Page 69 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

What had she done.

What had she done, forcing her mother to come here. Who had she thought she was, confronting the Organ Mandor with nothing but her human force and the stupid blood that only could fuel vehicles? Why did she ever think such a being would be compassionate and explain himself? How had she never considered that he would kill her mother when he saw her after over twenty years?

Hope had believed that somewhere inside her father, he would remember what he had felt for her mother. That the love that had destroyed her mother so devastatingly would have been reprocicated, and that it would have affected him as well. That the fact that he discarded them instead of killing them, somehow meant that Rhei Coralt had indeed loved her mother.

In front of Hope was his love. His redemption.

Dead.

Hope let her tears flow freely, painfully, as she cried on her mother’s chest. Exactly how she used to cry when she was little. Except Aurora’s chest was cold as the cruel heart of her killer, and she would never hold Hope’s body tight again.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice cutting between devastated sobs. It didn’t even matter if her words were intelligible. Aurora would not listen to her ever again. “I never meant for this to happen.”

A shadow moved in the clearing, and Hope remembered Ciaran was here. He had taken her here. She didn’t even know where exactly she was, or if it was safe, or if that man was reliable to be around, or if the night would swallow her whole and take her to the deep pit of pain that her whole soul now was.

None of that mattered.

This woman she was crying on had been all that had ever mattered. The woman who had been with her every single day since she was born. The woman who had died internally all those years ago, but had managed to re-flourish from her damage. The woman who had taught her to be resilient. Who had taught her how to defend herself, how to fight and how to kill. Who had been her sole companion all her life. Who had loved her and helped her grow.

The woman Hope had never given up on. Who she had always fought for.

But there was nothing else to fight for.

All that remained were endless tears and pain. So much pain and so many tears. And her mother’s dead body.

43

Lenna

Lenna’s mind kept spinning around even as the floor settled under her feet. She was barely aware of Jake moving her into a black armchair, forcing her stiff body to sit. He kneeled in front of her.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft.

The fucking Organ Mandor had taken her powers away. She was not a panom. She would never be anything of worth again. She could never help Raoul, or any other innocents in this broken society. Lenna clenched her fists, ignoring the pain as her nails dug into her skin.

“Brachyan,” Jake said firmly, putting a cautious hand on her thigh.

Her golden eyes met his silver ones, and she acknowledged her surroundings at last. A luxuriously black and navy bedroom with the shape of a petal that could only be in his private chambers.

She was still in the House of the motherfucker who had taken her heirloom and her powers away. The heirloom part she would have felt relief for, were it not for the absolute emptiness and sorrow she felt at losing the biggest part of her identity that had come with it.

“I don’t want to be here,” Lenna said, swallowing her hatred and revulsion to talk as if nothing was happening. As if her entire world was not falling apart.

“You want me to take you to your chambers?” Jake asked.

Theon would probably be there, and she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone.

“I don’t want to be in his fucking House. In his city,” Lenna said. Even if the entire island of Thyria belonged to this man that she hated so much, and she could see Jake thinking precisely that too. “I just want to go home,” she whispered.

“I can take you to the North House,” Jake said. Lenna nodded, silently putting a hand on top of his. A hand with no magic on top of the hand of the most powerful heir of Thyria.

A hand on her neck. The floor disappeared from under their feet again, and Corentre was gone.

The wooden walls of her room in the North House were warmly familiar, and the wide panel windows opening to her balcony let her breathe in the much needed fresh air. Her bed, her things, her heart had been here all those years, and even the smell seemed to welcome her back home. She silently thanked the epitellia wards for allowing Jake to moure her there because of her identity.

“Don’t let this make you miserable, Brachyan,” Jake said.

“Said the most powerful panom heir of Thyria to a panomless former heir,” Lenna snorted. “Seems like a Cardinals-damned grim joke.”

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