Page 48 of Petals for Deadly Power

“Mind your own damned business, then.”

30

Hope

Hourspassedwhilestaringout the window, and Hope only knew because the sky was darkening, and the impulse of throwing the crystal feather through the glass was fading.

Of course, she wouldn’t have thrown the feather of the Core ordeal, regardless of how much she wished the conditions—therestrictions—that came with it didn’t exist. If she’d learned anything from over two decades living with her mother, over two decades learning to use her body and her weapons to fight, it was to master her self-control.

Two and a half decades.

If the Core Cardinal hadn’t mentioned it, Hope wouldn’t have remembered. She knew the date of her own and her mother’s birthdays, but they had never marked them.

Her birth had ruined her mother’s life. Hope’s arrival in this world was what got them discarded. Was a birth like that a reason for celebration? For acknowledgment? She doubted it.

The fifth time the door knocked since past meridiem, she decided to go, rather than dismiss Nina with excuses from her seat.

She opened the metallic black door. “I’m oka—”

“Cardinals above,” Nina shouted. “Is thatthefeather?”

Hope looked at the red crystal in her hand. “Oh—yes, it is.”

Nina gasped, a tight hug following that almost knocked Hope backwards. “May the Fifth have mercy. I havesomany questions. Like so,somany, but everyone needs to know. Cardinals spare me. Come, quick.”

Nina took Hope’s free hand and pulled her upstairs, half-walking, half-running.

When they entered the room in such a rush, everyone turned to face them. It was Ciaran who spotted the red crystal shining in Hope’s hand first. His eyes widened with alarm as he trotted towards her.

“Llunal shade me, Hope. Are you—” He swallowed, his eyebrows knitted as he examined her body, her face, her hands as if he was trying to find any sign of harm. His metallic hand lifted to caress her cheek, the tip of his fingers sending goosebumps to all her fibers, as she couldn’t take her eyes off the worry on his face.

“I’m okay,” Hope repeated for the Fifth knew how many times. She followed Ciaran towards the couch, sitting next to him, Nina joining her other side. Indianna, Raoul, and Ayla sat in front of them.

“You’ve been telling meI’m okay,and you were in your ordeal?” Nina sounded disappointed. “I’m never trusting you again when you tell me you need some alone time.”

Hope chuckled apologetically. “But Iwasokay, and I needed time to think. My ordeal finished many hours ago.”

“You could have mentioned that.” Nina looked at her, her ocean-blue eyes shining as she sighed. “Sorry, it’s just—I get it. I truly do. I only wished I’d have known to . . . I don’t know—help, somehow.”

“Thank you.” Hope smiled. She felt lucky to have Nina in her life.

“Where was your ordeal? In yourroom?” Ayla asked.

Hope put her braids over her shoulders distractedly. “Sort of. I walked over the water but then . . . went somewhere else.”

Ciaran readjusted in his spot next to her, the black leather of his leg brushing her own, as if he didn’t miss the broad description of where she’d gone. It didn’t get less specific thansomewhere else.

Raoul cocked his white eyebrow. “And what was the actual ordeal? Climbing, like Ayla’s?”

“Talking.”

Hope’s word caused different reactions across the room. Raoul exclaimed, “What?”Ayla and Nina swapped utterly confused stares. Indianna narrowed her eyes as if reconsidering whether Hope wasokayin a mental sense, and Ciaran . . . Ciaran tensed, still as the dead.

“We should tell the others,” Ciaran said, cutting whatever question was about to leave Raoul’s mouth. “Do you want to do the honors?” he asked Hope, and when her black eyes met his blue ones, she saw what his steady voice had hidden. There was tension, worry, uneasiness, fear, and more. There was a lot more behind Ciaran’s apparently collected expression.

Hope lifted her hand, willing her red sparks to send written ink to Lenna.

Lenna’s golden ink tickled her arm a few seconds later:

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