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“I want you to promise to help me in a matter, on your honor as Dragunheart.” They watched her. She wet her lips. This was the boldest she’d ever been in her own skin. She was wearing her own face and she’d just admitted she had no love for the Order. There was no turning back now.

“My needs are twofold. Kidnap the Headmistress of House Ambrose and bring her to me. My brother may have plans to kill her, so it’s a mercy, in a way. And help me find the rest of the pieces to this.” She held up the Scroll.

Yagrin didn’t speak. She bit down on her lip, wondering what he thought of her request. Too savage? Too hopeful?

“That’s not a fair trade,” Yagrin said.

But Jordan took the scrap from her hands. “Intellectus secat acutissimum.” His expression darkened. “Your House doesn’t have the knowledge it’s known for.” He breathed a laugh.

Yagrin snatched the paper from his hands, greedily reading every mark on it. When he looked up, he gazed off.

“This can bring back anyone from the dead?” he asked.

Her heart ticked faster. He still loved her. Or the lie that he knew.

“Within a certain amount of time after death, yes,” she said.

“How much time?”

“That’s unclear. Months. Maybe a year. I—I’d have to do more research.”

“She doesn’t have the full Scroll, Yags,” Jordan said.

“We do have it,” she said. “Or we did.” She explained how Caera Ambrose uncovered the secret, then parts of it were lost somehow, leaving only this scrap and the one her brother had.

“If we find it, you have to give it to us,” Jordan said.

Yagrin’s mouth hardened. Even if she could give Yagrin the Scroll, the girl he loved was dead. Red was the one thing Nore couldn’t give him. She needed the Scroll. But to get it she needed their help. She stuck out her hand.

“Deal,” she said to Jordan.

He shook her hand. “Yagrin, after we push Beaulah back, you’ll go with Nore. Abby—”

Abby cleared her throat. “You don’t speak for me. What do I get out of this?”

“What do you want?” Nore responded.

“I want my magic.” She folded her arms.

Jordan squeezed Abby’s shoulder before he and Yagrin climbed up on Daring. Nore stroked his nose and scratched his neck before slapping him on the hind. They rode off toward the darkening calamity on the horizon.

Sixty

Quell

The graveyard is engulfed in a cloud of darkness. Shouts scratch my ears, but it’s the moans of people writhing in pain that stirs the bile in my stomach. The brooding sky has only grown darker, and the chaos has filled the air with ash. When mixed with the fog of toushana, the murk is so thick I can hardly make out the Sphere, now a bit away. But I can see wisps of magic evaporating into the chilled air. I keep my eyes fixed on it and the magic whirring in my chest. I hold my focus there, churning it faster, letting it build in me until my lungs feel as if they might explode.

In the haze I spot Beaulah’s Draguns still arranged neatly around the Sphere. But as she breaks ranks with them and moves closer to me, several follow. My heart rams in my chest. I pull at the icy chill in my bones, urging it to stir harder.

When I release on the Sphere, she’ll be dead.

“Get back!”

She steeples her hands.

That’s when I see it.

A familiar ring on her knuckle. Once stoneless, now with a bright red heart-shaped stone at the center of its nest of gold. The stone from Jordan’s pendant. No! How? I step backward, trying to think of something to say. Or something to do. That stone will draw my magic to it! I can’t use toushana anywhere near it.