Her shadow warrior.
She focused on the scent of night and pines around her, imagining she was in his arms. He had been her safety and protection, her love, her life.
Hope fell forward into the dirt, breath slipping from her chest, the sound of the sangins closing in fading into nothing but silence.
She died on her knees, unbroken, her last breath carrying the promise that the Cardinal Queen’s reign would end.
34
Lenna
The Ruining Flame lived here, in the East Ruler’s office—if flame could be said to live. It stretched from floor to ceiling, an eternal pyre that circled the room, licking at the edges of the ceiling with eager tongues. It wasn’t a hearth; it wasn’t warmth. It was a prison of fire, a cage of bargaining heat.
Lenna swallowed hard, her throat as dry as if ash lived inside it. Memories clawed up her skin—skin that had once blistered, cracked, and scarred under fire. She had known flames before. She had screamed under them. She had thought they would swallow her whole. And yet here she stood, her spine refusing to bend to fear. She had never been a coward.
Her heart thundered as she stepped closer. Sparks leapt free, dancing on the air, and when one landed in her hair, she slapped it down with a hiss. The scent of singed strands filled her nose. She forced herself not to flinch again, not to run.
Her voice was steadier than she felt when she spoke.
“You have something I want.”
The Ruining Flame stirred as if it had heard, though its roar did not change. Still, Lenna felt the vibration in her bones, an acknowledgment.
A question licked across her mind like a heatwave: “Is a heart that beats no longer a heart worth burning for?”
Her lips twisted. “Perhaps.” She began pacing in a circle, eyes fixed on the shifting fire. Her skin prickled with each step, sweat breaking across her temples. “You wanted me to learn about your wicked trades and your harming desires, East House. Now tell me—what is it you so desperately want?”
The flames brightened, flaring like a breath sucked in. The voice that followed was not sound but pressure, carried in the crackle of fire.
“The broken corpse of Harming abomination.”
Lenna’s eyes narrowed to slits. Fuck. Her stomach dropped like a stone. Could the House even exist without its original creator alive? She wet her lips, a bitter laugh threatening to escape.
“You want the Cardinal who created you dead.”
The fire hissed in approval. “The wretched villain has lived too long.”
It was almost funny. Almost. The Harming House wanted to Harm the Harming Cardinal. If irony had a throne, it would sit right here in this room.
Her voice was steel when she asked, “If I give you her wings, will you give me the heart of the Queen?”
Behind the flames, something solid emerged—something the fire did not consume but cradled like a lover. A chunk of dark, burned flesh, blackened at the edges, glowing faintly with a deep pulse that was not light but memory.
“Untouched and safe, just as Her Majesty wanted me to keep it.”
Her throat tightened. That piece of the Queen’s heart was what Hope and Ciaran needed to beat the Queen, for Thyrian society to have a better future. Not that she needed any more motivation to kill a Cardinal. She didn’t let herself hesitate. “Then it’s a deal.”
The fire screamed. And then the world shifted.
The East Cardinal appeared before her, as sudden and absolute as if she had always been standing there. Fuck her life, Lenna had not been expecting the House to claim its dueright there and then.
The Cardinal’s wings unfurled, vast and gleaming, every feather as sharp as a blade. Her red eyes burned with the weight of ages, cruel and cold. Her lips curved into something that was not quite a smile, revealing blood-stained teeth. The innumerable white scars filling every inch of the skin on her face were the purest depiction of Harming.
“You dare,” the Cardinal hissed, her voice low enough to scrape bone, “to trifle with trades you cannot begin to understand? Do you not think I know what you plan? Do you not think I can see what happens in my House?” Her wings flexed, crimson feathers crackling with embers. “You scratch through books like a starving rat, you gnaw at the edges of magics that would hollow you out, and still you dream of undoing me. One more step, one more attempt to twist what I have decreed, and I will tear your heart from your chest and feed it to the Ruining Flame myself.”
Out of nowhere, the biggest panomquake she had ever experienced shook the ground, throwing Lenna to the floor; too close to the Ruining Flame, she smelled her own skin about to be roasted. Right when she stood again, Jake entered.
His eyes widened, pupils contracting as they landed on the Cardinal, then on her.
