Hope’s father had once said the daggers only obeyed the Organ Mandor of Thyria. Yet the blades did not fight Lenna. They thrummed in her grip, hot and hungry, almost eager. Using them burned her veins with pain, but she did not care. She was rage incarnate, dressed in hatred and broken feathers.
With the red crystal dagger, she tore the second wing away. With the Black Lawful Stab, she plunged into the East Cardinal’s heart.
The goddess screamed, a sound that shattered glass and bone alike. The Ruining Flame roared, swallowing her whole, devouring her body until nothing remained but ash. Ash and two red, broken wings lying limp on the stone floor.
Silence fell.
A panomquake thundered through the ground, shuddering the walls. Lenna staggered, clutching the Lawful Stabs. When she turned, Jake was looking at her—reallylookingat her. That was love in his eyes, raw and unguarded.
“My sweet, burning fire. My Lenna. My love.”The words poured into her mind.
Her heart stuttered.
And then Jake bled out.
The pool beneath him widened. His chest rose, fell—and stilled.
35
Ciaran
The crystal table cracked straight down the center, a clean break that split it into two jagged halves. The floor lurched underfoot, lines fracturing outward like veins of glass. The shelves lining the West House’s war chamber emptied in a crash, jars and scrolls shattering in a single unified tremor.
Panomquake.
Ciaran’s chair skidded back as he surged to his feet, his heart a wild hammer in his ribs. His father was shouting—something about the stability of the wards, the records, the House foundation—but none of it reached him.
Because there was only one person alive who could shake Thyria like this.
Hope.
The word ripped through him with the speed of lightning, raw and unequivocal.
His shadows snapped out, curling wild and sharp around his arms, answering the terror roaring through his veins. He didn’t wait for permission, didn’t give his father another glance. Henight-walked, slipping into the silk of shadow, faster than his pounding feet could have carried him.
The gardens blurred past. The pines of the West forest swallowed him whole.
He was running blind, hunting her, every nerve in his body reaching for the tether he had left with her—his shadow curled soft around her ankle, his presence always waiting, always watching.
But it wasn’t there.
The weight was gone.
The bond was gone.
He pushed harder, shadows scraping the ground with every step, until he was flying, the forest bending to his will as he tore through it. Her scent should have been clear—the sea wind, the salt on sun-warmed skin—but instead it was faint, opaque, as if distance itself had dulled it.
And then, an incoming ink cut through him. Lenna’s words, trembling, frantic:
Hope is not answering.
He knew already. He had been screaming through his inks, clawing for her, and all he had met was silence. His shadows twined around his throat, restless, raging.
He leapt over fallen pines, debris scattered across the forest floor. The woods were wrecked, entire trunks splintered, roots torn up, the earth ripped apart as if a god had struck the land.
Then he heard them.
The sangins.
