Page 32 of Petals for Deadly Power

“She’s swimming to us. Wait, no. Where is she now?” He frowned. “Fuck, a wave drowned her for a bit. I see her now. She is swimming the wrong way.”

“She can’t see. Her eyes must be—” Nina said, panic in her blue eyes as she looked at Hope and Ciaran as if they were the answer to the equation. “She needs help.”

“Can’t she moure into the navia?” Raoul asked.

“Llunal’s protection doesn’t allow mouring. Otherwise, we would have intruders every minute of our nights,” Nyraxa said, the patch-free eye focused on the same spot where Ciaran’s blue eyes were fixed. “Your friend will have to swim.”

Nina opened her mouth, ready to argue back, but held her opinions in as Ciaran walked towards the rail.

Hope would have been happy to help in daylight, but the red moon half-peeking through the clouds wouldn’t be enough for her to guide Ayla safely to the black navia. If there was no other alternative, Hope would still do it. Her black eyes met Ciaran’s blue ones before he removed his black shirt from over his head.

It required all the determination one could imaginenotto look. Even without focusing her stare where her curiosity wanted her to, Hope could sense the marked muscles on his chest, abdomen, and arms. She could hint the intersection between his metallic arm and his shoulder that she so wanted to examine, and the inked dark patterns trailing from the upper part of his chest down his biological arm. His arm had more ink than many letters.

Ciaran turned to the waves and the night and jumped into the sea.

It was night by the time a dripping Ciaran climbed the ladder of the navia carrying a drained and blind, but definitely alive Ayla.

Ayla thanked him in a muttered, weak voice when her feet touched the floor. Hope walked to her other side, so she and Ciaran could guide Ayla to the common area under deck, where Raoul, Nina, and Indianna were waiting. It hadn’t been easy to convince them to go inside, and Hope had promised to send them warning sparks as soon as Ayla arrived.

Nina brought a chair behind Ayla’s legs. When the edge of the chair touched the spot behind her knees, she sat, tilting her head backwards as if it was the biggest pleasure this life could provide. Indianna had many ripped clothes piled up. No, not clothes. They werecurtains. The shadow-powered curtains that protected from the cold.

“How are you?” Nina asked.

Ayla half-scoffed, a tear rolling down her still-closed eye. “Destroyed.”

Hope kneeled in front of her and placed her hands over Ayla’s eyes. The eyes she hadn’t yet opened since Ciaran had brought her to safety. Ciaran joined her shortly after, kneeling next to Hope and Healing Ayla so that each of them could focus on one eye.

It took long, very worrying minutes from Ayla pressing her eyes shut, to her features easing slightly, to her blinking multiple times before she could open her emerald-green eyes.

“Thank you,” she sighed. “I wasn’t sure if I would ever see again, and that would have been very unfair, because I need to see—”

Ayla put her hand inside her tucked-in shirt and pulled out an object. A very red, very crystal, and very feather-shaped object.

“By the Cardinals,” Hope whispered. “Congratulations, Ayla.”

This was it. The first factual, tangible proof that they were on their journey to obtain the Fifth power.

The Fifth crusade was not a myth. It wasn’t a made-up theory. The crystal feather of the North Cardinal wasreal, and Ayla was holding it as a mother would hold her newborn.

“I’m not sure if congratulations, condolences, or apologies are in order, but thanks. I’m too exhausted to think and too glad I won’t have to do that ever again. I’m too fucking annoyed that, after everything, I couldn’t see the North Cardinal with my own eyes.”

“Talking about being annoyed . . . Your sister will kill me if I don’t update her now,” Hope said.

She sent her red ink to Lenna:

A few seconds later, Ayla looked at her own forearm and the golden ink in Lenna’s handwriting was on her skin for all to read:

Ayla chuckled, silver sparks leaving her fingers, on the way to Lenna. Before Hope had time to figure out or ask what Ayla replied, Lenna’s ink was back on the forearm of the redhead.

Ayla swallowed, a smile spreading across her lips as her eyes fixed on the last two words of the ink from her twin.

22

Lenna

WheretheFifthhellwas this man?

It was ante meridiem, and Jake still hadn’t come to the cabin. Lenna had gone from pacing in the cabin, to pacing in the corridor, to pacing in the cabin again. The cabin was notthatbig.

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