Page 23 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Eighteen

Jordan

Yani is expecting me when I descend the basement stairs.

The room is sparsely furnished but clean.

There’s a bed, a full bathroom, and a small table with two stools.

Yani cleans a scrape on her arm. She wears dark red pants with a red corset over a sheer long-sleeved top, which is torn at the shoulder.

Her diadem sparkles, gunmetal silver with bright blue gems. It’s the only part of her that doesn’t look haggard.

I set the change of clothes Knox gave me for her and a plate of dinner on the table.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

“Sometimes it feels like you’ve forgotten who I am.”

Beaulah trained her to wear masks well. But ironically, it was being with Yani that forced me to learn how to see through them.

“I hope you weren’t too shaken up.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s as unconvincing as she was the night I stepped in to save her life.

I was sixteen. She and some Perl peers dragged me out to attend one of Charlie’s raids.

When she tried to single-handedly apprehend a dangerous target, he almost choked her to death right there in the middle of a nightclub.

I stepped in, and Charlie showed up. The target let her go, but the moment moved on as if Yani wasn’t just gasping for air.

Charlie didn’t even address it. But I did.

Even then, Yani didn’t flinch. She was “fine.” It wasn’t until she snuck into my room that night and curled up next to me that I really saw through her.

“I know who you are better than you do sometimes,” I say.

She laughs. “You still flatter yourself, I see.” She moves from the stool to the edge of the table. “You think these safe house freaks are going to kill me?”

“Depends. Are you ready to be honest about why you’re here?”

“Mother made me leave. It’s true.” There is an earnestness that gleams in her eyes. But she fiddles with a silver buckle on her corset.

“I remember when we first met,” I say. “Everything with you is a strategy.”

“You’re still not over that kiss?” She grinned, a real smile that hugs her eyes.

“You walked up to me at my birthday party and kissed me! I was fifteen, surrounded by all my friends. And then you didn’t say a word to me for a year.”

“You loved it.”

It was the only thing I thought about for the next year. A girl kissed me. And not just any girl, but the one everyone whispered about being so pretty. Did that mean she liked me? She didn’t talk to me after that. Did that mean I was a bad kisser? Back then my head spun every time I thought of it.

“It was an angle,” I say. “You admitted as much when we…”

“Broke up.”

The two syllables crack in my head like thunder, taking me back to that vicious fight we had.

A year after the kiss, I’d worked up the courage to approach her and ask her to the Tidwell.

We danced all night. I was sixteen, recklessly confident, well mannered.

She was into Jordan with the big ego. Gone was the insecure boy she’d made blush at his birthday party.

By the end of the ball, I dropped her off and told her I wanted to kiss her again.

Just one kiss could last me another year, I told myself.

She gave me permission and spent the night with me.

The next morning I smelled like her. We only saw each other a few times a year.

It felt like I was dangling from a string.

She was the cat, I was the toy, no matter how hard I tried to maintain the upper hand.

She insisted we shouldn’t get too attached, and yet all I could think of when she was gone was her.

She never asked me for loyalty and shamed the idea, never reciprocating when I said I loved her.

But back then, no matter who I was with, it was Yani I imagined.

“I don’t know if I’d call it a breakup, because it wasn’t really a relationship.”

She admitted that at my fifteenth birthday party Beaulah had told her to get close to me. She knew I’d be Ward one day in House of Marionne, and she wanted eyes on me to make sure that my loyalties hadn’t wavered.

Yani was dead to me then.

And I’ve never looked back.

“Sixteen-year-old Jordan wouldn’t have said that.”

My cheeks heat, images of her I should not remember flashing in my mind. She hops off the table, moving toward me, and Quell’s warning plays on repeat in my mind.

“Come on, Jay. We were fun, weren’t we?”

“I don’t look back on us with the fondness you do.”

She throws down a cotton swab dirtied with blood. “How could you say that? It was me breaking your heart that turned it to steel.” Her chin rises. “I wear it like a badge of honor.”

“So what is your angle this time? Coming here. What badges are you auditioning for now?”

She steeples her hands.

“The truth.”

Her expression shifts, the mischievous purse of her lips melting into a deadpan stare. Her gaze drifts past me. She turns her back to me, pulling at the stack of clothes I set down. She yanks the ratty string at her back, and the bow from her corset comes undone.

“The truth is, Beaulah believes you still have feelings for me.” She wiggles in her top, loosening it before reaching inside the corset, pulling at the bone of it.

Out comes a small blade. It clangs on the floor.

“She says a first love doesn’t just go away.

” Yani pulls at the next bone in her corset.

Another blade. When she’s done, there are half a dozen razor-sharp daggers on the table.

“She sent me here to sway you to my side and bring you and magic back to her.” The shapeless corset falls to the floor, and she pulls the sheer top off. “And to kill anyone who gets in my way.”

“And you have no intentions to obey?”

“Not this time. She didn’t do right by Charlie, doing experiments to bind him to toushana, letting him die like that.

I can’t get past it. I said what I had to to get out of there.

” She holds out her arms. “There. I have nothing else to hide.” She turns in a circle before snatching the dress from the table.

There is a mark on her back: a cracked column wrapped in a vine of roses.

She tosses the dress overhead before plopping on a stool and dragging her dinner over to her.

“I’ve never seen a mark like that before.”

She hunches over her plate, shoveling food. “Yeah. And?”

“Does it mean anything?”

“It means everything.” Metal scrapes her plate. “It’s the mark of the future. Adola’s mark.”

A shiver runs up my arms, and it sends my heart knocking into my ribs. Adola, making a move for her own independence. Could House of Perl be an ally? Or was this another layer to Yani’s master manipulation? “What do you know?”

“Just that I picked the right side. That’s all.”

I watch her eat in silence, finishing every crumb on her plate.

“How long did it take to find us?”

“Audubon wasn’t exactly eager to help. He made me…” She grimaces. “Entertain him before giving up the address.”

“You should have stabbed his eyes out.”

“I carved them out of his skull.” She takes another big bite.

I smile, and cold licks my insides, the Sphere’s dark magic stirring. “Good.” A beat passes.

“She picked me first, you know? For her little experiment. Putting toushana in a person. But after the first session, I told her no.” She sits taller.

She may lie to my aunt, but standing up to her?

I’m not sure I buy it. However, if she believes I’m starting to trust her, that will only loosen her tongue.

“Do you know anything about the Dragunhead’s whereabouts?”

“I’ve heard things. But I couldn’t tell you what’s true. He hasn’t been at Hartsboro. Beaulah’s done with him, or he with her. That’s all I know.” She pushes her plate away. “I also hear the darkness could eclipse the sun soon.” She smiles darkly.

Darkbearers rising up, taking over. Impossible.

Before the brotherhood crumbled, our raids of safe houses turned up many descendants of Darkbearers and some actual practicing Darkbearers: the target with the red ball cap at Ya?uper Rea; Stryker, the boy my aunt kidnapped.

How many more is Beaulah protecting? The Sixth Ward comes to mind.

And the other neighborhoods ransacked by dark magic that Quell mentioned.

If this is true, Darkbearers would have to be organizing somehow, somewhere.

I grind my teeth at the guilt twisting in my chest. I should be out there, using the power I do have to stop this carnage.

“Scared silent?” She mocks me.

“Magic is in my hands. I fear nothing.” I block her view of my ribs.

“What side do you think your pretty little do-gooder will end up on if it gets ugly?”

“You assume you know the side she’s on now.”

Yani throws her head back in laughter. I’ve gotten all out of her that I can for now.

“I can’t make you any promises about what Willam is going to do with you. These people don’t like me much either. Be honest for once. See where that gets you.” I gather her daggers to take them with me. I owe her nothing. But every person against Beaulah—if she’s honest—is an arrow in our quiver.

“I can help you and Quell if you give me a chance,” she says. “What is your plan with the Sphere’s magic?”

I start up the stairs.

“You and Quell will never work, you know.”

I climb faster.

“She’s too caring, and you’re rotten on the inside.”

“Wouldn’t you love that to be true.”

“You being rotten? I couldn’t care less.”

“I meant Quell and me.”

I know I’m rotten on the inside.

When I reach the ground floor, I secure the locks on the basement door, where Willam is waiting. I tell him everything Yani admitted about Audubon and Beaulah’s real intentions for sending her here, and give him her weapons. I leave out my cousin Adola’s alleged mark.

“Do you trust her?” he asks.

“Not for a second. Do you trust me a bit more now?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” He indicates the den nearby, where Knox and Quell are sitting, waiting. He’s made his decision about whether I can stay. Quell and I meet eyes as I sit down beside her. Her expression doesn’t look promising.