Page 57 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Everyone stilled, Marcus walking to the back of the pack, the spot closer to the bigger vessel they had just moved away from. He extended his arms, and shadows surrounded them. Thick, black shadows covering all the vessel. Vanishing it in darkness, as if it simply wasn’t there.

Hope felt a warm hand on her elbow and knew her mother was there. Her silent way of saying that she had her back. Nina was on her other side. And her blades were already on her hands, ready to attack. If the approaching cellholt didn’t run over them first. She didn’t know if Marcus’ shadows were only thick in shade or also in shape, if they could stop a fast cellholt.

The cellholt passed through the circular opening, connecting both vessels at a sharp speed. From the cellholt, the roixers would have seen a dark circle where an opening to another blue-tinged vessel should have been. But if the roixers hadn’t been looking at the living map on the cabin at that moment… If the roixers hadn’t been looking at the glass side of the vehicle at that moment… Perhaps they could stand a chance.

The noise of the cellholt kept moving farther away, disappearing into nothingness with each second. Marcus took his shadows away, his eyes as severe as one could imagine.

The risk that the roixers had seen the abnormality in the vessels was too great. They could have perfectly seen it and not raised the alarm on purpose, to keep them convinced no one knew where they were. Right at this moment, other cellholts could be heading their way to this precise vessel. They could be organizing a trap based on their current location.

It was paramount that they moved. Fast.

“You have thirty seconds to get your shit together,” Marcus said, his serious voice cutting the surrounding air. “Because then we run, and we don’t stop until we climb that fucking tunnel and get the fuck out of this net.”

35

Lenna

Lenna woke up with a gasp. She did not know how long she had been on her chest. Only that her body was freezing as the stone she was laying upon. She tried to lift her head to see where the Fifth she was, but a stinging pain on her back stopped her from doing so. She groaned as the memories returned to her.

The fucking Organ Mandor had put her here, in this subterranean cell. He had left her half dead. With only five strikes of the red Lawful Stab. Lenna was utterly disappointed at her reaction. At not being able to endure the strikes with a smile that would have pissed him off even more. Even if that might have been counterproductive.

All she had managed was to keep from begging Rhei Coralt to stop. Because she knew it would make no difference. That had been all her self-control. But the rest? Screaming her lungs off after each hit, crying her eyes out and her vision blurring from so many tears… She had been no better than the crying baby in the throne room. She thought she was a strong woman, but this was proof that she wasn’t. She was fucking weak and breakable. And she hated herself so much for it.

And because she had been such a pitiful show, Lenna knew the fucking idiot had enjoyed every single moment of it. Maybe even her own father had enjoyed it. Or her sister.

Lenna knew who hadn’t enjoyed it. Her eyes stung, remembering how Ciaran had offered to bear the pain in her place. At how her friend would bear twenty-three strikes like hers. How was he even going to survive that? She moved an arm and pinched the upper part of her nose strongly, painfully. To keep those tears from falling. She wouldn’t cry again.

Had Ciaran already received his punishment? Had Cobrian, his father? Had they gone somewhere safe afterwards, to recover? She doubted they would have been able to moure themselves out in such a state. But with Ciaran, it was always difficult to know what he could or couldn’t do.

Silver eyes full of violence crossed her mind. She couldn’t push any longer, not thinking about him. About what Jake had done, challenging his own father in front of the panom society. About what that would mean for the political stability of the Houses, of the future of the Organ House. Not that she gave a shit about any of that. They could all drown in the Radel Sea after Thyria collapsed, for all she cared.

No. That wasn’t true.

Because if Thyria collapsed, she might not see the challenge in those silver eyes again. She might not hear his voice, ordering her to not give any satisfaction to his father. Even if she had fucking done exactly that. Jake had told her she was stronger than this. Did he truly believe his own lie? Had he not seen what a pathetic being she was?

He had tried to protect her.

Lenna felt a deep pain in her chest, too difficult to identify if it was caused by what that might mean, or because of her realizing she would have indeed benefited from protection. She, who had always refused to accept any aid, especially from a male. She, who had always believed she was an empowered, independent woman that needed no one on a sentimental level. She, who had fucked and played with every being she wanted to over the years, always consciously avoiding any serious feelings growing and definitely any long-term commitment.

Here she fucking was, hoping with a bigger part of her soul than she would ever admit that Jake Coralt was as fine as he could be. That whatever number of strikes Jake had endured because he’d tried to stop her pain wouldn’t have broken him. That, unlike her, he had managed to not give his father the satisfaction of breaking him.

The room started spinning around her, blurring. Her throat needed water. Her back needed her skin sewn together. Her pain needed immediate relief. Her mind needed rest. She needed sleep. Sleep.

A loud thump crashed against the floor inside the cell. She turned her neck as much as she could, bitting her lips at the pain this caused. Amongst the dark specks and the blurriness of her vision, she could see a body. A chest barely raising with agonizing, slow breaths.

Lenna held her breath in as she tried to spin her body around herself on the floor, containing her tears at the pain in her sliced back and her breasts against the rough stone underneath as she pushed herself. She recognized the ink in those arms. She knew that black hair.

That stillness, though. That was new. And the overwhelming copper smell of his blood was new, too. If Rhei had just finished with him, Lenna guessed she hadn’t been in the cell for that long. She hoped she hadn’t.

Lenna got as close to him as her body could without collapsing again. Which was close enough to touch his bare shoulder with her stretched arm.

Her touch caused a sharp inhale, as if it had awoken something in him. The room was spinning again, so Lenna laid her face on the floor, her eyes fixed on the back of his head, some wet strands of her red hair across her line of sight. Slowly, Jake turned his head towards her, his neck muscles presumably also giving up as he laid his head like hers, his eyes still closed.

He was handsome, Lenna realized. This man who had tried to protect her was handsome. As much as he was brave.

Jake opened his silver eyes sluggishly, as if his eyelids weighed a ton. Lenna wished her head would focus and the world would stop spinning so she could fixate on them. Maybe the Cardinals heard her, for once. For a change.

The corner of his lips moved with effort, curling upwards. A handsome, brave man, half-dead and smiling, he was. Lenna could only blink at him.

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