Page 73 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

The index finger of his metallic hand touched the middle of the reopened wound, and a shiver went down her spine, making her close her eyes. Where pain should have been, there were many things but that.

When Hope opened her eyes, Ciaran was staring at her, his eyes slightly glazed as if he too had felt something similar. Hope didn’t want to think about what the Cardinals had that something exactly been.

“Are you happy for me to continue?” Ciaran asked.

Hope didn’t have a clue about what he was doing, only that she wanted it to be over as soon as possible before her knees buckled, and that she needed answers to her question. Perhaps she also wished to feel that intensity again. So she swallowed and nodded.

Ciaran didn’t look at her hand again, as if he had already memorized the precise location, length, and depth of her wound. His blue eyes seemed to look inside Hope’s soul through her pupils as his metallic index traced the exact shape again. Hope was expecting the powerful sensation this time, and managed to keep her eyes mostly open even as the skin on every single part of her body seemed to tense at his touch. Every single part of her had tensed.

And again, it wasn’t because of the pain. It was quite the opposite.

His nostrils flared slightly, and Hope’s own sense of smell identified the copper scent of her blood. Ciaran lifted her now bleeding hand to his mouth, and licked the length of her open wound with his tongue, the metal ring following suit. A low sound left her mouth before she could control it.

The world seemed to stop. Her thoughts had paused, on hold, with only a deep need for him to lick her blood again.

Without removing her hand from his lips, Ciaran closed his now drunk-looking eyes, inhaling through his nose deeply, the warmth of every exhale sending a shudder through Hope’s skin.

Damn every single Cardinal if this wasn’t the most intimate thing Hope had ever lived. If her knees weren’t about to let her collapse on the floor, giving up on any attempt at keeping her posture. Her own irregular breaths were louder, but she couldn’t control them.

The sight of this exquisite man savoring her blood sent many thoughts and feelings through her. Thoughts and feelings she had never considered before. And with each deep breath of his lips against her skin, her knees were losing the last forces. She was going to fucking fall to the floor, right there and then.

Ciaran inhaled sharply, opening his blue eyes and separating his warm mouth from her skin, giving Hope her hand back. As if a spell had been broken, Hope widened her eyes, wondering what the Fifth had just happened, and swallowed, blinking a few times. What the actual Fifth had just happened?

Ciaran cleared his throat, and his usually straight and muscular posture somehow seemed affected as well as he said, “I wasn’t expecting… that.”

Hope was glad she was not the only one caught unawares, but didn’t dare ask what that meant. So instead she asked, “So, how do I kill the Organ Mandor?” She walked towards the nearest gray couch and was about to lean her hands on it to somehow support her still affected knees until she remember one was bleeding.

“I can Heal it for you,” Ciaran offered.

“I prefer to let biology work naturally.” Biology and the grief-guilt that would continue to heal its way through her soul. “But I could do with some bandages.”

Ciaran opened his biological hand, and a perfectly placed white bandage covered her hand. His hands could do wonders, clearly.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” His blue eyes seemed to darken slightly.

Nina entered the room, smiling calmly as she said, “I told the others and they are on their way.” Then she looked from Hope to Ciaran, and back to Hope, her nostrils flaring as she lifted her eyebrows. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Ciaran was just about to tell me how to kill the Organ Mandor,” Hope said, without taking her eyes from his blue ones.

Nina made a choking sound. Ciaran said, “Your blood is extremely powerful. I would say it has the potential to become the most powerful blood in Thyria.”

“How does he know about your b—” Nina started, but Hope gave her a look that said Not-now-or-I’ll-die-please-don’t-ask that Nina seemed to catch at once because she changed her question to, “She can’t be more powerful than the Organ Mandor though, can she?”

Ciaran hesitated, his fingers playing with his metal ring. “Your father is the Organ Mandor. His panom blood is in your veins. Yet you are the first female with Core panom blood alive in generations. The Cardinals protect you, somehow.”

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when a cardinal bird appeared in the middle of the vessels and started guiding you. That is truly unheard of,” Nina said, shaking her head.

“A cardinal bird also guided me to the chamber underneath the Invisible Grand. I didn’t know it existed. Which probably means that not only one Cardinal protects you, but two.”

“That bird has been my buddy since I was little. It always visited me in our treehouse in Verdania.”

Mentioning her basic treehouse while standing in the middle of this fully furnished, stylish living room with more attention to detail that she had ever seen made her feel minuscule. Yet, the image of the treehouse came with memories of her mother, and a whole wave of very painful feelings.

Ciaran’s eyebrows rocketed to the sky. “A fucking cardinal bird was your buddy?”

“It is a cardinal, but not the Cardinal,” she snapped.

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