Page 50 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Forty-One

Jordan

When I shut the door to Quell’s room, I run. Down the dorm wing, through the foyer where the projection of the Sphere used to hang, toward tall exit doors with the conservatory beyond it. The fresh air hits me in the face, and it’s the slap I need.

I cup my face where her head just was. I can still smell her hair on my fingers. I pant, trying to return my racing heart to normal. But toushana wrestles my insides like an ice storm.

I hadn’t meant to touch her lips.

An urgent memory of how it felt kissing her had wrapped around my chest, and I couldn’t feel anything else.

My toushana lurched. I blinked, and my thumb was at her lips.

I desperately wanted to kiss her. I’ve always wanted every part of her, but I’ve never wanted her this strongly.

When we’re not near, it’s impossible to feel whole.

I see the certainty of who I am in her eyes.

She is the sun, and I am the moon. Without her reflection, I have no light.

My magic thrums, filling me with an urge to run back in there, take Quell in my arms, and kiss her like I really want to. To hold her like I’ve longed to. To be near her like we used to be.

I’m close to the conservatory and decide to enter it.

Inside feels like stepping back in time.

This is the first place she let me get really close to her.

I shove around the overgrown grass with my shoe, recalling transfiguring it to sand, making this entire place a beach so that she could focus on her exam. I linger.

Until the sharp pain in my side returns.

Sharper and longer than it did when I was dealing with Zecky.

I lift my shirt, inspecting my side. The skin is smooth; there is no sign of a bruise. I blow out a slow breath, staving off worry of the worst.

Then it pinches again.

I need to talk to a Healer.

I leave the conservatory and walk as casually as I can to find Abby.

Commotion fills the halls of the Chateau once I’m back inside.

Somewhere, over a barrage of voices, Dexler shouts instructions for an assembly line to make dinner go smoothly.

I skirt past and stave off a few stares as I look for Abby.

The sun is a glow on the horizon when I find her. She’s in the old Healer office. The door is hanging from the hinges, but over the wreckage, I spot her mending a trunkful of dresses.

“Do you have a minute?” I ask, dissolving the broken door hardware with toushana to detach it fully before setting it carefully against the wall.

“Jordan.” Abby’s dark bangs stick to her forehead. “Sure. Dexler is trying to find some clothes for everyone. She found these. I told her I could help clean them up a bit.” She sets aside a plum gown with blue beading. “What is it?”

I duck my head out into the hallway, and it’s empty, for now. But I don’t want to risk being overheard. “Can we speak privately?”

She takes me to the back of the office, inside a room untouched by the damage.

There are piles of half-unpacked boxes with herbs and vials of liquids beneath an exam table.

Along the walls are more racks of dresses, slacks, and shirts.

I close the door and twist the lock. “Are you settling in alright?”

She laughs. “What can I help you with?” Her gaze dips to my side. I lift my shirt and show her the tender spot where I felt pain beneath my ribs. “There used to be a wound there.”

“It looks fully healed.” She presses the area. I wince. “Lie down for me.”

I get on Abby’s table, and she begins to work her Shifting magic over my skin. I can feel my ribs tugging at the nudge of her magic. A cold sensation rushes to the area. She tsks.

“Something wrong?”

She doesn’t answer, trying her magic again. “Try to stay very still.”

The pull at my bones wedges an ache deeper into my organs. I hold my breath, trying to swallow a groan welling in my throat. She grunts, exasperated.

“Hmph. You can get up.”

“Well?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, but the Sphere’s magic is still wreaking havoc inside you.”

“He fixed it. I just think there’s some residual tissue or something.”

“Jordan, Zecky lied to you.”

My neck breaks out in a cold sweat. “What do you mean?”

“Your skin is shifted to appear healed. You’re still rotting on the inside.”

I steady myself on the wall. Black dents the edges of my vision.

“I tried moving the tissue around to repair it. But the minute I shift it back, it dissolves again. The magic that caused the wound is stronger than my Shifting magic.” Abby won’t meet my eyes. There’s something she’s not telling me.

“Say it.”

“Jordan, it’s killing you.”

I don’t move. I can’t. “Will the bruise re-form?” How long before Quell is able to see what it’s doing to me?

“Eventually, yes. It depends on how aggressively the toushana is binding to you. It’s just too much in your body, I suspect.

” She taps her lip. “I don’t know if Zecky could heal you and just didn’t.

Or if he couldn’t heal you at all and just pretended to.

Give me some time to look into the magic.

The best thing is to get it out of you as soon as possible.

The longer it’s in you, the more damage it’s doing.

” She hands me a vial. “Use this salve for the pain in the meantime.”

I turn the cream in my hand. “I should go.”

“You’re going to tell Quell, right?”

Cold scrapes at my insides, writhing with irritation. “Of course. You will say nothing. No mention of this, Abby. I mean it.”

“You have my word,” she says. “I’ll see what else I can find out.”

I tuck the vial into my pocket and head straight for the broom closet where Quell is waiting. If there’s a way to make the toushana inside me more manageable, I have to consider it. Especially since it’s still killing me. I can’t have it exploding in bursts like it did outside with Willam.

It’s only beneficial if I can keep it in check. Otherwise, there’s no difference between me and the shaded-sun-worshipper scum out there.

Quell is waiting in a new dress, one I haven’t seen. It’s a soft mint color that brings out the gold in her deep brown eyes.

I hope this isn’t a mistake.

She’s holding the metal box with the diadem. “Didn’t want to leave it, just in case. My dorm room doesn’t lock.”

“Good thinking. I was worried you would think of a reason not to come.”

“Oh, I have thought of many. But I’m here.”

Outside, the night is thick with fog. The forest is a litter of destroyed trees.

We walk for a long while until we reach a stretch of forest that appears untouched.

Thick trunks rise in the air, towering over us, sprawling into sprays of branches.

The moon can hardly be seen through the cover of leaves.

“What now?” I ask.

“Destroy some of these trees.”

I wipe my clammy hands on my clothes. She steps back, and I call on the cold in my blood.

It lassos in my chest and oozes through my limbs.

The feel of it traveling to the tips of my fingers sends a shiver up my spine.

It pools in my hands, thrashing, and my heart skips a beat.

All the Sphere’s dark magic. So much power, in my hands.

Unleash, it whispers.

Relaxing every muscle in my body, without holding anything back, I do.

Darkness expels from me like vomit. Toushana bleeds from every part of me, filling the forest. The fog thickens, and I lose sight of Quell. I try to speak, but I am frozen, a vein spewing blood. Everything the Order’s cost me claws at the walls of my mind.

Hartsboro.

Beaulah Perl.

The Dragunhead stabbing me in the back.

The lies of Darragh Marionne.

Yaniselle’s betrayal.

Almost losing Quell.

I groan as darkness thickens, rushing out of my skin so fast every pore on my body burns.

Destroy it all, the magic whispers. Make them hurt.

The world dents black at the edges. A growl tears from my throat. I’m so cold all over I am a floating body without feeling at all.

Somewhere Quell yelps.

The world is a haze of confusion and anger, and I can’t see a thing. But I can feel the delight in my bones. The way the dark magic licks my spine. The corners of my lips tug up in a smile. Through the haze I faintly hear shouting.

Quell’s voice.

“Let up!” she screams. But before I can pinpoint where my limbs are and how to stop this flow, fire erupts in the middle of the forest. The woods glow as flames consume one tree, then lick the next.

“Jordan, you’re starting a fire. Stop!”

I hear her, but I don’t see her, my senses dull like an overused blade. I focus on the ripping feeling as toushana tears through my skin. Stop, I plead. Stop now!

The cold slows.

The cold obeys.

I rediscover feeling in my legs and stagger into a stump. The warmth of the nearby fire quenches the rest of my toushana. The dark magic slinks back inside my body, and I blink, seeing the forest—or what’s left of it—for the first time. Fire still burns in the distance.

Quell jogs toward me. “We have to get out of here.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know! Your toushana was destroying the forest so fast, and then it sparked, and there were flames.”

“We can’t let the fire reach the house.”

My mind spirals, sifting through every single thing I understand about dark magic. It’s destructive in nature. It should be able to destroy fire, right? But the heat stifles the toushana’s ability to breathe. The cold and hot don’t mix. Think!

“Jordan, turn the trees that are not on fire to ash. We can spread those ashes all over to create a barrier between the estate and the flames. If there’s nothing left to burn, the flames will go out.”

“You’re saying—”

“Destroy the forest before the fire does.”