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“Quell.” It’s Abby. “You have to say something to me.”

“Do I? The last I saw you, your boyfriend plotted to have me killed. And you ran off.” I fold my arms, a bit stunned by my upwelling frustration at Abby. I’d shut out those feelings; I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.

“I didn’t know, alright? Mynick didn’t tell me.”

“We need to get out of here,” Nore says, looking around warily.

“And when it happened, I was scared,” Abby goes on. “So I ran. I’m a coward. I was trying to get away from the chaos at the Sphere when Yagrin found me and took me to Jordan. I heal people; I don’t battle Draguns. And what about you! I hear you have toushana? When were you going to tell me that?”

Nore grabs me by the wrist. “We need to leave now.”

Abby’s and my eyes meet, and we stick to Nore’s heels. She leads us across a snowy stretch of graveyard, gazing over her shoulder every few moments.

“What is it?” I ask, but she only urges me to come along. Her estate grows larger the faster we run. When the gate comes into view, she cuts a sharp right.

“This way.” We stop at the stables, where she offers Abby reins. “Do you ride?”

She nods. I shake my head before she can even ask and swing into the saddle behind Nore.

“No questions. Let’s go.”

We ride quickly, the Sphere’s commotion at our backs, around the wooded perimeter of Dlaminaugh Estate. We squeeze through a break in the stone wall, which Nore has concealed with shrubbery. Once inside the grounds we stop at a small house. The minute my feet hit the ground, everything feels different. An eerie feeling of being watched covers me in shivers as I tie up my horse.

“Get inside,” Nore says.

“I don’t under—”

A whoosh of wind sweeps past, so strong it knocks me forward. The howling wind blows again, and I realize it doesn’t feel like wind at all—it’s more like something is pushing me around. The hair on my neck rises. Nore grabs me and Abby and dashes up the porch steps. The bones of the rickety wood creak and the sky seems to darken. She whips the door open and shoves us inside just as her porch chair comes flying and smashes into the door. She barricades her back against it, breathless.

Abby is frozen in shock.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I think the ancestors of my House are after me.” She peeks out the shuttered windows; the wind hasn’t stopped its assault. “Stay away from the windows. Just in case.”

I huddle on a spot on the floor with my back to the wall.

“What does that mean?” Abby asks. “Are we safe in here?”

“Are we safe anywhere?”

Bang!

I jump. Abby shrieks. Nore peeks out the window, where a thick branch just cracked the glass. As she stares outside, Nore sucks in a breath but doesn’t let it out.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Can you see them?” she says.

I look but only see a violent windstorm destroying the outside of her house. “See what?”

“The shadows. They’re here. They’re everywhere.” She chews her nail.

“Oh my goodness, it’s gone!” Abby rubs the spot where the scar pierced her at Cotillion. “Quell! There was a cloudiness in my head, a kind of fog, whenever I’d think back on certain things. But it’s gone.”

“My grandmother’s dead. So her curse would be, too.”

“Dead?” Nore clutches her chest. “Darragh?” She looks as if she might actually cry.