She closed her hands, forming tight fists, and Took.
Without pausing, her fingers clenched and released, working the South petal of her panom mark to its limit as she Took heaps of jewels, hoards of ancient possessions, mountains of gold, and an endless scatter of weapons and gems. The valuable treasures vanished under their eyes and under their feet, disappearing from Terrha never to reappear, being Taken for good.
Hope didn’t need to look behind her to know she had Taken more than half of the valuable possessions the South had stolen from their owners for centuries. She felt it in her magic and how much of it she had used, even if she didn’t have an inner scale to tilt. She also felt it in the shaking of the ground above them, the ceiling and the walls of the cave, and in the sand from the desert raining onto them.
The world was shaking, and there was no way to know if it was a panomquake, if the desert was collapsing above them, or both. What was clear was they had to leave the cave as soon as possible, or they were going to be buried with every other treasure left.
Hope didn’t stop Taking, though. Not until something biological and dull finally appeared in front of them. The piece of heart had pieces Taken from it, as if chunks had been bitten from it. From the joy Hope felt, one would have thought she had just seen a newborn come into the world.
“Here,” Ciaran grabbed the heart with his shadows, lifting it in front of them until Hope took a crystal case from her pocket. She had Given herself the rectangular recipient the day before with this specific purpose.
Ciaran’s shadows placed the heart inside, and before Hope closed it, she grinned and whispered to it. “We’re getting closer, Cardinal Queen. You should leave my throne and my island while you’re still alive.”
The sand was now not raining butpouringon them, and the shaking ground was making all the remaining valuablescling and clatter against each other louder than a continuous thunderstorm.
Hope felt a tickle from an unknown ink waiting for permission to appear on her forearm, but she declined it. If Gabrielle was wondering what the Fifth they had done to her Petal, she would have to wait for an answer.
Her hand was on the back of Ciaran’s neck, ready to moure away from the Seizing Wind and never return. First, because she would hopefully never need to. Second, because it probably wouldn’t exist any longer.
The last thing she saw before they moured to the West House was the black crown, right before the dune fell and buried it under its sand, but by then, they were gone.
29
Lenna
Her sister and Nina had succeeded in the North, and so had Hope and Ciaran in the South. Lenna, on the other hand, couldn’t be more lost or farther from achieving either of her missions. Her only success of late, if she had to pick one, had been winning at a sassy cuddling competition against Sweet Bitch. That, and not giving the fucking fuck up.
From her many days researching, she had reached the brilliant conclusion that not in five thousand years could she have ever imagined there were so many ways to use panom powers as dark magic.
There were five things all literature considered dark arts and dark magic: causing death without using Harming, resurrecting without using Healing, creating life-binding curses without using Giving, breaking said curses without using Taking, and the creepiest one—the use of any parts belonging to Cardinals and Rulers, including blood, bones, and even a single cell.
From Lenna’s understanding, what made the Rulers important enough to class tampering with their bodies as dark is that they had once been—or currently were—intrinsically linked to a Cardinal House. Other than them, not a single book reported anyone giving a shit about using fluids or organs from any other being, panom or not. Which meant good old Jake and his hundreds of murders were very-appropriately-used, not-dark-at-all magic.
After thinking, rethinking, and some more overthinking, Lenna finally was sort of convinced that killing the former Organ Mandor—Jake and Hope’s father—in the cave in Orizane right after the Fifth Judgment didn’t involve dark magic. Technically, they had used the Black Lawful Stab and not any other power to Harm him.Technically, using a weapon on a piece of shit man was allowed, at least when it came to dark-and-non-dark magic terms. Which hopefully meant the five shared-owners of his murder—and more specifically, their fivesouls—were safe.
Because what was clear in most of the books is that performing any of the five dark magic usages ate a chunk of the soul’s panom and significantly decreased life expectancy compared to a healthy, proper-magic-user panom. But who wanted to live that many centuries, anyway? Then there were other unpleasant, quite off-putting symptoms, such as panom power inaccuracy and ineffectiveness, panom mark disappearance and self-combustion by magic exhaustion and lack of control.
Overall, the whole thing sounded as positive as a bunch of rotten feathers. Lenna, however, had assumed that there wasno other way to break the curse from the East Bird so her man could get back to normal loving capacity. If she had to get used to living with a chunkless soul, it wasn’t the end of the world. Especially if her life was going to be shorter than Fifth-knows-how-many-centuries, which had to get exhausting and boring at some point, surely.
Then, of course, there was the fact that Lenna still needed to find the part of the heart of the Bird Queen hidden in the East Petal, especially now that the North and South pieces had been found. The East House never ceased surprising Lenna with renewed wickedness and ways of Harming its guests, definitely making sure it was an absolute delight to be here. There were so many hidden places, corners, weapons, and Harming magic that it was not easy to figure where the Fifth a Queen would hide a part of her most important organ to keep it safe from unwanted hands.
With her hands full of books and the steps of her high heels echoing in the empty corridor, she turned a sharp corner to change course. The library could wait. Her answers couldn’t wait any longer. And seeing him again couldn’t either. Since that kiss—the damned kiss that had lived in her dreams and nightmares every night since—since he sent an ink so intimate Lenna was surprised the East Bird hadn’t somehow forbidden it, since she had left a handwritten letter under his door… Since then, there has been no contact at all.
She had roamed arounda lot, more than she would like to admit, even if her new scratches, bruises, and healing scabs were proof of pleasant walks around this joyful House. Because, of course, she was here to investigate and learn about the East House inch by inch, not at all because she had the stupid hope of finding him accidentally somewhere.
He had been nowhere. It was almost as if the House had sucked him in, or he had buried himself in his circular firepit of an office. The one she was now heading to.
She hadn’t dared send him an ink either, not since the last one he sent, the one now permanently in white, scar tissue on her forearm.
Jake’s words were covered by a black, mesh long-sleeve she had magically reinforced by Giving it a second layer on her forearms. He didn’t need to know how fucked her mind was or the level of desperation she had reached, thanks very much.
Right when she was getting closer to the door, praying to all non-Harming Birds and flying creatures that he was inside and not buried, she heard a noise approaching her and she crunched down, covering the books as if she cradled a baby. A metal arrow flew from the left wall, opening the skin on her cheek and setting free an array of curses from her mouth as her finger touched the neat line of blood. When she had hands free, she would Heal it. Or not. Sometimes they were so many that she didn’t bother anymore. Just another one to add to her collection. Sometimes it was hard to guess which was meaner, the East Cardinal or the East House.
The door opened in front of her, with only the outline of Jake’s body visible as he remained on the inside, the fire on the walls the only illumination in there. Her lungs wanted to shut down in a panic, but she set her focus on him, and stepped in, trying to ignore all the reactions of her body—terrified of being surrounded by so much fire again.
“I’ve never seen you so covered in my life, Brachyan,” he said from behind her when he closed the door. The flames were soabundant that she couldn’t see him properly, and what she saw was not what she had expected. His always immaculate face had dark bags under his silver eyes, his hair was a mess, but the piercing stare was the same. “What are you hiding?”
The skin on her forearm tensed, and she tightened her hand into a fist, refraining from putting it behind her back. Cardinals, could she be any more obvious? “Multiple wounds from your sweet House.”
