Page 2 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

One

Jordan

Cold eats away at my bones as I search for Lady Ruby.

The Sphere’s magic sludges through me, wrapping around my spine as I move my hand to my heart, which has been wounded in both the literal and figurative senses.

The urge to sleep in a sunlit field of fresh jasmine and never wake up pulls at me.

But the magic brings a face to mind, with dazzling brown eyes that glitter with defiance. My heart twinges with longing.

“Quell.” Her name slips from my lips like a song. A wish.

I should be with her. That was the plan.

Not here, in Washington, DC, hunting down a notorious Trader who might be able to help me contain the magic festering inside me. My ribs begin to pulse with pain. But Quell is the Headmistress of House of Marionne now. If I lose the Sphere’s magic—Quell dies.

Saving her is what matters most.

After everything I’ve done, I must. I try to blink her memory away and focus on the bleeding skyline of dilapidated buildings before me.

The Sixth Ward’s lively retail district and vibrant nightlife of east DC used to pulse with the city’s heartbeat.

But the few buildings still standing are boarded up and tagged with angry slashes of paint: distorted House sigils and elaborately detailed suns.

The silence reeks of death. I move carefully through the slick streets, past torn-down streetlights, busted-out windows, and the singed metal hulls of what used to be cars. The stench of rotting flesh stings my nostrils, stopping me dead in my tracks. Three bodies are tied to a storefront.

Blood for blood is written across them in bright yellow paint.

The few windows of the shop that haven’t been broken are painted with the same number over and over: 1822. The year the first House was founded by the Upper Cabinet. Also the year Misa, the ancient magic city, fell and most of the residents were burned in their beds.

My throat thickens. But it’s the suns branded onto the corpses’ eyelids that make bile lurch in my gut. An old ritual of Darkbearers, meant to light a path to the afterlife; an act of mercy, they called it.

“Deaus misereateur.”

My hand moves from my throbbing side to the scar inches below my heart, where the Sphere’s magic disappeared inside me several weeks earlier.

The gash has spread into a meaty, purpling bruise across my chest and down my left side beneath my heart.

Every day the flesh there thins, hanging like draped fabric over my ribs.

Toushana-bound Darkbearers…

On the loose…

Guilt threatens to choke me as my head swivels.

There was no one here to stop them. My side throbs and I grit my teeth.

I can’t save Quell if the Sphere’s vessel—me—is rotting from the inside out.

I need to be healed. Then I need the magic out of me and into something safe.

I tighten my fist and keep walking, staying out of sight, skimming for some indication of where the infamous Lady Ruby could be.

There are stories of a legendary Retentor stone with healing properties powerful enough to mend any severe magical wound.

The hero always saved the day, rescuing his love from peril and curing whatever ill magic befell them with this elusive stone.

Lore always has a seed of truth. Lady Ruby will know if the stone’s real.

She’s a Trader who’s been on the brotherhood’s wanted list for years.

The rarer the item, the harder it is to procure, the higher the chance Ruby’s tried to get her hands on it or knows how to.

But she never meets for a trade in the same place twice.

I couldn’t even find a consistent description of her.

It’s taken me all these weeks just to suss out a whiff of where she might be.

Tonight she’s supposed to be meeting up for a trade here.

I skirt a fleur-de-lis drawn across the sidewalk in a red that is not paint and walk quicker, the Sphere’s cold magic inside me stirring.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

My heart stutters at footsteps echoing mine.

I turn. But there is only darkness behind me.

I continue walking.

Clack. Clack. Clack. My jaw ticks. I despise games.

Slipping into the shadow of the streetlights beneath an awning of a building, I listen for the direction of my follower, summoning my Dragun senses.

A stir of hot magic rustles inside me like a reed tugged by the wind.

Heat blossoms in my chest, pushing the Sphere’s toushana aside.

My senses sharpen for the first time in a long time.

The world comes alive in a symphony of sounds. The footsteps have stopped, but I can hear breathing that isn’t my own. My bones tremor, the Sphere’s magic pulsing inside me with its own heartbeat.

A sudden pain shoots up my spine, a thousand icy needles scrape my insides. The Sphere’s warm magic retreats as the sounds and sights begin to dull.

The breathing quiets.

I ease out a shaky breath. I am broken.

Dueling magics, proper and dark, have lived inside me, constantly at war with one another. The warm thrum of my own magic is gone. I can’t feel it at all. When I reach for magic, the Sphere’s magic answers, weighty, like wearing shoes filled with lead.

After the fight at the Sphere, as the dregs of the Sphere’s magic finished siphoning into me, I lay there, unable to move.

When I reopened my eyes, I was somewhere else, all alone and in excruciating pain.

I thought I was dead. But by the fourth day of waking up with life in my limbs, I dragged myself up, determined to form some sort of plan.

Quell and Abby were supposed to meet me at the Tavern near Chateau Soleil.

But I couldn’t be near them in this condition, this unsure about what the Sphere’s magic inside me was doing.

I refuse to accidentally hurt anyone, but especially them.

Especially Quell. My eavesdropping from one northeastern Tavern to the next led me here.

Someone crosses the street up ahead before disappearing between the buildings. Fear seizes my chest. I touch the cured paint and notice it’s peeling in several places. Whoever destroyed this neighborhood did it some time ago.

I hold on to the feeling of magic inside me as I close in on a girl in slick pants, a flowy teal shirt, and a silver diadem arced over her head.

Too young to be Ruby.

She dashes down the alleyway, and I catch up to her, grabbing her by the wrist. Cold snakes through my bones to my fingertips, ready to strike.

“Let me go!” She tugs against my hold. The girl’s a living work of art.

Her face has been painted like a canvas.

Strokes of every color coil and twist around one another across her olive skin.

Icy rouge on her cheeks, earthy tones slope beneath her eyes.

Sharp, bright pink paints her lips. Gems adorn her thick brows, trailing around her face and neck, disappearing into her clothes.

“An Emoter.” Prodigiously skilled painters who use colors to reveal emotion.

My grip on her slips and she rounds her wrist, freeing herself before clamping her hold on me.

She cocks her head, and surveys my chest with curiosity, not malice.

I’m not sure if it’s the suddenness of her touch or the way it only makes me miss Quell more, but I don’t immediately resist.

“What’s your name?” I ask as she shows me her palms, which have turned blue.

“I’ll tell you my name if you tell me what makes you so sad.”

I shift on my feet. She’s far too young but maybe…“Ruby?”

Recognition glints in her eyes as she scopes the surroundings, looking for the Trader. My instincts were right. But she knows her.

“You’re meeting her tonight,” I say.

“The temperature is dropping. Can you feel it?” As she smooths her palms against her pants, the color of her palms returns to her olive skin tone.

“I’m Harmony, Secundus, fourth of my blood, Emoter candidate, sensor type. Oralia.”

“I’m—”

“I know who you are.” She gazes around again. Shadows begin to shift. The darkness thickens. “Look, if I were you—”

Silver protrudes from her throat and the sentence finishes with a gurgle. Her body hits the ground with a thud. Her attacker lunges for me, a fresh blade slashing in my direction, when several things happen at once.