Page 70 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Fifty-Five

Jordan

My brother is sitting at a bar in a tavern sipping from a stemmed glass when I find him. Yagrin’s ability to disassociate is envious.

“How’d he like the gift?” I ask, sliding into the seat beside him. “I got here as soon as I could.”

Yagrin looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

“What happened?”

“So much.” He rakes a hand through his hair. But doesn’t meet my eyes.

“Yagrin?”

“I would have written, but with Ellery out there, I couldn’t risk getting intercepted.” My brother speaks to the floor, and my heart tremors in my chest. This is the brother who couldn’t keep my birthday gifts secret from me each year. He takes another sip from his drink.

“I have some of my own updates,” I say to break the ice.

He pushes his seat out from the lip of the bar a few inches. His heart hammers harder. And because of the trace, I feel it in my chest.

“Go on, then,” he says, and I tell him about the Sphere’s proper magic being removed, relocating the safe house to Chateau Soleil, and planning the toushana extraction. How we are held up at House of Marionne, which is in a state of disrepair.

“Headquarters is in shambles,” I add. “The brotherhood is a joke.”

“Always was one,” he mutters, and a strangled laugh escapes me. My brother smirks, and it chips away at the ice between us.

“I found Maei’s body, deflated like a sack of skin.” A shiver finger-walks my spine. “The Dragunhead is actually after Quell and me. The Darkbearer attacks are to draw me out. Be careful, Yagrin.”

“He always rubbed me the wrong way.” Yagrin buttons and rebuttons his sleeve. “When he realized that daddy business didn’t work with me, he left me alone.”

My jaw hardens. That was a dig. A fair one. The Dragunhead played me like a viola, and I sang his praises like a song.

“What a mess,” he says. “What else?”

My side throbs, and I’m not sure if it’s my decaying rib cage or guilt.

I try to find the words to tell him about my conversation with Abby.

How I need the Scroll now more than ever.

But the words stick in my throat as I stare at the brother who counted on me to hold him up his entire life.

I flag a bartender and order two drinks.

“Tell me how the search for the Scroll piece is going,” I say.

He meets my eyes, but his deaden on impact. “Nore Ambrose is Red.”

I blink. “Red?” I lean toward him to make sure I heard him correctly. “Your girl, Red, the Unmarked?”

“Nore may as well be Unmarked. She has no natural magic either. No one knows that, of course.”

His words are a train wreck in my head. Red, my brother’s love, who the brotherhood killed, is alive.

And she is actually the heir to House of Ambrose?

She has no magic and has somehow hid that her entire life.

I sit back in my seat, unable to shut my mouth.

He explains how her brother gave her the persona.

How she used it to have a life away from the Order.

Red is alive.

My brother’s love. His only love is alive.

“I’m happy for you,” I manage, his words still sinking in. My brother deserves true happiness and a life that’s his own. The sag in his shoulders and shift in his posture confuse me. His heart still thuds. My stomach twists. Something isn’t right.

Red being alive means…“You’re still looking for the Scroll pieces, aren’t you? You haven’t run off to Dlaminaugh like a couple of newlyweds?” I chuckle. Yagrin doesn’t respond, and I sip my drink. Cold stretches in my chest, riling itself up.

“Ambrose has an agreement with their dead. That’s why their magic is so advanced.”

“What kind of agreement?” My grip on my glass tightens, and it feels like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff I’m about to be pushed from.

“Ambrose Headmistresses turn over their hearts to their dead ancestors. In exchange, the House gets to channel the magic of all their dead. Breach means death.”

“But Nore doesn’t have magic. So—” The world rips in two. Nore becoming Headmistress should be a death sentence. I shove myself up from the bar. “You have the Scroll! You used it to save her!”

People stare in our direction. But the ice seizing in my veins whispers, Choke him.

“No!” He shoots up as well. “Though, would that have been such a bad idea? To do something for myself for once!”

The glass cracks in my fist. Shadows bleed from me in every direction. Table bussers come by to clean up the mess, and I pull my brother into the corridor to the bathrooms. “Everything is riding on this. And you’re worried about yourself?”

“Isn’t that what you’re worried about? The girl you love. I don’t deserve the same?” His finger stabs me in the chest, and I stare at a brother I’ve never seen.

“You’ve planned it this way the whole time, haven’t you? You’ve never been honest. You’ve been plotting with Nore behind my back!” How could I ever have trusted someone so selfish?

“You’re wrong. The Scroll is a bust. It was found centuries ago. We’ve been chasing a fraud. Duncan told me tonight. But if I could have found that last piece of the Scroll,” he spits, “I would have used it without thinking twice!” He tries to push me off him, but I tighten my hold on his shirt.

Cold claws at my bones. “The Scroll is a fake?”

He pulls pieces of parchment from his pocket. “These are pieces of Caera Ambrose’s historic scheme to look like the cleverest Marked to ever live.”

I shove him back into the wall. “If you’re lying to protect your little redhead, I’ll gut the life from her myself.” Shame burns in my chest. I did not mean that.

All the tenderness in my brother’s stare dies. The hard, bitter Yagrin I’ve known the last few years glares at me. Only he doesn’t change into one of his personas. He doesn’t hide his feelings.

A thousand apologies and regrets run through my mind, but only “Am I clear?” makes it to my lips.