Page 41

40

Jake

T he metal rail of the navia screeched under Jake’s clenched fists.

His knuckles were white like the corpses he left many times behind. His clothes were still soaked from the torrential waters he had dived in when he rushed to the deck after Lenna disappeared from his grip.

Disappeared .

He had given up on shouting her name, praying to the Cardinals they would keep her safe.

Bullshit praying, that was. No one was fucking safe in an ordeal.

It hadn’t been until sunrise that he saw the red mass interrupting the expanse of the sea, until he chased the courtrades and begged them to move the navia as fast as they could. He probably hadn’t asked in the nicest way. He had offered whatever they wanted in exchange. Those were problems for later.

The problem right now was that red mass—whatever the Fifth hell that was—was still too damn far. And there was no doubt Lenna was on it.

Obviously, he was going to try to not interrupt her ordeal. Obviously, he believed Lenna was capable of this challenge and many others. Few beings on Terrha had the will and determination she had. The fire in her veins, in her eyes, in the way she didn’t think twice when speaking her mind. The fire that burned worlds down.

Did that mean he was going to sit and watch if his woman was in danger? Cardinals be damned—obviously not.

It had taken all his restraint to watch as red rain started falling on a specific part of the red mass. A person wearing black moved towards the center of the—was it a four-petal platform? A field?

The courtrades moved behind him, the shadows not as helpful as they were at night, the navia still too far as he watched red rain fall, and fall, and fall on Lenna. Whatever that rain was made of it was not letting her run fast enough. Then her magic started, Taking away what kept her feet stuck and—Giving something to the sea.

“That’s my woman,” he muttered, pride filling his chest and squeezing his corrupt heart. It was awfully difficult to use opposite powers in sync. Very few panoms had mastered it, and here she was. His stubborn, unyielding woman doing it.

His silver eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring with the need for her to make it, for her ordeal to finish already.

And then, she tripped, and she was on the floor.

“Faster!” he shouted to the courtrades behind him. “Llunal, I’ll suck your dick if you have one, but I swear on the Fifth if this navia does not move faster, I’ll burn it down .”

Burn it down, burn it down, burn it down.

The words echoed in his mind, in his ears, in his life. Because in front of him was a flame, a living, raging flame on the platform where Lenna stood. A flame that trailed towards her, towards her body too full of whatever the fuck the redness falling on her was.

No.

Seeing Lenna fighting harmed him more than all his ordeal put together. The fire was too fast, her pace too slow, the distance to whatever was in the middle of the panom shape too far.

No.

Over his dead fucking body, he was going to let her be tortured again. He didn’t care if it was at the hands of his father or the five wicked Cardinals. This was not happening again. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

Jake jumped out of the navia, cursing Llunal, his slow-as-shit shadows and all his useless stars. The cold water engulfed him, his arms and legs pushing away from the navia with all the strength he could master.

He only needed to swim far enough, far enough to—

He had never been happier to moure in his damned, long life.

The water or the worry swamping him didn’t allow him to moure straight to where Lenna was, leaving him at the edge of the four-petal shape field. It was a field , and the red rain were petals.

Petals on fire, chasing his sweet fire.

No—it hadn’t been the water or the worry. There was an invisible wall separating the grounds of the burning ordeal from the rest of the world.

He lifted his hands above the water, and with the wicked delight that not caring about the pain his inner scale inflicted, he Took the whole wall away. The pain would have been enough to stop other beings’ hearts. His heart was too sore to care.

He pushed himself up onto the edge of the field, and time seemed to stop.

He couldn’t have been that late. It couldn’t have happened so fast.

At the very center of the field, he saw a growing mountain of red petals covering Lenna’s whole body, piling up and up and up. The wildfire was closing in, advancing faster now the path of petals fueled its flames.

She was going to burn.

Jake didn’t have time to run, so he moured. He moured between the fire and the pile of petals, Taking them away as fast as he had ever Taken anything. There were so many petals, and underneath, nothing moved. No one moved.

He Took as if his life depended on it, because it fucking did. He would have Given a river behind him, placating the fire that approached his back, but he had never been good at simultaneous magic, and he couldn’t stop Taking—he had to get to her.

Torturous long seconds passed until Lenna’s hair started appearing as petals were vanishing. Her unresponsive face came later, her mouth choked with redness, the expression of terror marking her face in the same way it marked Jake’s soul. He had allowed this to happen.

He Took, Took, Took, and when the petals were not holding her body upwards anymore was when she fell limp, cold in his arms.

Lenna. Lenna! He screamed into her mind. But where usually a golden response was waiting, whether angry, heated, or laughing, there was nothing. There was nothing, no one to shout at.

“South Cardinal,” he roared, his lips curling as tears flooded his eyes. “Take me. Take my feather, take my life. Take everything from me, but don’t take her.”

The Taking goddess did not answer, did not come, did not care.

The Taking goddess was going to take the true reason for his existence.

His hands shook under her back and her knees, his back barely feeling the fire burning him.

The only fire he cared about had been extinguished.