“Mother,” Ayla called, and Veronica looked at her daughter’s metal eyes. “Don’t spill another drop of blood for them.”
“Go do whatever you need to do,” Veronica Brachyan demanded, standing straight, heading towards a panom who was fighting two sangins at once and being debilitated.
The five of them ran with Jake in the lead, using shortcuts and diverse routes, ensuring safety until they forced their way to—
“The throne room,” Lenna gasped, when the doors groaned open in front of them, revealing nothingness. The doors slammed behind them when they closed, leaving all noise from the fights outside.
Hope inhaled sharply, her firm steps echoing in a completely empty room, as she approached the throne.
Made of black feathers and bones, the last time she had seen this throne, her father had sat on it. The last time she had been in this room, her father had killed her mother, and she didn’t stop it. The Black and Red Lawful Stabs throbbed at her waist, begging,demanding, to be claimed.
There was no Queen here.
Hope stood in front of her throne. Her biological hand caressed it, analyzing, assessing, as she reconfirmed there was no one sitting in it, not even in invisible form.
The QueenknewHope was here. Her Cardinal-red spark-filled orbs were all she needed to know it was truly her and not a false bait.
Hope turned around, locking her eyes with Ciaran, Jake, Lenna, and then her heart skipped a beat.
“Where is Ayla?” she gasped, clenching her fist around the hilt of a Stab, fearing she already knew the answer.
Lenna’s hand went to her mouth, eyebrows shot to the roof as she opened the doors and ran back to the corridor, calling her sister, as her golden sparks left her hands, sending Ayla an ink desperate message.
Panic rose like fire. Jake dragged a hand through his hair, Ciaran’s shadows clenched tight. Hope’s pulse hammered, dread sinking into her ribs. Hope already knew Ayla wouldn’t answer the ink.
Like a sudden hit, her forearm hurt.
Fresh ink crawled across her skin, black, sharp, and velvet, words that carried a voice she already hated in her bones.
43
Ayla
The black ink in Ayla’s hand had been thrumming with its own beat since Hope moured her into the Organ House. When she felt the same ink spreading across the floor in the hatching sangin corridor, panic flared in her chest. It touched her clothes, not her skin. She forced herself back onto her feet, forced focus into her mind.
She fought the beasts in the North gate trap, she saved her mother from a roixer’s spear, she attacked sangins and roixers alike as she ran. Her thoughts were her own. Her decisions were her own. Her goals were her own.
Until they weren’t.
Until her legs carried her down an empty corridor she hadn’t chosen. She couldn’t control the direction of her legs. Her footsteps were rhythmic. Her frantic thoughts were not. She couldn’t see the ink on her hand, but she could feel it—threading through her, commanding, whispering.
She was the Cardinal Queen’s puppet.
Crystal doors opened wide before her, and she stepped into a room she knew. She had stood here with Lenna during their Fifth Ceremony. She had donated her South petal to Lenna here, so her twin could wield her panom magic again.
The Cardinals’ Temple felt so very different now. She smelled magic stronger than any; she felt power beyond measure in every pore. Goosebumps broke across her skin like frost.
Her steps carried her onward at a ceremonial pace, slow and steady. Breath caught in her lungs, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t control her legs approaching the being in the middle of the Temple, right under the crystal dome that crowned the center of the Core of Thyria.
“The true magic of control lies in its silence,” the Cardinal Queen greeted, voice reeking of venom. Ayla could feel her grin, her cold blood, her folded wings resting against her spine, unhurried. Why would she need them? Ayla was no threat.
To Ayla’s shock, she heard it—the faint, faltering beat of the Queen’s heart. Weak, shallow. A fifth of a heart still tethered to life.
“I have good news for you, Ayla Brachyan, Ruler of the North,” the Queen said, savoring her name like a feast.
Ayla clenched her jaw. Her voice was still her own. Her breath was still her own. Nothing else.
“Then share your news,” she muttered, mastering steadiness she struggled to find.
