Page 29 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Twenty-Three

Quell

I refuse to put Knox in a session room. Knox and I exit the service elevator near the kitchens to the second floor and make our way to my old room.

But the window is busted, and there is a wretched smell inside.

My fingers graze my old dusty bedsheet. There are still two beds in here, where Abby and I dished on all the House gossip, stressed over exams, and where Jordan kissed me for the first time.

I lock the door and try the next room in the Belles Wing.

It’s tolerable. Knox enters and gives the room a cursory glance.

“You’ve literally made history.”

I laugh.

“I’m serious.” Knox inspects the view from the window.

She runs her hand along the dagger stand, desk, dresser, and ornate framed mirror.

“It’s just regular furniture.” She chuckles, but tears rim her eyes.

“All the people they hurt, the families they’ve destroyed, to keep their haves and have-nots separate.

You’d think you’d at least have fancy furniture.

A golden toilet, maybe?” She cackles again, so hard it’s contagious. I barrel over.

“Your toilet was much better,” I say when the mood settles.

“This was a bold move, Quell. Willam will come around. Since I found him half dead, discarded by Beaulah Perl’s Draguns, he’s only set foot outside of our houses for food. I always went to trade and deal.”

Bumps skitter up my arms as I remember the cracked column scar at Willam’s throat.

Perhaps he isn’t the same Willam she knew before she was imprisoned.

Because he has left the safe house. He’s at least been to a tattoo shop recently to cover his scar.

But I keep my mouth shut. She wants me to be hopeful. And I want that, too.

“He won’t be easily won over. He can’t. Or he’d be a terrible protector. You understand?”

“I do.”

She pets my shoulder. “Your mother always believed you’d do great things.”

My gaze hits the floor. I believe that. But I’ve realized since binding with toushana, she also made me spend my whole life hiding. “You talk about her as if you knew her well.”

“You know what it’s like in our house. That shouldn’t surprise you. Willam knew her even better.”

I sit on the bed, resting my chin on my hands, trying to make sense of this mother who saw something in me. She feared for my life because of how different I am. It was her way of loving me, but it also taught me to erase myself. Something I had to fight to overcome.

“They used to play chess until the wee hours of the night. Your mother was very good. She was like a sister to him for the short time we had her. Sometimes Willam would sing outside your door to help you get to sleep. Did you know that?”

I knead my hands together until the color leaves my fingers.

She moves to the window. “Tell me about that rose garden.”

I join her, gazing out at the overgrown bushes.

“Your mother loved those roses. She talked about them at dinner once, and no one believed her. A rose that didn’t smell.”

I nod because I can’t find words.

“She said she ran away a lot when she was a teen, returning after a few days. But each time, she told me, your grandmother would plant black roses in her garden, hoping that wherever she was, if trouble found her, the roses would help her escape death.”

“If only it worked.”

Knox grabs my hand. “Rhea told us she wasn’t ever going back, joking about how many roses your grandmother would be planting.

When you both left, the papers talked about Headmistress Marionne going on an indefinite sabbatical for mental health.

Her fitness to lead was being questioned because she insisted on spending months uprooting her entire garden and replanting it.

By hand. Alone. Your and your mother’s absence were mentioned in the article, so I knew you hadn’t returned home. Odd, don’t you think?”

I watch the garden, recalling the strange way the roses seem to know who I am, ruminating over the grandmother I thought I knew.

Had I known her at all? I stare, speechless, into the bleakness beyond the window, a once-beautiful garden choked by weeds.

My grandmother kept so many secrets. So did my mom.

I didn’t know them at all. Toushana tremors in my bones, and the roses outside tilt in my direction.

A knock at the door makes my heart leap. It’s Willam.

“Everyone’s tucked away for the evening.” Willam strides inside. “Quell, I was short with you earlier, and I shouldn’t have been. I’m sorry.”

Questions claw at my skull. The Healer. Jordan. I need Willam’s help. But now is not the time.

“Let’s talk once you’ve settled,” I say. “In an hour or so.”

Willam sighs, but agrees. He might need time to digest. He might actually care deeply about me and just be scared. But I can only give him so much time. Jordan’s life and my magic are on the line.

And two women died so that I could be here to fight for what I want.

When I leave Willam and Knox, I find Dexler and ask her to ensure we have a private space to talk.

Then I knock on the door of Jordan’s old room in the Gents Wing, but no one answers.

I wander the halls of House of Marionne, scorched and barely recognizable, until I find Jordan, who is warming his hands over a fire in a sitting room near what used to be the grand ballroom.

He invites me to sit in a nearby chair, but that distance feels like an ocean. Heat from the fire billows up my legs, and it gives me the confidence to slide onto the settee beside him, desperate for his comfort, even if we can’t touch.

The toushana in my body is silent as I move closer to the fire.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks.

“Knox gave me a much-needed pep talk.”

“Good.”

That’s when I notice a folded-up copy of the morning’s Debs Daily in his hands.

On the front is a picture of Audubon’s mansion, burned to the ground.

There is a smaller picture beside it: a bird’s-eye view of the singed rubble arranged into the shape of a sun with a filled center. The mark of a Darkbearer.

I snatch it from him and find two huge photographs inside of the Dragunhead’s face and Jordan’s side by side.

Answers Demanded, the title reads. Neither could be reached for comment.

“He was always a troubled boy but grew worse under his aunt’s mentorship,” says Richard Wexton, father to Dragunheart Jordan Wexton.

The interview goes on about how Jordan is a puppet for Beaulah Perl, blaming him for the world falling apart.

It wraps up with vivid images of Unmarked bodies turning up across cities ransacked in the last few days.

I throw the paper into the fire. “You can’t believe any of that. It is not your fault.”

“If anyone should have been there to defend the innocent in the Sixth Ward, it should have been me. I took an oath.”

“Yes, to protect and honor magic! Which is what you’re doing.”

“Still doesn’t feel good to hear.”

It’s like they want him to crack.

We’re no closer to healing him than we were when I intercepted him in the Sixth Ward. Now the Marked world is publicly pinning every vile crime on him.

“Jordan, I’m going to make Willam reach out to his Healer.”

“Sure.”

Encouraging him falls flat. I move even closer to the fire, recalling how warmth chases away toushana, and I reach to run my fingers through his hair. But he tips his head away.

“Warmth helps keep toushana calm and under control.”

“We shouldn’t take chances.” He eyes the few inches of space between us on the seat and stands, moving to the mantel. “Have Dimara and the others ever used magic? Or has it all faded? They could be useful around here to get this place in better shape if you were thinking of—”

“I’m not.” I join him at the fire. “Jordan, I’ve lived with toushana in my body my entire life. I survived this place with it. I can help you understand it more.”

“I don’t want to understand it. I want it out of me.”

“You need to understand it to control it.

“You haven’t had this much toushana in you.”

“Fire helps. Please.”

He faces me. “Fine. I’m listening.”

“Magic, as you once told me, hates indecision. Toushana is the same way. It wants to be used.”

“Magic strengthens with use. If I use any magic by choice, it won’t be that one.”

“When dark magic is inside you, using it is how you control it. That’s how you bend it to your will.

As a dragun you summoned toushana from outside your body and expelled it, to keep it from attaching to you.

Now, Jordan, you still have to use it to gain more control over how it behaves inside you. ”

He is silent. So I remind him about the forest behind Chateau Soleil, where I saw him push away toushana for the first time, and how I found solace there, satiating my toushana’s need to be fed. “I can show you.”

“No. It’s already stronger somehow, without me even trying. I can feel it.”

I let it go. Too much, too fast. First we need to heal him.

Jordan lifts his shirt to examine his side. Purpled, blackening skin hugs his ribs.

“I wonder if, since you’re not feeding the Sphere’s toushana enough, it’s feeding on you.”

Jordan gazes into the fire. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel. Like I’m not in control. Do you know how long it’s taken me to find some measure of control in my life?” Flames dance in his eyes, and it’s the first time in a long time I’ve seen him look scared.

Nightmares from Hartsboro flash through my memory, and it draws me a step closer to him.

“This could kill me, Quell. The pain radiates through me so often now it’s become how I expect to feel each day. I’m not sure how much longer I can—”

I settle a hand, fingertips first, on his back. His heart pounds, but he doesn’t shrug my touch away, so I lay my full hand on him, right beneath his shoulders. They sink, and I press my body against the back of him, holding him. He sucks in a breath at the suddenness of my hug and becomes rigid.

“It’s okay. This near to a fire, I think it’s okay.”

He swallows and allows me to rope my arms around him, carefully hooking them. His panic thuds through my body.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” I tell him, because I don’t think anyone’s ever told him something like that before.

“When it pours out of me, it brings out something in me that…” He shakes his head.

“Trust yourself more than you do.”

He takes one of my hands, accepting this gesture of comfort, ignoring his worry for a second.

And it feels like hearing I love you for the very first time.

He presses my hand tightly to his chest. I nestle closer to him, remembering when he saw my rose gold diadem in the ballroom just paces away.

And though he only had half a picture of who I was then, he admired my power and strength.

A strength he clings to now with his fingers laced in my grip.

I have missed this. Holding the person I love.

Being this close to the only person alive who loves me back.

“We tempt fate, lingering like this.” He unfolds himself from me, and before I can protest Dexler’s voice rings behind us.

“Willam and Knox are waiting.”

Dexler cleared her desk for the meeting. Willam and Knox sit across from us. The air in the room is more rigid than a whale-boned corset.

“Were you able to get a quick nap?” I ask to break the ice.

“Not easily. But we made the best of it.”

“I apologize the House isn’t in a more fit shape for guests.” I dig a nail into my palm, realizing I’m apologizing for someone else’s mess.

“The House was abandoned. Of course it’s not in its best shape,” Willam says, and my cheeks burn. Knox glares at him. I stomach the dig.

“How about we just skip to it?” I say. “While we’re here, you’ll be expected to help out.”

“We assumed,” Knox says.

“And part of helping out is seeing what we need and using your skills, your resources, to get them.”

Willam mutters something, but before I can push, Jordan asks, “How certain are you that Dimara, the twins, Rein, and Kedd can’t access magic?”

Willam’s nostrils flare. “We don’t use magic. It’s not safe.”

“How do you know they don’t want to learn magic, Willam?”

“You overstep, Jordan.” He braces his elbows on the desk.

“I don’t think I have,” Jordan says, matching Willam’s posture. “I’m not sure I’ve stepped far enough.”

I grab Jordan’s arm and squeeze. He’s cold. So very cold. His anger burns in my chest.

“It’s a valid question,” I say, trying to reassert some common ground. “But we won’t force what we think on you.”

“We don’t even know what you think about us having our own House,” Willam says. “I mentioned that to you, Quell, and you haven’t even brought it up.” He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “You bring us here for safe haven, but now you’re questioning how useful we can be.”

“And you think I’m overstepping,” Jordan mutters.

“We don’t want to be absorbed by your House.” Willam stands. “We want a real say. Otherwise, we will leave. We have other safe houses ready to help.”

“Sit down, Willam,” Knox says impatiently. But he pounds his fists on the desk.

“Sit.” Knox rubs her temples.

He does, fuming. “I meant what I said.”

“You’re nervous about trusting us,” Jordan says.

“People who have persecuted us our entire lives,” Willam spits. “Yeah.”

“I am growing tired of him,” Jordan tells me, shadows behind his eyes. “What have you done to show us you’re trustworthy? The one thing we’ve asked of you, you haven’t done.” Jordan’s hand moves to his side, and he flinches slightly. He huffs, exasperated, and storms out.

Now it’s my fist pounding the desk. I understand Willam’s hesitation.

I didn’t love Jordan’s delivery. But Willam’s resistance to healing Jordan and saving magic makes no sense.

This has gone far enough. “Houses or no Houses, none of it matters if magic is lost. Jordan is dying. Will you really do nothing?”

Knox is on the edge of her seat. All eyes are on me.

I stand and shove my chair to the table. “A relationship starts with a step,” I say. “I’ve made one. It’s your turn. Summon your Healer. Until then, there’s nothing to discuss.”

I leave them there. I have to stick to my convictions. We need a Healer. And fast. If that makes me a bad person in Willam’s eyes, so be it.