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Finally her brother smiled, and said, “Thank you.”

She blinked, not understanding.

“Have you ever wondered why Ambrose can push our strands of magic farther than any other House?”

He pulled a dog-eared book from his satchel and handed it to Nore. “Because the House has a pact with our dead—we give up the Headmistress’s heart in exchange for help with magic. With Mother missing, you, dear sister, are next.”

Fifty-Three

Quell

By the time Jordan returns with Yagrin, I’m on the balcony rehashing my plan. When we find the Sphere, I won’t have much time. Jordan isn’t going to give me his necklace and he’ll be even more on guard.

Yagrin enters as himself and that’s some small relief. He and Jordan must have not argued the whole journey up the peak. Maybe they’ve made some kind of peace.

“How many sunspots were there this morning?” he asks.

“Hundreds.”

“All of Beaulah’s Draguns are gone,” Jordan cuts in, his expression harried. I guess their sun tracking wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.

“What about the ones we detained?”

But before he can respond, the morning sky ripples with plum and orange streaks. A light flashes, shooting across the sky.

The flare.

It’s time.

“Now!”

Jordan and Yagrin latch onto me. I pull at my toushana and picture my magic grabbing hold of the bright light, wrapping us in it, taking us with it. We disappear.

* * *

We appear on a snowy field between mountains, where a thicket of sturdy conifers are frosted with snow. A barren field of headstones stretches out before us against an ominous gray sky. And far in the distance, the tip-top of a glass-and-stone building disappears into the clouds.

“House of Ambrose,” Jordan says.

“There she is.” Yagrin nudges me. I turn all the way around and the sight knocks the wind out of me. A sea of sloping hillside graveyards stretches ahead of us as far as I can see. There are thousands of headstones, maybe more. The way the snow is lumped, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more flat headstones than tall ones. But the expanse of dead isn’t what rattles my pulse.

The Sphere hovers over them like a dark moon.

Its insides undulate violently, cracking like whips of electricity. Jordan and Yagrin stare, unmoving. I step out from the shade of the trees, my eyes adjusting to the colorless landscape.

That’s when I see them.

Cloaks appear—pops of shadows, all across the graveyards. Then they dissolve, leaving a person behind. On the Sphere’s left flank are Draguns in dark colors, forming themselves in neat rows. With every blink of my eyes, it seems another joins them.

“House of Perl,” I say. They are dots in the distance, but Beaulah is hard to miss, her deep red coat billowing. Beside her, opposite the Sphere, is a ragtag band of people wearing pale green robes marked with a sigil I’ve never seen before. On the Sphere’s right flank is another hefty formation. I can spot my grandmother even from several fields’ distance away. She’s wrapped in a bright gold coat marked with a fleur-de-lis. Near her is someone who could, from far away, be Abby. She has her dark hair and dainty frame.

There is a war brewing.

Jordan was right.

And it’s right here.

Fifty-Four