Page 30 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Twenty-Four

Jordan

It’s been an entire day since I stormed out of the meeting with Willam, and I’m still on edge. My side is bothering me, so I haven’t left my room, haven’t seen Quell. And Abby hasn’t shown up either. I hope she’s alright.

The sun sets outside my window as cold moves through me, scratching my bones.

I adjust the way I’m sitting, but it doesn’t help.

So I get up and pace. Each step makes the space beneath my ribs ache more.

When I pull up my shirt, a rancid smell hits my nose.

The rotted flesh has spread. The skin around the wound is healthy and smooth.

But it bleeds to black around my stomach, running down my side over my ribs.

Quell said to use it to control it. Is controlling it how I stop it from spreading?

I swallow a dry breath.

There’s a stretch of splintered paneling alongside the window in my room.

Carefully, I inspect it. Here goes nothing.

Unsure how to control toushana inside the body, I roll the tension out of my shoulders and focus on the hum of magic inside, like I would with proper magic.

Warm granules flutter inside me like blustered leaves.

Then a pressure shifts, and cold billows through my sternum.

Toushana wades through me, rippling through my limbs into my hands.

Visualize to mobilize. As much as I hate her, I can’t get the ring of my aunt’s words out of my head. Magic responds to our intentions. I hold an image in my mind of magic bleeding through my hands.

The chill inside me stirs violently.

I hold on to the sensation, tugging it to my palms. Fingers stretch between my ribs. My hands tingle. Then suddenly, in my palm awaits a whiff of darkness. Magic is nothing without its wielder. Command it without hesitation.

The shadows swell.

Numbness slinks up each notch of my spine, chasing away every warm feeling.

I press the writhing magic against the wall beside my window, and it blackens, decaying on the spot.

Magic pulses through me with an aching, icy bite.

Rot spreads, racing up the wall like hungry flames. Toushana licks my insides.

Destroy it all.

My heart pumps faster as toushana coils inside me like a snake. I tremble, a deathly cold wrapping around me.

My vision blurs.

Fog forms at my lips, my body buzzing with a power like I’ve never felt.

No place has ever truly valued you.

A picture forms in my mind of a cloud of darkness engulfing the Chateau as several things happen at once.

A crash of glass.

A whip of wind.

The world is dark, fading into a memory.

Wails scratch my ears.

My frail arms hug my shaky legs. A familiar face breaks through the forest. My aunt, holding one of her wolves.

“I’m right here,” I shout to her, waving. She unclips the wolf’s leash, and it charges at me. Its paws hit me in the chest, and my back slams the ground. Snarling jaws snap at my face.

“React, nephew.”

I breathe harder and reach for the wolf’s face, clawing and kicking. Its teeth rip into my shoulder, and I moan in pain.

“It’s him or you, nephew. End him. Use that fear, make it anger.”

Heat burns through my body, numbing the pain.

A strange blackness rushes through the air to my fingers, and the wolf howls in my grip.

The rest is a fever dream. I blink, and there lies a pile of rotted bones.

My aunt touches my temples, sparking a shoot of pain in my head.

She signals for someone to join us. A Dragun I don’t recognize comes out of the shadows and brings a magic I’ve never seen near me.

My head throbs harder.

I blink, and my room materializes back into focus.

The exterior wall in my room is gone. The window that was once there is broken in decayed pieces on the floor.

A gust of outside air urges me to my feet.

I gape at my hands, which have turned purple.

I stagger backward, feeling my chest for a heartbeat.

Trust yourself more than you do, Quell had said. She was wrong.

“That was quite the show.” Yani, Willam, and a robed figure with stringy hair and icy gray eyes far too large for his long, bony face stand in the doorway.

There is no sensation of magic, cold or warm, anywhere in my body anymore.

I move away from the hole in the building.

Yani watches me, mouth agape. Then she knits her brow as her gaze darts to the others.

“You didn’t tell me I’d be working on the Dragunhead,” the robed figure says under his breath.

A Healer. I can hardly breathe.

“Heart.” My own twinges. “And not really anymore.”

Willam scowls as the Healer spots the hole. “We’re going to need a better place to do this.”

“Is something wrong with Jordan?” Yani says.

“What is she doing here?” I ask. Quell and I told Knox that Yani should stay under Willam’s watch until we can find a secure place to hold her.

I’m not yet convinced she should be wandering around Quell’s former home.

But I didn’t imagine him parading her around the estate, letting her in on my business.

“I was just checking—”

“I’m fine,” I tell her. “Leave us.” She scowls as she and Willam depart. The other man and I make space in the old Healer office.

He removes his hood, revealing a chiseled face with a sharp nose and beady eyes.

Blond stubble covers the bottom half of his face.

“I’m Zecky Meir, seventh of my blood.” He wears a heavy dark cloak, black trousers, and boots.

There isn’t a memorable marker anywhere on him.

Other than a speck of brown in one of his otherwise-pale gray eyes.

He shrugs off his robe, hanging a thumb from his pocket as if he is here to hang out.

His handshake is firm, and his posture is rigid despite his otherwise casual demeanor.

“I understand you have a toushana-related wound.” He unpacks a satchel with curious metal instruments.

“Yes, sort of.”

“How much toushana? And is it bound to you, or are you calling it to yourself? You’re a Dragun, so I assume the latter, but I have to ask. I’ve heard things.”

“It’s inside me, binding to my blood.”

Zecky stops polishing his instrument. “So the rumors about the Sphere’s magic being stolen are true. You and the Dragunhead plotted—”

“My work relationships aren’t your business.”

“Only curiosity, my friend. Safe houses are ripe for the picking, thanks to you two.”

“The last time I saw the Dragunhead, he stabbed me in the back. Literally. So no, we’re not working together.”

“Mmm.” Zecky unrolls leather with tiny pockets. Inside are more silver tools in odd sizes and shapes. “Let me see the injury.”

I lift the edge of my shirt.

“What do you mean—ripe for the picking?”

“Willam’s the old-guard type, with a closed-door safe house policy.

They don’t take in anyone. Which is why no one in his house knows the first thing about healing or any magic, really.

The newer safe houses are more progressive in our thinking.

I am strategic and aggressive with who I bring into the family.

This news of the Sphere has filled out our ranks nicely. ”

“Glad I could help,” I groan, eager to get these fake niceties over.

“Hmph,” he says, inspecting my ribs. I try to exhale, but every hair on my body stands with unease. Zecky reaches for me with a round tool tight in his fist.

I grab his wrist. “What sort of experience do you have with wounds like this?”

“I am not in the business of proving myself to anyone.”

“We just met.”

Zecky purses his lips. “My ancestor’s surname was Doyle. Kindred Doyle.”

I sit up. “He was one of The Twelve. The Sphere’s engineers.

” I think of the old Sphere engineer with the mottled skin and garden of strange herbs behind his home from the raid I did earlier this year.

Francis. One of the brightest minds in magic, who worked on the Sphere.

I can see his dead body on the backs of my eyelids. “How did you end up—”

“In a safe house?”

I offer a tight smile.

“I wasn’t born into my safe house family. I fled to one when my curiosity sparked for how dark magic and Shifter magic could intertwine. It took over my studies, ostracized me from my friends. My success at the Rites came to a screeching halt. I was about to be kicked out.”

“Someone should have turned you over to the brotherhood, in that case.”

“Oh, there were a few cousins hoping to make a name for themselves by squealing on me. But my mother, thanks to Gramps Doyle, prepared me well for skirting the rules of the Order. I’ve seen many things,” he goes on.

“Nothing quite like this, but I’m confident I can heal you up.

” He rolls up his sleeves, and the insides of his wrists are covered in tally marks.

I shift uncomfortably. “So you work on Darkbearers?”

“My safe house family has to eat, too. I stopped practicing toushana to focus on research. But I know it well.” He grabs his round tool again. “I should have you out of here by sunrise.” He hands me a strap of leather to bite. “It could get loud.”

I lie back with my heart in my throat. He pulls out a blunt tool with a wooden handle, turns it in his hand, studying it closely, then replaces it, only to pull another.

“This is curiously devastating,” he says.

“Both of the Sphere’s magics are inside you.

Your liver is fully attached to toushana.

It looks like it’s covered in black icicles.

But your lungs and heart are covered in calloused earthy granules, stuck to their surface like barnacles.

There is a battle inside your body.” He slides the instrument deeper, and it nicks a bone.

I groan, recalling the stone with the Sphere’s magic I buried in my chest. It’s dissolved into my blood, unleashing the Sphere’s magic all over my body.

“Your skin, bones, and muscle are holding it all in better than any human-made material ever could. Magic is alive, and it thrives in an organic environment. The most powerful man alive.” Zecky smirks.