Page 12 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Nine

Quell

The Wexton MidCenter Hotel, where Dragun Headquarters is located, is plastered in yellow caution tape.

My magic answered weakly, but Jordan was able to cloak.

The early-morning Chicago air is icier than my toushana, whipping around us as we approach the tall glass doors.

The last time I was here, Jordan had intercepted me as I tried to kill Beaulah and convinced me to partner with him.

He brought me here to get the Dragunhead’s permission.

It’s hard to believe that was only months ago.

He smooths the condensation off the windows before cupping his hands to them. “There’s no one here.”

We share a glance. He slides the tape aside and pulls at the sliding doors. They don’t budge.

“Have you seen any of the brotherhood?” I ask.

“No, but I’ve heard things.” His jaw works.

“If the rumors are true, the protocol if the Dragunhead is incapacitated or, in this case, has vanished, is to promote me, the Dragunheart. But the rumors about what I’ve done are far worse.

My best guess is with no clear leader, the Draguns fled, too.

Some may stick together in small flocks.

But with no governing, who’s to stop them from doing whatever they want with toushana? ”

“You talk about them like they’re Darkbearers.”

“A Darkbearer is bound to toushana. A Dragun just borrows toushana from the Sphere’s magic. The only real difference between them is a code of honor. Without the brotherhood, that’s gone. Toushana is enticing, even for those of us trained to use it.”

“I’m not so sure it’s that cut-and-dry.” I peer through the window. The place looks like it’s been ransacked, with overturned furniture and the art on the walls in pieces on the floor. “Would Draguns come back for people in the Cells who were going to die anyway?”

“Protocol is to establish a new spot and sanitize this place.” He gazes inside again. “Whatever is happening isn’t protocol.”

“Get me in there. If Knox is gone, maybe there are clues to where she went.”

He tugs the doors harder.

“Use toushana.”

He tenses.

“If you won’t, I will.” I am about to nudge him aside when he flattens his palms, and a weak whiff of black unfurls in his grip, much fainter than before.

“Back,” he says.

“You’re scared of it. It works best when you trust it.”

“Quell, it’s more complicated than that. This is the Sphere’s magic. More toushana than you’ve ever touched. Even if I wanted to, I can’t give in to that much power at once.” He flinches, and the magic in his hands grows. “Something’s happening,” he says.

I watch closely, imagining commanding that much toushana. “What does it feel like?”

“Like my flesh is wrapped around an iceberg.” More black seeps from him.

“And somehow it burns like holding the sun in my bare hands. When it flows through me, I don’t feel it.

I don’t feel anything.” Shadows shift the air around us.

“I cease to exist completely and the world is—” The growing fog billows to the ground.

I reach for his wrist to push his hand onto the locked hotel doors but stop myself, remembering the risk of getting too close. We share a glance. Something burns in him that has nothing to do with magic.

“To the door,” I tell him. His magic slinks along the ground.

Magic tugs in my chest toward him, and I put more distance between us.

His magic eases closer to the hotel’s glass, blackening every inch of the pavement it touches, subduing everything in its path.

So much power in one body. No wonder it’s killing him.

I glance at the spot where his wound hides beneath his shirt. “Does it hurt? What do you feel?”

“Darkness. Everything is unfeeling darkness.” When the shadows connect with the glass doors, they shatter. A shrill alarm rings.

He stares as if he’s seen a ghost. “I didn’t want to break in.”

“You directed the Sphere’s toushana with control.”

Sirens wail in the distance, and I urge us inside. Jordan presses his talon key against the elevator button, and the doors open to take us down. His head rests backward, his stare dead ahead.

“What happens when you use the Sphere’s proper magic?”

“I don’t know, it’s been so long since I’ve tried.”

The elevator doors open to Dragun Headquarters, and my heart stammers at the scene in front of me.

What was a pristine lobby looks like a war zone.

The Brotherhood’s sleek marble walls are scorched and cracked in several places.

The glass partitions, which used to house cubicles where Jordan’s desk was, have been destroyed.

The floor is an ocean of glass confetti.

“Who would do this?” I ask, then the answer hits me. With the state of the world, who wouldn’t?

The Order leadership is corrupt but not complex.

Four Headmistresses rule their Houses like dictators as long as they honor the Three Rites, Rules for Cotillion, and Internship.

Most other matters are handled by the Dragunhead, not as their superior but as their equal.

One transcontinental Order, five in power over it all.

And now one is dead. I swallow hard.

One was caught red-handed trying to rob the Sphere.

Another is a prisoner to her own son.

And the fourth is keeping her head down.

To make matters worse, the one protective force in charge of maintaining order and discipline has disbanded. Their leader has vanished.

“Literally everyone has a reason to be angry.”

“Things are out of hand,” he says. “In a way, I’ve done this.”

“Not our problem.” I rush over to the reception area.

Behind a sleek wide desk are large office doors engraved with a crest bearing the sigils of each House.

But the horror behind the desk stops me dead in my tracks.

A body. Or the shell of one. A hollow suit of skin lies in the chair like a deflated balloon.

Jordan mutters under his breath, moving closer. My toushana bristles, tremoring, urging me backward, far away from whatever twisted magic this is.

“What happened to her?” I ask, but he is frozen in shock. “I’m sorry. You liked her, if I remember.”

Jordan doesn’t respond. He’s pulling open her desk drawers, which are all empty. Too clean. Then he tugs on a bottom drawer that won’t open. As he skims for a key, I pull on the thread of cold still buzzing in my veins, and to my relief a puff of toushana drips from my hands. It’s open in seconds.

Jordan pulls out a stack of photographs, all taken from the same vantage point, standing over a body at its feet. He flips through photos of the dead at various locations, with closed eyes and suns branded on their eyelids. Darkbearer attacks.

“She was looking into their return,” he says.

“But why hide evidence Darkbearers were on the rise?” This is the place where people investigate magical crime.

“I’m not sure.” Before he can take us another moment off track, I step into his path.

“The Shadow Cells. Knox. Police will come through those doors any moment, and there are all kinds of things here we don’t want to have to explain. We have to go. Now.”

We rush toward the stairs to the lowest level of the building, underground, and my gut is in my throat. A cold seeps over my body so biting my bones shiver when we reach the basement floor. I fidget nervously, but my heart slows at the steep drop in temperature as the Shadow Cells come into view.

We walk the long aisle of cells sealed with a writhing veil of mist in place of a door. The curious vapor turns and twists like a curtain of smoke. I touch it carefully.

Blood drains from my limbs, and the bones in my hand throb. A scream bites my lips as I try to stretch my fingers, but I’ve lost all sense of feeling in them. My hand dangles from my wrist, unable to move.

Jordan reaches for me before closing his hand into a fist. “Quell, no—”

I rub my hand as blood rushes back to it, and I can flex it again. “What kind of magic is that?”

“It’s a way we’ve manipulated toushana to paralyze and repel. Stick with me.” He stops at a cell and flips out a fire dagger from his waist. Flames erupt from it before he slashes the veil in half to reveal a familiar woman in a metal chair.

“Knox!” I rush inside. Her cell is piled with trays of food covered in bugs and a nearly empty water trough leaking water across the floor.

The last time I saw her, she’d found out Yagrin and I were lying to her about who we were and why we were at her safe house.

She and Willam made Yagrin leave for the betrayal.

I chose to leave as well to find my mom, but it still felt like saying goodbye to people who could have been like a family.

“Quell?” She blinks in the sudden light flooding her cell. “Is that really you?” She pulls me over with a tight tug at my wrist, studying me closely before a smile bows her lips. “It’s so good to see you again.”

“You’re okay.”

“I have seen worse days. It’s actually been quiet the last several weeks.”

The brotherhood just left them here to die. My stomach turns. I search my pockets for some morsel of food or something but realize I have nothing.

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Mm, not so sure that’s in my best interest.” Knox turns her attention to Jordan, who is hovering near the door. “Mr. Wexton, am I correct that you’ve finally accepted your fate?”

“We need your help.” Jordan tucks his dagger away. “We can talk about my fate later.” The strain in his voice rattles my pulse. “You have to come with us.”

“Please,” I add.

She moves closer to Jordan and grabs a fistful of his shirt before he can resist. He swallows hard, and I can’t tell if it’s irritation or fear. Her chilly blue stare roves his chest.

“You foolish boy! What have you done?” She looks at me. “You went along with this?”

“There was no other choice.” I explain the chaos that happened at Dlaminaugh months ago. But the concern carved around Knox’s eyes doesn’t change. “I didn’t expect you to care what happens to magic.”

“I don’t care about magic. I care about what the threat of its loss will make people do.”

Jordan’s gaze hits the ground. “It’s carnage out there.”

Knox exhales sharply. “If one person can steal all of magic, anyone will think they can. The world is after you, boy. You better run.”

“We have a plan,” I say. “Show her.”

Jordan lifts his shirt, showing her the wound. She inhales sharply but doesn’t flinch.

“We want to have a safe house Healer heal it. After that we plan to get the magic out of him and into something else.”

“I couldn’t let Beaulah win,” Jordan says.

“We came here because there is no one else I trust more,” I say.

A clang somewhere on the floor above us shatters the silence.

“Will you come?” Jordan asks. “Please.”

She gazes between us and sighs. “We should get moving.”

Jordan grabs the handles of Knox’s chair and rolls her quickly toward the elevator. We rush inside and up.

Still haunted by what we saw earlier, I whisper, “What happened to Maei?”

He tightens his mouth.

“Stop protecting me,” I tell him. “We’re a team.”

When the doors open to the lobby, he says, “Her soul’s been ripped from her body.

She was an Ambroser. They’ve advanced magic somehow to allow them to roam postmortem in spectral bodies, the academic texts say.

I’ve read they look like shadows to the untrained eye.

Whoever killed Maei killed her body and her soul so that she can’t come back as one of their ancestors.

So that whatever she knows is gone forever. ”

I gasp. “How do you kill someone’s soul?”

“No idea.”

“Who could do that kind of magic?” I ask.

“Someone playing a game we are still learning the rules to.”