Page 79 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Sixty-Three

Quell

When Jordan leaves breakfast, I race to the healing ward to find Abby. She’s in her office soaking a set of stones in a clear liquid.

“Quell? I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t have time for your too-late apologies now. You should have told me.”

“He is the holder of the source of the world’s darkest magic!” Abby grabs my arms, nails digging in. “I advised him honestly. I tried to help. What more did you want me to do?”

“I wanted you to risk something to do the right thing, Abby. To not think about where helping him could get you.”

“Don’t make this about that. I deserve to try to survive this world you and he broke. You don’t get to take that from me!” she fumes.

Isn’t that what we all are doing here? Every person in this House is trying to sort through the chaos and find some ember of hope to cling to.

To survive. The clench of my fists loosens.

I peel Abby’s grip off my arm and squeeze her hand.

Being on Jordan’s good side was the boon she found at the expense of our friendship.

It wasn’t fair to expect her to choose between that and survival.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Her eyes water. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it’s been keeping that secret? Trying to pretend like I knew nothing, so he wouldn’t call me disloyal? And my one friend, I never got to see. If I did, it was a passing glance. You were absorbed in something else. And you never came to visit me.”

I was so consumed with my own survival. She is right.

“And after what Mynick did to me, I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world. Jordan and Dexler checked in on me. No one else.” She blotted her face, drying tears. “The silence from you, the Headmistress, while reading the headlines was…” She hugs around herself.

Hearing my title pokes me like a knife in the ribs. That’s what people see when they look at me now. A House. Power. Someone in control of freedoms and fates.

“I’m sorry,” she goes on. “This isn’t just about me. That’s not what I’m saying.” She sobs, and I pull her into a hug.

“You needed a friend, too, Abby. I hear you.”

She holds on to me so tightly it brings tears to my eyes. My first friend. If she feels this way, I can only imagine how Erla and the others feel. When we let go, I eye the time and realize there isn’t much of it left.

“Jordan is planning to go through with the extraction.”

Her lashes flutter. “He is planning to die?”

“To save me, yes.”

“What about the Scroll?” she asks.

I update her on the Scroll. “I need you to call him here for something dire. Perhaps tell him there were some additional tests you need to run, or some epiphany you’ve had. I’m going to go destroy the lab before he has the chance to use it.”

“Then what?”

“I need some kind of sleep elixir. Something that won’t hurt him. I’m going to lock him in the basement and seal it with protections so he cannot get out.” With him locked away, I can figure out a safer plan to get this magic out of him.

“I don’t know about this. He will be furious.” She stuffs her hands in her pockets. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave him to his fate?” Abby’s countenance darkens. “You don’t need him. You just need the magic inside him.”

“Sometimes we have to fight for those we love when they are hurting too much to fight for themselves. I won’t abandon him in his most desperate time of need.”

She shrugs and turns back to her rocks. “I’ll send for him like you asked. Just let me know when.”

An unsettled feeling sticks to my ribs.

When midday lunch comes, I spend the time in the halls, watching for Jordan, who appears right as planned.

He moves at a fast stride down the corridor, through the foyer, and turns the corner toward the healing ward.

I stroll casually, careful to stay out of his line of sight.

When he disappears into the Healer office, my heart thuds.

It’s now or never.

As I linger in the hall while a handful of people are escorted to their rooms with lunch trays, I spot Erla. She speeds up. I catch up to her.

“Wait up.”

She’s rigid with fear, eyeing the stragglers in the halls. “I know what you did.”

What I’m about to do…

“My brother.”

I swallow my exhale.

“At least I am free of him now.” Housemates linger in the corridor, waiting for her.

“Move along,” I tell them. “Back to your rooms.”

“I should get back to my room, too.” Erla pulls away from me and runs off. I clench my fists and race toward the Sunrise Corridor. The long hall of session rooms is empty. I will just have to do this myself. I reach the extraction lab and twist the knob with a fistful of toushana in my free hand.

It’s locked.

I burn through the door with my toushana, but the room is dark and empty.

Where there were once rows of tables and lines of chairs is just stone floor.

The chalk wall that was covered in equations has been wiped clean.

Everything for the extraction is gone. I stumble backward and out of the room, checking to make sure I have the right one.

I break into the room next door. Also empty.

The next several are wiped clean, as well.

The world sways.

He knows what I planned, and he beat me to it.

I search the entire estate for over an hour. But find nothing, no indication of where the lab was moved to. I circle back to Abby’s office, but the door is open, and her things are disheveled as if she left in a rush. Dexler is still unconscious.

“I wish you could give me advice,” I say to her slumbering body. “I’m so sorry this has happened. I hoped…It wasn’t…You didn’t deserve this.”

Dexler was always so helpful. She was the first maezre to see something in me. She waited here and protected House of Marionne the best way she could, hoping I’d show up. When so many others left, she believed in me. “I’m really sorry. Somehow, I’m going to fix all of this.”

I dash out of Abby’s office, feeling a bit silly talking to someone who probably can’t hear me.

And also feeling a bit relieved. I check the third floor for Jordan.

Maybe he came to find me. But he is not there either.

I am out of breath when I make it to the dormitories. But the entire wing is vacant.

The recently repaired walls have caved in.

Blackened, rotting doors have been ripped out of their hinges.

I nearly trip over heaps of rubble, trying to check each room to be sure no one’s there.

My throat is dry as I race back toward the stairs to the ground floor.

When I hear a whisper of voices, it sends my pulse racing with foolish hope.

The faint sounds lead me through the foyer, past the grand ballroom, past the broom closet, and down the narrow stairs that lead to the basement. The voices disappear.

A shriek rips the air.

I run toward the sound.

There are shouts. Another scream. Something crashes. Someone wails.

Then Jordan’s voice shatters the silence.

“Enough!” he says again.

I follow his voice to the maezre storage closet where extra enhancer supplies and furniture are kept. When I push against the door, it doesn’t budge.

“Jordan! Erla, are you in there?”

The voices quiet. But there is another crashing bang. I pull all the magic I can muster to my hands and shove shadows against the door. It rots beneath my fists, inch by inch. When the hole is wide enough, I force myself through.

The storage room is set up with a table like the extraction lab. A tangle of wires runs between Jordan and several golden rings. The wires’ ends are frayed and broken, held in Jordan’s fist. He stands, seething, beside the table. But it’s what’s around him that chills me to the bone.

Everyone is in metal restraining handcuffs, their wrists linked together. Mothers, children. Willam’s have been tied to rusted pipe. Knox’s arms are in cuffs in her lap, paces away from him. Erla is clamping a restraint on someone else.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Jordan says. “I made every arrangement to ensure you would not be here.”

“Jordan,” I manage.

“I caught two of them trying to replace the rings with this mask.” He holds up an ornate, polished full-face white mask. “They were going to steal the toushana.”

“And destroy it,” someone shouts between sobs.

“Erla, tell her.”

“It is true. I uncovered the treason myself.”

“Ending all dark magic, including yours! You see what I’m fighting against? They will stay here like this as long as it takes, until I say!”

Two of them. And yet every person in this house is held against their will. “Jordan, you have to stop this. Because one is guilty doesn’t mean they all are.” That’s what the Order believed about toushana. Fear has turned him into the very thing he’s trying to destroy.

Shadows bleed from him. A haze of dark magic hangs in the air like storm clouds. Dimara cowers at Kedd’s feet, holding on to his legs.

“I tried to stop them, and then things get hard to remember.” He chokes on his words.

“I lost control, Quell. And now we’re weeks behind, if we can even salvage this at all.

” He shakes the frayed wires. “I have failed you. I have done nothing but fail you over and over again. This is the last thing I could do for you. I can’t even do this right!

” He trembles with rage because it feels safer to him than fear.

“There is only a thread of him left, Quell,” Knox says. “It’s now or never, Headmistress.”

I see Jordan clearer than I ever have. The guilt he wrestles with, the anger he finds comfort in, the darkness urging him to act on his most desperate desires.

Desires growing like weeds in a heart full of fear.

He is responsible for this mess. No one else can be blamed for his actions.

But I can’t stop running from the truth either—the future is in my hands.

I have to take control. And lead.

“The magic—” he starts.

“It’s not the magic, Jordan. Look around. This is all you.” Force would break him. Maybe love can rebuild him.

His eyes narrow. “How could you say that to me?”

Nothing is more loving than telling him the truth.

“This is you fighting for something you never needed to prove. You’ve never felt good enough to be loved by your father, to be respected by your aunt, to be a person of your own choosing.

You were forced to prove that you are worthy of their love.

You’ve cut them off, but their voices still whisper in your mind. ”

His throat bobs. His nostrils flare. But a glaze gleams in his eye.

“And all this time you’ve been trying to prove to yourself that you deserve my love.

” I move closer to him, pulling the wires out of his hand.

“You already have my love. Not because of your magic or the family you come from or your ability to fix the world’s problems or even your ability to save me!

You have my love, Jordan, just as you are.

On the messy days and the good ones. At the times when you’re strong.

And the times when you are lost. I love you, Jordan, because of who you are, not what you do.

You’re worthy of love and freedom, simply because you exist.”

It breaks me that he’s never known that kind of love. My own mother had to learn that I need to be seen and loved, toushana and all. Just as I am.

“That’s the only kind of love that can silence the constant voices saying you’re not good enough.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.” He shoves away, tears forming.

“I know. But I hope by hearing the truth, you can begin to.”

He storms out.