.”
Nature was unusually perfect in the Granting Ground, so it didn’t take Nina long to spot an oddity.
“This root,” she claimed from a few feet away from Ayla, “has been modified.” When Ayla met her, Nina guided Ayla’s fingertips to an uneven surface of a side root. It indeed felt different, as if something was underneath and it had been altered to regain its previous resemblance. Ayla traced the path of this root, damning the Cardinal Queen in her mind, because this root led—
“Straight to the door,” Nina confirmed.
“She wants the heart left alone, or whoever gets it to be locked in here forever. If that door vanishes, there is no other way in or out of the Granting Ground.”
“Then why didn’t she destroy the door?”
Ayla tapped her finger on her chin. “Perhaps so she could recover her heart in the future, if she needed to. Which means—”
“There is a way to get it and still get out.” She could feel the smile on Nina’s face.
The more she felt the root, the more convinced Ayla was that the piece of heart was inside the root itself, rather than buried under or around it. She considered different options, but none were doable.
She had lost her Taking power when she had donated her South Petal to Lenna so she could be a panom again, so she could not just Take the piece of heart or the part of the root. She could Give the ground a shake to make the root reach the surface and then Give herself a dagger to open it up, but she would risk thewhole House falling, since the walls of the very House were built on these roots. The back of her mind kept suggesting to use a power she hadn’t yet used, and she couldn’t help but imagine how many things could go wrong if she used the Fifth Power for the first time precisely here.
Still, there didn’t seem to be any other option.
“I’ve not used the Fifth before, but my magic tells me it’s destructive and powerful. I need only the tiniest drop.” Ayla placed the tip of her finger over the spot and breathed in deeply. “Cardinals have mercy and don’t let me break my House.”
Visualizing the core of her silver panom mark on her ribs, she carefully released the smallest part of the Fifth she could, aiming it at the root as she prayed the impact was enough and not too much. The effect was immediate.
The sound of wood breaking and cracking as the root opened up under her hand grew louder and louder, and what started as a fissure soon started to become bigger and bigger, the root splitting farther and farther as the Granting Ground shook under them.
Ayla’s hand dove quickly into the core root. When she was wrist down, she finally palpated a soft, wet mass of organ and grabbed it. It was smaller than she had thought, not even filling her palm.
The moment her skin touched the organ and felt something wet trailing inside her veins, she realized how big a mistake she had made. She snapped her hand and the heart out of the root, but it was too late. She felt ink sucking her blood, blackness trailing up her veins from her palm up her wrist, forearm, elbow—her mind almost froze from panic. Every vein in her circulatory system led directly to her heart, and when black ink reached that—
“Put it away, Ayla,” Nina rushed her. “Lock it away before it kills you.”
The cracking sound of roots ceased, and the ground stopped shaking as Ayla stood up, and it didn’t matter she was the one shaking then. With her spare hand, she Gave a small, silver metal bag and locked the cut organ inside, tying it under her shirt across her chest, sitting on the opposite side of her panom mark. Only her magic or her permission could open that bag, and she wasn’t planning on letting go of it for a second. Not even in her sleep.
When the organ wasn’t touching her bare skin, the black ink stopped spreading up her body. She didn’t need her sight to feel the new trail of black veins up her arm. She didn’t doubt the ink of the Cardinal Queen wouldn’t vanish, as it hadn’t vanished from Nina’s hair. The question was whether Ayla was now also somehow linked to the Queen.
Loud cracks in the walls that confined the Granting Ground brought her back to another priority that needed to be taken care of. She Gave silver sparks to every fissure and crack, making her magic liquify and fill every gap before allowing it to solidify.
With a hand over the metallic bag, Ayla smiled at Nina with the most pride she had felt in a long time, and said, “We did it, little dove.”
Her arm being touched by blackness was a small price to pay for a slice of the heart of a Queen of Cardinals.
The heat on Nina’s cheeks warmed her soul in a way difficult to describe.
Nina interlaced her fingers with Ayla’s black-inked hand, pressing them together, and immediately, Ayla felt less infected and infested by something unworthy and foul.
“We did it, braveheart,” Nina replied, placing a gentle kiss on Ayla’s cheek that felt too special to be real.
When her heart recovered, Ayla sent silver ink to Lenna, Hope, Ciaran, Indianna, and Stevian.
Before Ayla closed the hidden door behind Nina and her, she heard wings flapping, flying away from the nest at the top of the yew tree. How rude of the North Cardinal not to say hi to the new Ruler of her House.
