Page 4 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Three

Nore

The tattoo shop doors were coated in yew leaf stickers and neon paint. Nore had always pictured her first trip to an Ambrose tattoo parlor under very different circumstances. Before stepping inside, she gazed around for the dead, her grip tight on her bag strap.

The Pact her House had with their ancestors haunted her day and night.

It gave Ambrose the ability to push the bounds of magic.

In exchange the House Headmistress gave the dead her heart.

They channeled its magic to cling to life.

But Nore didn’t have magic. Her heart in their glass box would be the death of her.

She had to find the full Immortality Scroll before her time was up.

She held in a breath, searching the skies outside, but they were clear. When she stepped inside, the place reeked of sour peckle smoke, but the three tattooists at their chairs didn’t seem to notice.

“The wait’s about an hour,” the tattoo artist farthest from the door said.

Brown hair rippled down her back. The sides of her shaved head were branded with a gate of tally marks.

Nore pulled her thick red hair over her shoulder, her sleeves down and collar closed.

She had zero markings. And if anyone figured out who she was, she didn’t want to give them any excuse to look at her sideways.

A handful of seats were occupied. She’d discovered half the Scroll almost two months ago, digging up her inaugural Headmistress’s grave, when the Sphere broke. Her brother, Ellery, tried to steal it, but the scuffle ripped the half Scroll in two. She needed the missing half.

Or when her brother went through with his threat to kill their mother, Headship of House of Ambrose would pass to her.

Nore sat and watched the door, waiting for the person she was looking for to walk through. He was the key to finding the rest of the Scroll. She was sure of it.

When it opened and the tall, dapper Dublin Kyn walked in, her nails bit into the underside of her thigh.

He got the same greeting and strode over and sat two seats down from her.

She sat up, trying to look casual, flipping through art samples.

But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Dublin, whose swept-back reddish-brown hair and lightly stubbled beard only punctuated his cavalier aura.

He wore one of those shirts that didn’t look like it had top buttons, showing a sliver of chest. His brightly colored suit fit him with a precision that meant it could only be tailored.

She watched him with a hand gripped on her seat. For someone who’d built a reputation for methodically skirting the Order’s control over his life, she’d expected someone more…discreet.

Dublin was one of her House’s most infamous graduates.

He was offered his top internship choice after Third Rite but publicly announced he was going to take a sabbatical year to visit the Order’s most mystical locations instead.

A slap in the Council of Mothers’ face. At first, the Council tried to stop Kyn from making a mockery of the rules.

But everything they could hold over him—status in the Order, membership in a House, camaraderie, access to Marked venues, wealth—he didn’t actually care about.

Escaping the Order sounded impossible, but somehow this man had done it.

Questions scraped at her skull as he settled into his chair, unbothered.

He’d spent weeks in the Sahara; winter in Mali; months, one headline said, in a tiny village in the Paro valley of Bhutan.

He was famously quoted saying, “I want to tour places so remote, not a living soul would dare follow me there.” Unmarked headlines had Dublin’s name everywhere, heralding his travels to the most gravity-defying, difficult places in the world to reach.

He published excerpts from his journals that had detailed depictions of everywhere he traveled and all he explored.

Proof he’d seen it with his own two eyes.

He used magic to build the life he wanted, gloating for all the glory the Unmarked world had to offer.

He returned to the Council after two years of travels with a journal chronicling all he’d seen and said that after seeing all magic had to offer, he was bored with it.

Then he rescinded his membership in the Order himself.

If anyone alive had tried to hunt down the missing piece of the Scroll, Dublin Kyn had.

And Nore’d bet he’d written about it in his legendary travel journal.

One of the tattooists’ chairs emptied. A client with a fresh cherry blossom tree snaking around their arm slung their bag over their shoulder and eased in Dublin’s direction.

“I don’t mean to be weird,” they said. “But, um, are you Dublin Kyn?”

He flipped his hair back, foot propped up on his knee. “I am.” He felt around for something to write with. “And you are?”

They fanned themself. “Could I have your autograph?”

Nore grimaced as they raised their shirt and had Dublin sign across their ribs, then professed they were never bathing that part of their body again.

Another couple of waiting patrons hopped up courageously as well.

He signed whatever they asked and suggested taking a few pictures before the shop settled again.

Nore caught herself staring and jerked her chin away.

Dublin grinned as he pulled a brown leather journal with a brass clasp around it from his satchel.

Nore’s heart skipped a beat. She leaned forward in her seat, trying for a glimpse of the pages.

“Is there something you’d like me to sign?” he asked.

Nore hesitated, chewing on how she could get close to someone like him, who lathered in attention. He didn’t even bother to look anyone in the eye who approached him. And the way he kept flipping his damn hair.

Yagrin had long hair, and he never flipped it.

He was too serious to flip his hair. But he’d rake his hands through it when he felt pensive.

Sometimes he’d ask her to play in it, raking lines down his scalp.

It relaxed him like nothing else. Of course, he had no idea Nore knew any of that.

Because he had no idea the girl he was in love with, the girl he thought was dead—Red—was also Nore.

She slumped in her seat, more irritated than sad at her predicament.

She made sure to appear indifferent to Dublin, awaiting her answer.

She would deny him the one thing he wanted—her interest.

That would lure him in so she could get a better look at that journal.

“My body parts are just fine without your endorsement, but thanks.”

He closed his journal and smiled, drawn to her numbness of his ego. Sarcasm rarely failed her. Dublin flipped his hair again and she tossed him the hair tie on her arm.

“Seems like you need it.”

He rotated in his seat to look right at her. “You’re funny.”

“You’re…good at signing things.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I’m sure you would love to tell me.”

Again, he smirked. “It’s said the view from the top of the Kenetican mountains will make anyone cry.”

She’d heard. Her brother had taken her hiking twice. It was pretty, but not her idea of recreation. If Dublin was intrigued by her wit, she definitely wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of the punch line.

“From the peaks of the Kenetican, the clouds condense on your face, forming what looks like tears. Only one human has ever actually been there before.”

“You do know who I am, or you hike.”

“Both.”

“But you said you didn’t know—” His mouth bowed as he remembered what she’d actually said.

“Clever.” He extended a hand. “I’m Dublin.

It’s nice to meet you.” When she let his hand go, he held on to hers and quirked a brow.

Nore held up three fingers, then knotted them.

One for each yew leaf of the sigil of their House.

“What other hobbies do you have?” He sat back in his seat with a sugary grin.

“I enjoy painting. I’ve dabbled in oils. I enjoy fire made with my hands, really anything with my hands. I used to—” The truth formed a lump in her throat. “Have a farm.”

“The more simply we live, the wiser and happier we are. The layers we add are full of complications.”

“So much complication.”

“It’s odd to meet someone…” He grasped at the air. This was an Order-approved tattoo shop, though still open to Unmarked. Discretion was paramount. “Who has such a fresh way of seeing things.”

Oh gosh, is he flirting? She fought the urge to vomit.

“What do you make of the extreme weather we’ve been having? Everyone is talking about it.” The Sphere shattering, I mean.

“I don’t worry about the weather. I try to act as if the weather doesn’t exist at all.”

“What if a storm is coming, Mr. Kyn?”

“I suppose I’ll have to find a really good umbrella. And it’s Dublin.”

“There was just a huge storm, actually, Dublin.”

“So glad I was out of the country for it.”

There were so many things she wanted to ask him, such as how he got away from the Order.

And what it cost him. How he created a new life without changing his name.

Or living in hiding. He jotted something down in his journal on the page he’d held before.

As he wrote, he tucked his bottom lip, pausing to tap his jaw a few times.

“You’re up.” The tattoo artist gestured at her. “My gun is sparking.” She tucked away her tools, sliding them into metal drawers before tidying up her workspace. “Let’s move to the back room.”

“Would you care to join me?” Nore stood, hoping she’d played her cards right with Dublin.

He slapped his journal closed and tucked it under his arm. He watched her eye it, then said, “I would hate to impose.”

“It’s a lot less crowded back there,” the artist said, and Nore made a point not to look her way. “I can probably work you in faster.”

“Sure,” Dublin said. “Why not?”