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Hope

H ours passed while staring out 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—the restrictions —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 that the feather?”

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 have so many questions. Like so, so many, 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 me I’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 I was okay, 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 your room ?” 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 than somewhere 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 was okay in 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:

Ciaran’s biceps brushed against Hope’s arm as he moved to read the golden ink he had received. Hope read Lenna’s handwriting on his forearm and inhaled sharply.

Ciaran didn’t move for a while, and when he finally lifted his hand, dark green sparks left with his reply.

It was almost ante meridiem when Hope climbed the stairs to the deck of the navia. She needed fresh air, and she really enjoyed admiring the shadows of the courtrades pushing the massive vehicle across the Radel Sea.

At first, the shadows of Stevian, Nyraxa, and Ciaran seemed all the same. By now, Hope had observed—analyzed—them so much that she was able to differentiate them.

Nyraxa’s shadows were lighter, less dense, to the point that sometimes one could see through them, but they were also faster, more agile. Stevian’s were sturdy and elegant, their shapes always whole, never a loose streak. And Ciaran’s . . .

Ciaran’s shadows were pure, lethal night, the darkest shade of black, and they never faltered.

Hope stepped outside, the red-tinged moon welcoming her. She inhaled the night deeply, the salty smell of the sea breeze filling her nostrils.

Stevian smiled when he saw her, the deep wrinkles around his blue eyes warming Hope’s heart. “Good darkness, young lady.”

“Stevian.” She bowed her head, smiling. “Is the wind behaving?”

He chuckled. “Behaving badly, if we let it do as it pleases.”

“Good blessing you have it under control.” Hope sighed, looking at the indistinguishable horizon. “Are you doing all the hard work by yourself?” She had offered her help many times before, but the courtrade always declined politely, with the deepest gratitude.

“Ciaran was here a moment ago. Llunal allowing, I’m sure he’ll be back shortly.” His hands moved, and trails of shadows flew towards the peaks of the crescent shape. “I was thinking, right before you came, how cruel your goddesses are.”

Hope looked at him, expecting disapproval, judgment, or disgust towards the Cardinals, but she found none. Stevian looked at the sky, his white hair bright in the night, as if he was talking to Hope but also to Llunal’s stars.

“Do you know how Thyria and panom magic works?” Hope asked.

Stevian tensed his lips, his blue eyes glittering so vividly, to the point Hope thought she’d seen a tear.

“I had to learn many years ago,” he whispered. “It’s beautiful and powerful, the way your magic works. It’s unique and devastating, that panoms live and die for balance, and because of balance. It’s tragic and unfair that your goddesses built a nation where something as precious as love doesn’t prevail above balance.”

She had managed to rein in her tears in since her ordeal, and that had been an achievement.

Now, Hope bit her bottom lip to keep from crying, but it wasn’t enough. She buried her nails in her skin, clenching her fists.

“No one should ever be ashamed or guilty of feeling,” Stevian said.

She clenched her jaw harder, her inner castle of self-discipline threatening to go down with her.

“Have you ever been in love?” Her voice left her lips before she could stop it. The weakest question she had ever asked.

The tears from his blue eyes fell freely on his wrinkled skin. “I fell in love, and my life changed. We lived, we loved, we suffered, we laughed. We built a family, we grew, we learned. Then the darkness took her away.” Stevian didn’t take his blue eyes away from the starry night, his smile widening. “I’ve never stopped loving her and I never will. For as long as I breathe, I will love her in this world, and when Llunal claims me, I will rejoin my love in the stars.”

Hope covered her mouth with a hand, her cheeks wet as her body shook. Stevian looked at her, dire sadness in his eyes and voice.

“There is nothing more heartless than your Cardinals forbidding love between panoms because of the blood in their veins. They will find balance in the land, but nowhere else.”