“Who the actual fuck do you think you are?” Lenna spat instead, her voice ragged.
The Queen tilted her head, black wings flexing wider. “The Queen of Cardinals.”
Her voice dripped with mockery.
“Can a Queen reign without her crown?” Hope asked. Her voice rang sharp, clean, slicing the air like tempered steel.
The Queen’s nostrils flared. “My crown was Taken.” The word hissed out like poison.
“Can a Queen live without a whole heart?” Hope asked again, her tone unyielding.
A cruel smile curved the Queen’s lips. “Am I not living proof?” She lifted her chin, feathers rustling with her breath. “You and your questions will not get you far, Hope Nevada. My command rules this land.”
Hope stepped closer, the Lawful Stabs flashing red and black at her sides. “A command to the sangins to kill every citizen alive in this nation? A command to eliminate life from an island that thrives from it? Is that what a Queen should strive for?”
“You do not tell me what I should or should not do,” the Queen snapped. Her voice shook the crystal dome above. “I would rather reign on an island of the dead than on an island of rebels.”
Lenna’s heart pounded. Her nails cut into her palms. She could feel Ayla’s absence like an open wound. The absence of so many innocents who no longer lived. Because ofher.
“Thyria deserves better than you as its Queen,” Hope said, her voice steady as stone.
“It deservesyou?” The Queen laughed, the sound sharp, echoing through the Temple like breaking glass. “Are you the better option?”
“Thyria deserves to live,” Hope said. Her voice dropped, steel-cold, all trace of a smile gone.
The Queen’s wings spread fully, black eclipsing all crystal light. “My options are clear and nonnegotiable. It is your time to choose, Hope Nevada. Your Fate, and your future. Bow—” Her voice cracked like a whip. “—or die.”
The silence that followed burned.
Hope unsheathed the Red and Black Lawful Stabs in one fluid motion. The crystal blades caught the dim light, crimson and onyx gleaming like blood and shadow. She lifted her chin, smiling without warmth.
Her voice sliced through the silence.
“I was never meant to bow.”
45
Hope
The words had barely left her mouth when the air split. A shriek pierced through the Cardinals’ Temple dome, rattling the crystal above their heads.
Four Cardinal goddesses in female form burst through the light, their wings slicing across the sky, their feathers blazing like crimson storms. They landed with a thunder, shaking the Temple, the ground, Thyria itself.
“Sisters,” the Core Cardinal called, her voice fierce, unyielding.
The Temple was full of an oppressive, suffocating presence. Even the Queen paused, her lips curling at the sight of her four younger sisters.
The North Cardinal moved first. She wore a white diadem in her red hair and a familiar green necklace that sent shivers up Hope’s spine. It felt like a lifetime ago when she had seen Ayla’s eyes in the Fifth Judgment for the last time.
The Northern goddess bent low, kneeling by Ayla and Nina’s lifeless bodies, gently closing their eyelids. Her wings spread wide, shielding them from view, as if her feathers could cover death itself.
Both women were dead.Dead.
Hope swallowed bile. It was no easy feat to contain the painful grief in the tightest knot inside her chest, not allowing it to overtake her composure. Not yet. One distraction, one wrong movement, one wrong thought, and the Queen would take advantage.
The West Cardinal crossed to Ciaran. He did not move from his stance by Hope, his firm hand on the small of her back. The Cardinal’s hand brushed his shoulder, steadying him, though her eyes never left the Queen.
The Core Cardinal strode forward, taking her place at Hope’s other side. Her red feathers brushed Hope’s arm, her presence like a second heartbeat inside her ribs.
