Page 42 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

The squeaky noise of the door to the restroom had been the first reason. Because one would have expected these official vehicles to have some regular servicing and some oil onboard, but they didn’t. The cracks on the glass panel at the back of the cellholt and the splinters a courtrade got using a side table were additional proof.

The second time, a sleeping courtrade had kicked her, his feet too close to her head despite her knees being bent in a failed attempt at squeezing into the small space within her blanket by the wall of the cellholt.

If Hope had ever found her learned reflexes to be unhelpful and absolutely excessive, it had been these past two weeks, since their departure. Being very aware of her surroundings and unconsciously looking out for minimal noises that posed a danger to life, even when she was asleep, was only giving her constant headaches because of her self-inflicted sleep deprivation. Without mentioning the constant background noise of the moving cellholt.

She wished her body learned to acknowledge the shaking of the cellholt as part of the norm. And that she would not keep waking up every single time. Especially when it happened often. Usually when Marcus pushed them from vessel to vessel. Or when a burst of panom power hit the vessel they were in. Which also happened very regularly, as the outbursts of panom magic stabilizing the lands above had been the main purpose of the creation of the vessels.

Marcus had pre-warned Hope that the key to this plan working was her blood. Every five days, the cellholts needed panom blood to fuel them for another five days. His hypothesis was that her blood wouldn’t last five whole days because she hadn’t had her Fifth Ceremony and, technically, she wasn’t a full panom yet. His calculations, apparently with a margin of error included, concluded in his request for some drops of her blood every three days to ensure the structure of the cellholt had enough energy to function. And so far, it had worked. The aching scab on her palm reminded her. It was not healing fast enough by the time she had to cut it open again. And it had been a conscious choice to reopen the same spot to bleed, rather than have multiple injuries that could impair her further.

Now and then, the living map at the front of the cellholt showed they were approaching a blood station, and Marcus would then push some vessels around in order for them to avoid it. The blood stations were heavily monitored by roixers. It was where cellholts stopped to replenish power and supplies when needed. And therefore, where they wanted to be very far from, in order to avoid being noticed. Especially when their cellholt had no roof after the courtrades had blown it out to infiltrate it. And there wasn’t a single roixer inside. The closest to a roixer were the red uniforms they had kept from the bodies they killed under Verdania, in case they needed them when they reached Thyria.

Hope tried to go back to sleep while inhaling and exhaling deeply, and covering her eyes with the back of her hand. For the fourth time.

Light penetrated through her eyelids, interrupting her dreams of pines, shadows and night. Not blood-fuelled light like the one the orbs of the cellholt produced but... Hope slightly opened her eyes as she stood up, looking to where the roof of the cellholt should have been, but only the ceiling of the vessel they were traveling in was visible.

There it was. The sunlight coming through the water above the vessel.

Aridian yawned on the blanket a couple of spaces from her, shouting at Marcus and earning a few grunts from courtrades who were still asleep, “What's our depth, captain?”

“Minimum level,” Marcus replied from the other side. “We are 25 feet underneath. Get your lazy ass over here if you want to admire the most sunshine you will see in a while.”

For that was the Radel Sea's surface on top of them. And those dark masses blocking the light intermittently looked like—

“What are those platforms for?” Hope asked Marcus when she reached where him, Aurora and now Aridian stood.

“That, you can ask your father when you see him,” he said, lowering his voice. Hope was silently grateful for him not shouting her bloodline through the roofs. Or lack of roofs.

Another unanswered question to add to the list, then. And the least of her priorities. She was about to leave them alone and go look for Nina when Marcus added, “My guess is they are experiment sites. But Llunal guide me if I wanted to know what they do over there.”

Aurora was looking at the floor, swallowing, as she frowned. Hope knew that expression too well, so she asked, half expecting an excuse or a dismissal, “You know what it’s about, don’t you?”

Aurora hesitated, not taking her eyes from the floor, then said, “As the Roix Reigner, I was asked a handful of times to… verify the amount of brute force needed against certain creatures.” It was a visible struggle to talk about that past, as if a part of her mind had done a willing effort to forget it.

Aridian halted, turning to her. “Who wanted to verify that?”

Aurora continued, lifting her gaze to Hope, “Both petitions came from roixers based outside of Thyria.”

Hope could read the palpable worry on her mother’s face. Could have even recognized a hint of fear there. So she asked, “The brute force needed against what creatures, mother?”

“Sea creatures,” Aurora whispered. As if realizing the big fuckup omitting this bit of information had been.

“Llunal shade us all,” Aridian said, tracing a semicircle on his chest as he closed his eyes.

And maybe Llunal, the faceless god of shadows and darkness, was indeed listening. Because a moving, appallingly enormous shadow surrounded the whole vessel they were traveling in, spiraling around it as if it wanted to squish it. Or them.

“You fucking son of a bitch with some dark sense of humor!” Marcus shouted.

Echoing his thoughts, Aridian spat, “Bastards, these gods are. Fucking bastards.” Hope knew it was not something personal, but the use of that word somehow hurt.

The creature around them was closing in, and those were black scales now surrounding them. Each one was big as a fist. And precisely in Hope’s fists, she was holding her longest and sharpest blades. Not that they would help much if the thing snapped the vessel in half, leaving them to drown.

“No one do anything stupid,” Marcus’ voice resonated in the still moving cellholt.

Hope found Nina’s white hair in the middle of the group of courtrades she had been talking to. Their eyes met and Nina nodded, walking towards the front cabin where they were. Marcus was fastly zooming in and out the living map, his quick and precise movements not faltering.

Aurora said firmly, “The orbs of the cellholt are giving our location away.”

Marcus extended his arms, darkness spreading from him into each light source. “Not anymore,” he said. Hope heard Nina’s gasp of surprise next to her and put a hand on her arm. The only visible thing were the blue lines representing the never-ending vessels on the living map, interconnecting as always.

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