Page 12 of Petals for Deadly Power

“Oh, I don’t share,” she declared. “Not when I’m starving in this house full of interrupting and nosy beings.” Lenna lifted her eyebrows, looking at Ciaran with intent.

Maybe the heir of the West House decided he had made his point, and they would behave. Or maybe he didn’t want to witness what would happen if they didn’t want to listen, because he walked towards the end of the corridor and disappeared from sight.

And that right there was why Lenna had been missing the very man she was touching right now.

“I know you have to research and all of that, but maybe we could escape for a few hours,” she said, putting her head against his chest. “It would be nice to be alone. Just you and me. Without others, without distractions, without noise.”

“But I love the sounds you make when I make you come, sweet fire,” Jake said, placing his arms around her body in a hug that brought her even closer to his chest. The beating rhythm of his heart was as comforting as his muscles next to her cheek. “Let’s moure away from here. Do you want to do the honors?”

Lenna looked at him. Cardinals, he was stunning when he towered above her like this.

She hadn’t moured anyone with her before. She had practiced how to move from one place to another by herself, and that had been challenging and exciting

Still, it was probably better to try now than in an emergency, like Hope and Ayla had been forced to do to escape the Beftac Center for Injured Beings not that long ago.

“Don’t blame me if we end up hanging from the top of a tree.”

Jake grinned, his eyes darkening to a light grey. “Then I will fuck you at the top of a tree.”

Lenna put her palm on the back of Jake’s neck, concentrating on the hideaway beach house that Jake had only ever shared with her.

The guarded place somewhere in the South Petal where the sand was white and the ocean water blue. The place where they had spent some time together before coming to the Crystal Clear Safehouse. There, the bright sun was a given and the heat a constant. Lenna felt like wearing anything but white clothes in such a pure place was outrageous. So it was that, or nothing at all.

She had the conviction that the golden panom mark between her breasts would allow her magic to moure Jake with her. So, she took a mental step towards her destination, and the world started spinning around them.

7

Hope

Hopehadfinallydecidedto talk to Lenna about a recurring worry she had. Shame she had been unable to find her today. Jake hadn’t been around, either. They must have moured outside the safehouse, as they sometimes did.

The risk of someone intercepting them in the middle of a guarded mouring was very low, according to Ciaran and Jake. But that was the thing with risks—the possibility of error was always there.

Not that risks had ever stopped Hope before.

She had been considering for a while what would happen when Rhei Coralt died. Because everyone in the house seemed to think that because Hope was the heir, she would take on the role of the Organ Mandor. But she had no clue about how Thyria and its society full of human beings, Elite, and panoms worked. She was not the appropriate person to rule anyone, let alone a whole country.

Sometimes Jake and Lenna came back in a few hours, sometimes in a few days. Since Jake and Ciaran were meant to be discussing strategies to get the Fifth, the former was the likely option in this case. But in case, it wasn’t, Hope sent her red ink to Lenna:

There wasn’t an answer straight away, but eventually the golden letters of Lenna’s handwriting inked Hope’s forearm:

Hope snorted. The amount of fuss Sasha and Lenna made when Hope did anything with her blades was something unheard of.

Not that long ago, they had interrupted her daily throwing practice, right after she aimed at the head of a mannequin she had Given the room and knocked it backwards, by squealing, clapping, and cheering. She had patiently waited for them to leave, talking about their books, before she Gave another mannequin and aimed at its heart from a bigger distance.

Another golden ink followed not long after:

Hope heard the confident steps of the high heels before a smiling Lenna walked through the door.

“Hi there. Brendon just told me the roixers are busy following some fake clues leading to us in the South Petal. The amount of work that man can do in the span of a few hours is admirable.”

Hope nodded vigorously. “He’s very good.” Years working at the Invisible Grand, the most secretive organization of Thyria, had made the blond and green-eyed man a dangerous, misleading tool. Hope sometimes doubted if he was doing it purely to help them not be caught, or because he was delighted messing around with the military roixers and making them waste their time.

Lenna looked at her expectantly.

Hope inhaled. “So, I’ve been thinking about what will happen when the current Mandor is dead. And I thought . . . Would you do it?”

“Do what?” Lenna raised an eyebrow.

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