Page 50 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

“You are one of the key players in the discarding game of this society. The game your daddy is a master at,” she explained. “Don’t think for a minute that I forget who am I talking to and all the shit you do. How you ruin people’s lives for no reason.”

Jake held her stare. “Someone needs to discard the lower beings, so the lands keep their balance. So that our islands don’t sink in the seas.”

Lenna made a mental note of the plural. He didn’t consider his island just Thyria, if there was more than one he felt possessive about.

“I thought you were all about pushing boundaries and testing limits,” Lenna replied. As far as she was concerned, there was no difference between him pushing her to make her own harmony scale uneven, and him not discarding people to make the harmonic balance of the land uneven. Her raising anger showed in her palms, pressing harder against her breasts.

Jake swallowed, an emotion Lenna couldn’t identify crossing his eyes swiftly. He put his finger back on her skin, tracing the circle inside her panom mark. Lenna inhaled, her chin lifting at the touch.

“History says that the inner circle of a panom mark would brighten only for those who gained the Fifth Power,” Jake explained. “As I told you, there is no record of anyone alive with it. No matter how many times I trace it on you, it will not brighten up.”

He opened his hand and Gave the missing part of shirt back to Lenna. She finally changed position and crossed her arms, her lips tight in a thin line.

“I love it, when you are angry,” Jake said, his eyes darkening. “You want to have a reason to hate me. To resist the need of having my cock inside you. But I told you once, sweet fire, and I will say it again: you will beg for it. Sooner or later, you will beg for me.”

“Take a seat and get comfy,” she spat. But Lenna’s core tightened as her eyes narrowed.

Jake continued, the side of his lips curling upwards, “But if you want to hate me for having “no morals”, I will tell you a little secret. You and I, Brachyan, will never be together. Heirs of the Houses can’t be together. Not without causing a panomquake that will break Thyria in half. So all this teasing,” he grabbed her breasts, squeezing them as Lenna gasped, “is because I like to play with fire. And when you finally beg me to fuck you, sweet fire, I will refuse.”

30

Hope

Aurora brought a pile of clean courtrade-black clothes to Hope and sat next to her on the crates of the cellholt.

“Thank you.”

Aurora held Hope’s hand tightly in between hers. “I don’t think I tell you enough times how proud I am to be your mother and how much I love you.”

“I love you too, mother.”

“Are you nervous for what you will find in Thyria?” Hope didn’t need her to mention her father. Both of them knew that was what she wanted to find in Thyria.

“I am. Nervous, excited, curious and impatient. Thank you for coming with us. I know you said you wanted to, but you didn’t have to. I appreciate not being alone in such an important moment of my life.”

Aurora smiled with all the kindness and love that a heart could bear. “You didn’t leave me alone when I wanted to end my life in this world. You were little, and yet you didn’t leave my side. You didn’t stop insisting I ate. You looked after me when I couldn’t look after either of us. You are brave, my dear Hope. You have always been.”

Aridian passed by and must have overheard the last few sentences as he started and grinned at Hope. “If you’re so brave, come throw some of your precious daggers against me.”

It was her turn again, and the courtrades were making too much noise. They cheered Hope while she got ready to throw her blade across the cellholt again, aiming at the empty crates on the opposite side. She preferred this annoyingly loud excitement to the moaning rounds of how hungry everyone was and the useless conversations about what they’d love to eat.

“Difficult to guess who you’d like to win,” Aridian snapped, an incredulous look on his face as he played with his next blade. “I thought us courtrades had a real family bond.”

“Don’t be a baby, Ari,” Jessica laughed. Nina was also laughing next to her. Jessica added, “The bond is there, but this woman is wiping your ass with her blades. How much longer will it take?”

“Ready to go!” shouted the courtrade who just finished piling the crates, adding some extra support from behind to avoid them crashing against the back wall of the cellholt.

Hope’s last throw not only reached the middle of the cross Aridian and she were aiming at, but made all the crates fall on top of each other. Which lead to Marcus shouting that they would end up playing in the fucking sea if they broke the cellholt with this dumb game.

But Hope knew Marcus was looking at this dumb game from the cabin that he had barely left during these four weeks it had taken them to reach Thyria. She certainly did not want to break anything, not when they were less than two days away from reaching the tunneled exit from the vessels that would take them to the streets in Corentre.

Thyria. Where Hope would finally meet the male that gave her panom blood and find the answers she needed. Where Nina would finally be closer to reuniting with her brother. Where Aurora, Hope remembered with sudden angst in her chest, would have to face the beings she led all those years ago as the Roix Reigner. But more importantly, her mother would have to face the male she had fallen in love with. The one who broke her heart, mind and soul in such small pieces that took years to put them back together. The one who discarded her and their newborn child because they were inconvenient.

Hope knew deep down that nothing was going to stop her. She was a survivor. She was still alive after over two decades of fighting against all the odds. Her determination and perseverance, her will to achieve whichever goal she set her mind to, was proof that she didn’t need anybody or anything to get what she wanted.

In the cellholt, the courtrades stopped cheering, letting Hope focus as she lifted her blade next to her face. But she didn’t need to focus. She already knew precisely what she was aiming for.

With the right amount of strength to rip the hypothetical veil off the truths she was chasing and break the crate but not destroy the cellholt, Hope threw her blade.

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