36
Lenna
The Ruining Flame had kept its word. From the ashes of the East Cardinal’s ruined body, it had given Lenna the burned, harmed piece of the Bird Queen’s heart. The piece was blackened, cracked, still whispering with remnants of fire.
A Cardinal’s life for the heart of a Queen. The bargain was sealed. She’d take care of that piece of harmed organ later. For now, all she cared about was another heart. One that beat no longer.
“Give me a Ruler,” the House whispered through the Ruining Flame. Demanding, always demanding.
Lenna put both hands on her hips, hair sticking to her bloodied face. “Shut up and give me a second.”
She didn’t have seconds, not really, when her man was lying limp behind her.
The room was still aflame, walls breathing smoke, but she didn’t hesitate. Closing her hands to Take, everything inside vanished—tables, chairs, the stained remnants of the East Cardinal’s presence—until only a black crystal altar stood at the center.
Lenna turned back. Jake was sprawled on the ground, pale as chalk, lips already losing color. Her throat tightened, but she forced her hands steady as she slid her arms under him and dragged him to the altar. He was heavy, dead heavy, the kind of weight that wanted to break her bones, but she didn’t stop until his body lay across the crystal slab.
She stripped him without hesitation. Boots first, then the leather, the shirt, the trousers. All of it gone until he was bare under the firelight. Her Jake, her impossible, reckless man, looked like a carved statue. She swallowed hard. If she thought of him as gone, she’d shatter. And shattering wasn’t an option.
Lenna picked the broken wings of the East Cardinal from the floor, one by one, holding them against the Ruining Flame, so close the heat threatened to burn her own fingers, until—
She gasped. From the burning red feathers, a thick, dark red liquid started dripping, a product of the wings melting. She collected every single drop in a Given crystal vase, wishing the process was faster so she could move on to the next step. Eventually, the last few remnants of the East Cardinal’s wings lay in liquid form in her hands.
She stirred the mix with a crystal spoon, movements sharp, decisive. She knew she was taking an enormous risk by using dark magic, but she didn’t give a fuck, nor did she have time to waste looking for a fuck to give.
She Gave her satchel from her room, every forbidden scrap she’d taken from the East libraries spilling across the cracked tiles. Pages of dark spells, recipes scrawled in blood. Her fingers went straight to the one she needed—the resurrection chant. Her eyes skimmed the words again even though she already knew them by heart.
Dark magic had its own little list of sins. Don’t kill without Harming. Don’t raise the dead without Healing. Don’t touch life-binding curses unless you’re Giving or Taking. And the dirtiest rule of all: don’t mess with Cardinal or Ruler flesh. Blood, bones, or feathers. Not even a speck.
And what was she about to do? Cross many of those lines.
She should have cared. She didn’t.
The East Cardinal was dead. Jake could not be dead too. It was simply not a fucking option. End of.
So if she had to gamble her soul, fine. If she had to carve centuries off her life, fine. If she had to risk blowing herself up in a blaze of magic exhaustion, also fine.
Jake wasnotstaying dead.
She built the fire higher by feeding it the final five feathers of the East Cardinal’s broken wings. They curled, shrieked, and collapsed into ash, thick smoke filling the room until her lungs screamed. She didn’t care. She bent close, watching as the ashes melted into liquid, deep red and sticky, like blood boiled down to syrup.
The smell of melting Cardinal feathers was vile. Not just smoke and blood. It smelled like something sacred breaking.
Disgusting burning Bird smell, but also the most important ingredient she needed. Practical magic, thank you very much.
She stirred the mix. The liquid clung to the spoon like tar, bubbling, spitting sparks of black light.
She dipped her finger into the mixture. It burned, searing through skin to bone, but she clenched her jaw and turned back to Jake.
Her first stroke dragged across his chest, thick red on white skin. The ink hissed faintly, sinking into his flesh as though it had always belonged there. She wrote in the shapes she had memorized—the twisted sigils that had made her skin crawl when she first saw them. Symbols for life, for return, for binding. Every symbol was a detailed, precise variation of the original four-petal panom mark. One trace gone wrong, and she would fuck the whole thing up.
Her hand shook, but she did not stop. Line after line across his chest, his arms, his ribs.
The more she drew, the more the molten-wing ink burned. She felt it digging into her own veins, too, as if the spell demanded her blood as well. She kept going.
Her lips shaped the chant before she realized she was speaking, her voice hoarse, rising with every line.
“Feathers to blood, in fire they burn. From death’s cold grasp, to life return.”
