Page 91 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Hope tried to resist the urge to open her eyes wide and lift her eyebrows, but her peripheral vision noted that Lenna didn’t seem to care one bit about her expression being an open book as her jaw dropped. Hope couldn’t take her dark eyes from Ciaran, even if focusing solely on him in a corridor so full of armed enemies was a risky mistake.

Ciaran was a panom and a courtrade. There would be time for questions and explanations later, if they survived. Right now, he looked at Hope with that side smile she wanted to caress.

Ciaran leaned into her and whispered, so softly that only she could hear, “Do your worst, Hope.”

She was so ready for this. To exterminate every single one of these roixers and the Roix Reigner herself. The adrenaline was building up again in her veins, rushing as if she couldn’t keep it in, and maybe she couldn’t, because arterial-red sparks were swirling around the blades she was holding tight. She whispered back, “Do your worst, Ciaran.”

Hope recognized the shadows coming from his fingertips. She had seen them in action during those long weeks in the vessels. Except Ciaran’s shadows were dancing, adorned with dark green sparks.

So Ciaran unleashed his shadows, and Hope unleashed her daggers.

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Lenna

Lenna had never seen someone kill like Hope. She was death incarnate, dressed in black and blood. Her daggers flew around without faltering, with unnerving perfect aim, strength and will.

A couple of roixers confronted her in hand-to-hand combat, and Hope fucking smiled at them. Maybe Jake and Hope had something in common after all. Because she was still smiling when she kicked and destroyed the balls of one, and as soon as he bent in half, her dagger was waiting vertically under his now-bleeding chin. Cardinals, she was fast.

The other roixer grabbed her other arm, aiming to twist it around as he approached the blade of his short sword to Hope’s neck. But it never made it to her neck. The dagger was now out of the other’s chin and blocking this sword instead. She slid blade against blade masterfully, removing the roixer’s ability to push it against her body, until her dagger was in his abdomen, and his blood leaked into his red uniform.

Around Hope’s non-stopping kills, continuous swirls of shadows snapped from Ciaran’s fingers, wrapping around other roixers’ throats at impossible speed. Wherever the shadows went, sounds of snapping bones followed and bodies on the floor appeared.

Alone, Ciaran and Hope were devastatingly efficient. Together, they were absolutely lethal and utterly terrifying.

Lenna had no clue what the shadow business was about, but if it helped Ciaran not end up unbalanced inside from Harming to kill roixers without wasting time to Heal anybody, she was on board with it.

Jake had taken Hope and Ciaran’s opening as the cue to break all hell loose, and Cardinals damn him if he didn’t look like he was enjoying Harming roixers in creative ways before ending them.

He hadn’t stepped away from Lenna, and his warmth on her back was reassuring in the middle of the bloodshed. Whichever roixer he set those silver eyes on, whichever roixer screamed in agony. Unless he removed the air from their lungs instead, made their eyes roll backwards into their brains, or made their necks twist, in which cases they could not scream or beg for mercy.

As if the man that Lenna wanted in her life knew what mercy was.

If Jake was feeling any pain as his inner magical balance became uneven with so much Harming, he didn’t show any signs. But hadn’t this man been submitted to pain so many times that it was as natural to him as breathing?

There was only one being in the corridor that Lenna wanted to focus on. The being that she had considered a friend.

The man fighting next to the Roix Reigner with all the skill in the world.

How stupid had Lenna been to never give two damned fucks about where had Theon learned to fight? On this island or any other, someone as skilled as Theon had to have been trained by the best and only Thyrian military force. It was so obvious now. And it was also obvious that Sasha, Brendon and Indianna were nowhere as able to fight the Roix, and the multiple cuts and bruises on their bodies were evidence enough.

Lenna risked another quick glance to the corridor to find… There, a sleek mass of red hair surrounded by silver sparks. Ayla was still keeping up against the roixers attacking her, and side-by-side a white-haired woman was fighting with all her might despite the blood falling from a deep cut in her neck. Ayla and Nina were still alive.

Fuck, Lenna knew she had to kill Theon, and she had to do it now, before he killed anyone else. She also knew that if she asked Jake, he would do it without asking questions or batting an eyelid.

The sharp feeling in her gut caused by his betrayal was more painful than any physical hit she would receive tonight. She doubted that the pain would go away anytime soon. Yet she would not stay still for a second longer. Not when he had fucking played with her for years and he had just dared to kill Carson as if his life was absolutely nothing.

It was cardinally poetic that Lenna’s first ever Harming was going to be against the traitor who had handed them to the Roix.

She made a mental note to thank Jake for explaining the theory of Harming in that cell. And for providing multiple examples in the past couple of minutes, even if some of them were sophisticatedly complicated. Bodies in red kept falling down.

It must have been the bloodbath around Lenna doing funny things to her mind, because if she looked at Jake’s side grin, at his silver eyes focusing on his next targets… If she focused solely on him, on the precise and non-ceasing movements of his panom hands in front of him, on how he hadn’t left her side and how his navy sparks seemed to caress her skin… She couldn’t wait for all this fucked up rescue to be done with.

Lenna raised her hands in front of her, golden sparks warmly tickling the skin on her palms as if they were giving her encouragement and reassurance that she could do this.

“You shit-eating cunt!” Lenna shouted, and Theon turned to face her, earning a hit on his cheek from Brendon’s elbow. “I hope your miserable life was as mediocre and worthless as your friendship. I hope the Fifth makes your unaliving existence as wretched as you deserve.”

Theon opened his mouth as if he was going to say something.

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