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Hope

N ina’s footsteps grew louder as she followed the dark green gathering sparks Ciaran had sent. When she entered the room that had become their common area, her white, wavy hair was all over the place, her ocean-blue eyes widened.

“Are you both okay?” she said, holding onto the wall.

Ayla arrived shortly after, her green eyes assessing Ciaran and Hope from tip to toe. Indianna followed.

Ciaran looked at Hope, swallowing. “We are now. We have—”

Raoul entered last, and Ciaran didn’t finish his sentence. Hope frowned deeply. The constant, never-ending change was scary.

Anyone could have recognized Nina and Raoul as siblings months ago, but now other than their smooth, pale skin, they looked barely alike anymore. There were dark bags under Raoul’s eyes, no longer light blue but a dusky sky tone, and the immaculate white hair Hope had first seen in the cave of Verdania—there were barely any remaining white strands left on his head. The majority of his hair was black. Black.

“What do you have?” Ayla asked Ciaran, walking next to Nina.

“The West feather,” he muttered. “Raoul, what the Fifth hell is happening?”

Nina’s brother shrugged, a failed attempt at being nonchalant, even when it was obvious his state was way past that. “I wish I could tell you. I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I look like crap.”

“Real, shit-looking crap, not standard, just-woke-up crap,” Ayla added.

“What happens when you sleep?” Hope asked. She had a feeling she knew the answer, and she didn’t want her answer to be true.

“I dream.”

“About?” Hope insisted.

He looked exhausted when he sighed. “You already know.”

The Core Cardinal had warned her after her Fifth Ceremony and then again during her ordeal, and still, this made it so much more real.

“Does she talk to you?” Her voice was a whisper. Ciaran’s shoulders tensed when he crossed his arms.

Ayla frowned deeply. “What are you two talking about? Who speaks where ?”

“Black magic,” Raoul said.

Ayla snorted, lifting her eyebrows. “Oh, thanks. That explains everything.”

When Raoul stopped staring at the floor and met Hope’s gaze, she saw it. In his blue eyes there were black speckles that hadn’t been there before, either. Speckles that looked like ink. One moment, they were there, the next, they were gone.

“I wish I could tell you,” Raoul finally answered. “She talks to me, but I can barely remember when I wake up.”

The blood in her veins froze. Barely —not never , but barely .

Nina put a reassuring hand on her brother’s arm, pressing gently against his pale skin. “How was your ordeal, Ciaran?”

Ciaran shook his head slowly, the intensity of his stare pinning Hope down. A thin trail of shadows left his fingers, going towards her. In another world, another life, or with another man, she would have been alert, ready to attack. But it was Ciaran.

There wasn’t a single person in the world she trusted more than him.

When he spoke, the shadows vanished. “Fucked up.”

Hope felt the need to get closer to him, caress his skin, get lost in his embrace, tell him she was fine, that it was all over—because she was fine, and it was over. Thanks to him . She didn’t do any of that. Instead, her words left her mouth before she could stop them.

“Can I talk to you in private?” she asked. She clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking.

“Always.”

Without a second glance back, Ciaran opened the door for her, waiting. He didn’t have to wait long, because her feet were light and her nerves thick. When she walked by him, her arm brushed his and she had to hold her breath to keep from showing what that slight touch had moved within her, how the glint in his eyes when their eyes met moved her in many ways—many of them forbidden.

It was pouring outside, so instead of going to the deck, Hope’s steps were taking them downstairs, to—

“Would you prefer to go to my room or your room?” Ciaran asked from where he was closely following her.

Fifth above and beyond, how grateful she was Ciaran couldn’t see the flushed cheeks, her widened eyes or the way she bit her bottom lip.

She surely couldn’t take him to her room. What if he sat on her bed, where she had touched herself thinking about him? What if he could smell what she had done?

“Yours is closer.”

He didn’t reply, but when she stopped in front of his metallic door and turned to him, his head was bowed, a curtain of smooth hair falling over his gorgeous face, only his blue eyes and his metal ring distinguishable.

He held the door open for her, and when she entered, she couldn’t stop from inhaling deeply. His scent filled her mind, fogging it with woods and night, pines and darkness. It was like entering into him . Her knees wanted to buckle, but she tried her best to continue walking. It was almost impossible he’d missed the pause, the shock of what she’d just experienced, of what was surrounding her right now.

Cardinals, maybe going to his room hadn’t been the best option.

He sat on the edge of his immaculate bed. “Take a seat wherever you want.”

Hope swallowed. She could be wary and clever and sit on the couch, or she could be reckless and dangerous, and sit next to him. Her mind hadn’t yet decided when her heart moved her towards him.

His hand stopped on her thigh before she reached for the bed. “Hope,” he whispered.

She halted, still standing, his firm fingers still on her. She could have walked, she could have sat, but she must have wished for inner destruction because, instead, her body faced his, standing between his legs. He sat looking at his hand as if he hadn’t meant to move it there, but he couldn’t have stopped it. The same way she couldn’t stop—she didn’t want to stop—her hands moving to his face, her hands caressing his cheeks, gently tilting his head up until his stare met hers.

She wanted to say so many things she didn’t know where to start. She didn’t know what she should or shouldn’t do, if there was any point in trying to save herself from this. From him.

Perhaps she was beyond saving, perhaps there had never been a saving at all.

His breathing was irregular, his metal ring bobbed. “What am I going to do, Hope?” His other hand held onto the outer side of her other thigh.

The exact same question she had been asking herself for the past few days, for the past few weeks. It was easier when she was able to think rationally, to convince herself she was capable of many things—of avoiding many things. But being here, this close to him, surrounded by his scent, it wasn’t difficult. It was almost impossible .

His hands moved her legs slightly to the side. It would be easier, much easier, to get away from him, back to a safe distance, if he pushed her away, because she was incapable of doing it herself.

But he didn’t push her away. He pushed her down, inviting her to sit on his leg. And Cardinals take her blades away, she didn’t refuse.

She fit perfectly on his strong, muscled leg, his hand embracing the small of her back while the other rested on her knee. Her arm rested on his metallic shoulder, her hand playing with his hair. It was softer than she thought, thicker than she had imagined.

She had thought he was brutally, fiercely handsome since the very first time. But this close, Ciaran was breathtaking.

“How can the same person save me and destroy me?” His voice was low, as if he was asking himself the question.

The question punctured her heart, but no more than the forbidding of the Cardinals had already punctured it.

“You’ve saved my life twice now, Ciaran. No words of gratitude will ever match how much this means.”

His hand moved from her knee to her throat, where the blade had hit her, where she would’ve bled to death if he hadn’t Healed her.

“No words are needed. I would do it a hundred times again.”

The touch of his fingers on her skin made her core and heart tighten. What wouldn’t she trade with the Cardinals to allow her to know what his lips tasted like?

“In my ordeal . . . The Core Cardinal asked me if I would keep my feelings and needs aside to protect the land, to avoid a panomquake, and I said yes. She said if my answer turned out to be dishonest or untrue, the crystal feather would break.”

Ciaran inhaled deeply. She was expecting an answer along the lines of I understand and respect it , The land must be protected , or The feather is more important than anything else .

His hand trailed up her throat until his thumb stroked her bottom lip. When he spoke, his voice was gravel.

“What needs do you have, Hope?”

She exhaled against his finger, her eyes unable to move from the trap where his eyes and his lips were.

“All the forbidden needs you could imagine. Every single one of them.”

The glint in his eyes matched his side smile. “My imagination is very creative.”

“Every. Single. One,” she repeated, begging she was able to keep her hands off the unmistakable growing bulk between his legs. The growing bulk she had dreamed about.

“Something was allowed that didn't break the land.” He flicked the knot of her braid, his fingers skillfully letting her black hair loose. “Do you remember how I . . . confirmed you had Core panom blood?”

She would never forget what she'd felt when he opened the skin on her palm and licked her blood.

“How is that possible?” Her voice came out as a gasp or a beg, she didn't know the difference anymore.

“Llunal is involved in that magic, in blood research and processes, not the Cardinals.”

Thank the five damned Cardinals she was sitting.

Research.

Re-search .

Not forbidden research.

If Llunal ever needed a new acolyte, he only needed to ask.

A quiet moan left her mouth. “Do it.” The desperation in her voice and her blood had reached a new level of insanity.

Ciaran pressed his nose against Hope's head, his deep, uncontrolled, almost desperate inhale making Hope press her thighs together.

“I could taste your hand again, or a different place.”

“Lick me wherever you want, Ciaran.”

The metallic hand on her back tensed, holding her flesh with strength she didn’t mind one bit.

“Not where I truly want. The Cardinals wouldn’t approve if I lick the blood between your legs, and I wouldn’t be able to control myself.” He nestled his head in the spot above her clavicle, his nose pressing on her throat sending all sorts of explosions to the nerves throughout her body. “Classic old Cardinals, drawing the line at kisses and private parts. A shame, because I would love to thoroughly research every single sensitive part of you down there.”

A quiet moan left her mouth. “Lick me, Ciaran. Do with me whatever you can.”

“Such a shy moan, that was,” Ciaran hummed against her skin. His finger traced a line down her throat, Harming her until she felt her skin open and the thick, red liquid pooling next to where his mouth rested. “It’s not enough. I need to know if the way you moan is the way I imagine when I come thinking about all the things I wish I could do to you.”

Hope half-opened her mouth, her head tilting backwards so Ciaran had access to the full extent of her neck. Her thoughts blurred with desire, desperation, need .

“Lick. Me.”

When the touch of his tongue met her open skin, her blood, the world faded—the world changed . The world was Ciaran, his tongue, the way he desperately licked as if her blood was what was keeping him alive instead of the air he breathed.

Bless the father of blood research, his shadows, and every single one of his stars.

“Ciaran,” she begged, grabbing his hair in her fist to avoid losing the grip between this parallel dimension of lust and reality. If she weren’t sitting on his leg, she would have fallen.

His reply was a low growl, his tongue not stopping the tracing of the small, bless-giving wound he had inflicted on her. His hands gripped against her clothes as if they were the most inconvenient poison and curse. Irreverent shadows filled the floor, approaching her ankles desperately, she knew, because he craved more .

The sudden, cold touch on her forearm made her stand up with a jump, a hand on her dagger as Ciaran stood, also looking at his biological forearm. Her mind was foggy with lust, her skin wet in various places.

Usually ink from panoms tickled her skin, except when her father was the sender, and the bleeding ink hurt. This time, it felt like the touch of a feather, and the color of the ink was the color of her magic. It was Cardinal-red.