Page 62 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Fifty

Jordan

My side hurts.

More than it has in a long time.

I sit myself up on the blackened floorboards in this abandoned house, wondering how long I’ve been unconscious.

Cuts and scrapes cover my arms. I dig the salve out of my pocket, squeeze the last little bit there is on my skin, and rub it in.

I stand, surveying what’s left of the two-story home I found in the woods a few miles from Chateau Soleil.

The home I just destroyed.

From the outside, the blue Colonial looked like something on a postcard.

Now it looks like someone took a torch to the siding.

South of House of Marionne’s property, through the forest I already leveled, is an overgrown trail to a small neighborhood of eleven houses on a cul-de-sac.

At first, I panicked. The thin forest around Chateau Soleil meant this hideaway could overhear things happening at House of Marionne.

But I snuck around the cul-de-sac, peering into the homes one evening.

And they are all empty.

Deserted.

The first time I entered one of the houses, I was looking for a place to spew the darkness, something to burn.

I long to hold Quell, to be near her, to give her the comfort she looks to me for.

If satiating my magic for an evening could allow me to lie with her for an hour, I will feed it all night long, for days on end, until my bones ache and I can’t feel the hum of cold in me at all anymore.

I’m not sure it will work, so I hesitate to tell her what I’ve been doing and risk disappointment. But we’ll know soon enough.

It’s been four days of this. My hands aren’t even the same color anymore.

First thing each day, before coming here, I check on Ube and Erla’s progress with extraction practice. This morning Yani was helping them since she’s skilled at calling on toushana. I allowed it, but plan to check back in on things.

The worst part of satiating this dark magic in me is it forces me to relive my worst memories over and over in my head. At a point, the world goes black with rage, and I can’t hold back. Then I wake surrounded by carnage. The next day I do it all over again.

It’s like getting control of toushana means giving up control of everything else.

The door of the house I destroyed today is jammed, half the structure collapsing in on itself.

It took all night to meticulously decompose the living room and kitchen inch by inch.

I made sure to be thorough, to feed the darkness as much as I could.

The rest of the house will be short work tomorrow.

But the more I feed it, the hungrier it gets.

I ram the front door with my fist to shove it open.

Early-morning air hits me in the face. Across the street is my work from the last three days—a heap of rotted houses.

Sometimes I picture Beaulah inside one of the houses, being swept into the rot as it spreads from my fingers.

It makes me smile. I am wretched to be delighted by such a thing.

I jog the trail back toward the Chateau. Still no reply from Yagrin. The day to meet with Ellery already came and went. I didn’t bother replying. Quell is right. He is desperate.

When I reach the southernmost wall of the estate, I pull myself up and over it, using the rose vines as leverage, smoothing a bit of toushana across them to thicken their stems. The Chateau is a dot in the distance.

I race toward it, follow the broom closet back inside, and slip down the halls to the Healer office.

But Abby’s door is back on its hinges and locked.

The lights are off. My hands ache. My side, too.

I detour to Sunrise Corridor to check on Ube and Erla in the lab. Abby can’t have gone far for long.

The siblings are in the session room, bickering. Between them is a large boulder on a table. Erla is wearing an oversized T-shirt. No frills on her wrists or ears, as if she woke and came immediately here. Ube jabs fingers at her, yelling to make his point.

“I don’t like it,” Erla taps her foot. “It’s not smart.” She sucks in a breath when she sees me.

“What is it?”

Her brother clears his throat. “We have some disagreement about amending the procedure. She thinks the rock size is going to be a problem.”

Her foot taps faster.

“But the larger the item absorbing the magic, the quicker the rate at which we can siphon magic into it.”

“I need a break.” Erla storms toward the exit.

I step into her path. “Show me. Run a trial right now.”

“Am I late?” Yani strolls past me, brushing my shoulder as she enters the room.

Ube fidgets, rolling the large rock to the center of the table. “Yaniselle, stream some toushana to the boulder when I say.” He grabs a tool with jagged teeth. He sets it on the rock. “Now.”

Erla crosses the room, far from us, watching with her arms folded across her chest.

The claw clamps down on the rock, snapping it in half. Black streams from Yani’s fingers to the metal contraption, sliding along its razored teeth and inside gashes in the rock. Black spreads like an ink stain over its surface.

“More,” I tell Yani.

The rock cracks once. Then it explodes.

Yani’s toushana gushes as stone flies in every direction. Erla squeals. Ube groans. Cold slithers over my spine.

Useless.

Waste of space.

I shake my head, trying to mute the whispers. But toushana fills my fists.

“This is all you have to show for three days of running this process?” I say. “There’s no time for mistakes like this!”

Ube stares at the floor. Erla’s chest rises and falls like a hummingbird’s wings. Yani glances between them, holding a scratch on her arm.

“Did you know this would happen?” I ask Erla.

Ube glares at her.

“I strongly suspected it.”

“Start listening to her. Run it again.”

“A vessel more compositionally similar to the object we are putting the toushana in would be better. Have you come up with something that we can use?”

Excuses.

Choke him.

It hasn’t felt right to ask Quell for a keepsake from here that could be hunted or eventually destroyed when she is still grappling with how she feels about this place.

“You were supposed to tell me if there is anything else more easily procured that we could use. A gem perhaps. Gems absorb magic.” Like the cave in Aronya we nearly depleted of resources.

“There is nothing I can think of,” he says.

“The next time we run this procedure, I will use you, Ube, instead of a rock! Stay here all night if you must.”

He doesn’t move. “Uh, we were going to finish up early for dinner with the Headmistress tonight.”

Quell’s dinner. I’d almost forgotten. “Plan to eat quickly.”

A rap on the doorframe fractures the tension. The magic bleeding from my hands siphons back inside.

“Jordan?” It’s Abby. She eyes the mess warily. “Do you have a moment?” When we leave the room, it takes a few paces before the anger burning through me at them subsides. When we reach the stairs, she pulls me aside.

“I was wrong.” She struggles to meet my eyes. “You’re planning to extract the toushana inside you because if it stays inside you, it’ll kill you eventually. But…”

She tucks her lip, hesitant to go on.

“Tell me.”

“It won’t work. It’s too much. The Sphere’s toushana is so strong and already partly bonded to you that it can’t be removed without killing you. This procedure you’re planning will be the death of you. Jordan, either way, you—”

“Die.”

We’re first to arrive. I enter the dining room with Quell on my arm, and it makes my pulse race. I am dead, no matter what.

“Are you alright?” Her palm rests on her chest.

“I’m fine. Do you know if any letters have come for me?”

“I haven’t seen any.”

Quell hugs tighter on my arm, which only makes my heart rattle faster. I remind myself where I spent last night. It should be safe to be near each other for a couple of hours of dinner.

“Did you hear about the brawl in the Elixir session yesterday?” she asks.

“An actual fight?”

The doors open again, and our guests enter, greeting us as they pass.

“Two are unconscious in the Healer office. One of Zecky’s mixed an elixir and tossed it in Dimara’s eyes, who of course went feral, attacking them back,” she says through a plastic smile. “If you weren’t so busy with Ube and Erla, you’d know.”

There is no pleasing these people. They are here, have access to magic, work a few hours a day, but otherwise can do whatever they want as long as they don’t leave. The ingratitude is grating. “Can’t Willam and Knox help Dexler make sure their people are under control?”

“Our people.”

Now isn’t the time to tell her that my feelings on roping in all safe house people into a new Order haven’t budged.

It’s not prudent. Once all the guests have arrived, I lead us to the dining table set with a four-course meal.

Ube, Erla, and Yani are already seated. Yani wears a black dress ribbed with red detail.

Erla has thrown a suit jacket over her T-shirt with a pair of slacks.

Ube wears a tailored tux as fine as the one I’m wearing, with a watch on his arm that’s blindingly glitzy.

Their discussion promptly stops when I pull out Quell’s seat and take mine.

Erla watches Yani with a perplexing expression somewhere between curiosity and annoyance.

Yani sits back in her chair staring daggers across the room at Erla, who I realize is wearing little to no jewelry.

Ube straightens his silverware, ignoring both of them.

As appetizers are passed around, no one speaks.

“How has your research been, Ube?” Quell asks as the olives and spiced nuts from the aperitif are cleaned up. His eyes dart to me. I lean closer to Quell, our arms brushing.

“We have to secure something for the magic to go into,” I say. “Ube, why don’t you tell her your bright idea?”

“I thought you may have some kind of ancient relic here in this grand House we could use.”