Page 8 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Five

Quell

As Jordan darts away, and before I have a moment to wonder why, someone grabs me from behind. I shove an elbow backward and pull at the cold weight of my toushana. But my magic sputters out in whiffs of darkness and only from one hand.

So I opt for a threat.

“You can let me go, or I will burn your eyes out of their sockets.”

They release me and take off. Jordan is already across the intersection and down a block, running with a limp. I chase after him.

“Slow down,” I yell when I’m close enough to shout. “Jordan, please wait!”

He stops suddenly, and I do, too. His skin has a sickly pallor. Where he was sharp and edged before, now he is hollow.

“Stay back.” The knot at his throat bobs. “You more than anyone need to be far away from me.”

As if I could stay away now that I’ve found him. I step toward him. He moves back, raising his hands. Darkness bleeds from him and a cloud of toushana surrounds him in a rush that I envy. It is so strong. And it’s coming from within his body. He’s not calling it to him.

“I mean it, Quell. Get away.” He sways.

Shadows siphon back inside him, not vanishing in the distance as his toushana once did. It is hiding inside him like mine does. I rush to his side.

“What’s happened?” I reach for him and he winces, protecting his torso with an elbow. I pull his shirt up and gasp. His body is badly bruised, and his ribs are partly decayed.

“Jordan,” I gasp.

“It’s the Sphere’s magic,” he says. “All I could salvage. The rest is gone. This is all we have left.” He stares off, haunted. “There was nowhere safer.”

Tears sting my eyes as I glare at the wound slowly killing him.

Everyone I love dies.

After all we fought through, Beaulah’s Draguns, freeing myself from grief, Jordan pulling the Order’s claws out of his skin. Didn’t we just touch freedom? Now fate would rip it out of my hands. I shove the tears off my cheeks. Cold thrashes in my chest with a comforting sharpness.

“I won’t stand for this. I refuse.”

Jordan shakes his head. “I will fix this,” he says. “The Sphere’s magic is still tied to the Headmistress’s lives. If it is lost, you die.” He swallows.

I run my fingers across his purpled skin. The flesh is tender. Why is this happening? I need to talk to Abby and Nore. “This has to come out of you. And soon.”

“It’s more than your life, Quell, it’s all magic. For your toushana to survive, for any magic to survive, I have to keep the magic inside me alive.”

“It’s killing you!”

Jordan moves the hair out of my face, pushing it behind my shoulder before he traces my cheek slowly. Then my jaw, even slower. His touch is like a blanket when it’s cold out. I curl into him, laying my head on his chest. He winces and I hesitate.

“It’s okay,” he insists.

My head fits perfectly under his chin and I listen to the thrum of his heart, synced in melody with mine. A song trying to compose itself.

“I will fix this,” he says.

“We will fix this.”

“It’s not safe, both strands of magic in me are unpredictable.

They don’t…” He huffs, exasperated. “Answer when I want. They’re strong when I need them to be subtle, weak when I need to be forceful.

And the toushana seems to be the fiercest. I’ve never felt more out of control in my entire life.

There are moments I worry—” He gazes off with a wild look in his eye. “Never mind.”

“You always say magic doesn’t serve us. We serve magic. Well, you’re its vessel now.”

“I don’t want to be its vessel. I just want it safe. But I can feel it attaching to me. It might be too late.”

“We still have to try.”

He opens my palm and kisses the soft flesh of my hand. “You being here, holding you like this, feels like…” His eyes water. He looks away. But I pull his face back to mine, and he says, “It feels like the sun shining after a long rain. Like a meadow of wildflowers just in bloom.”

I rise on my toes and meet his lips. My eyes close, rimmed with tears.

For all it has cost to get us here. For all it’s going to cost to keep us here.

He parts his mouth, his tongue exploring, and our bodies melt into one another.

He holds on to me tightly and it feels like it did the last time we were this close.

Like hope isn’t a dream. And our future hasn’t already been decided for us.

He kisses me deeper and I let myself taste his love, believing all it promises.

That it won’t ever leave me like everyone else I’ve loved has.

That a life in hiding with toushana isn’t all my mother’s death will amount to.

That the girl who should be dead by now will fly, one day.

Jordan’s hold tightens around me, closing the sliver of distance between our bodies. He breaks the kiss, pressing his forehead to mine as his thumb strokes my lips.

“I dream that this could be us forever.”

“I am yours, Jordan.”

He tries but fails to bite the smile away from his lips. “Say that again.”

“I’m yours.” I pull us apart and set my hand back on his chest where the bruise is the worst. “And you are mine. We fix this. Which includes dealing with those people after you. Who—”

His jaw ticks. “Darkbearers. The way toushana moved back there, I just knew.”

My mind races, remembering that Beaulah tried her hardest to make me into a Darkbearer, a toushana-bound magic wielder who weaponized Dysiis’s teaching to terrorize and pillage to feed their own power.

Even though they are not all monsters, Beaulah was trying to control me, and I almost fell for it.

“They want the Sphere’s magic,” he says, his gaze moving beyond me.

“You hold all of magic’s future inside you. Of course they do.” Suddenly, magic shudders in my chest. The sharp cold twists painfully. Toushana rushes through me like a live wire, bubbling beneath my skin. It stings.

He shoves me away. “Did you feel that?”

Everything burns. I stumble backward, when I notice toushana bleeding from him again.

But when he closes his fist to call the magic back, it doesn’t stop, shadows billowing from him like smoke.

The burning tugs beneath my skin, growing sharper, as if my magic is being pulled from my body.

To his. I try to go to him, but he puts more distance between us.

“Away, please!”

The pain is so strong my head rings. Then slowly, as his shadows settle, seeping back into him, the searing feeling of magic settling in my body curls around my bones. “What was that?”

“The trace. It’s confusing the magic.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, inspecting the parts of my skin where the hot sensation was the worst.

“Like calls to like.” His skin is clammy. “Because of the trace between us, the magic in me is a part of the magic in you. It is pulling your magic to mine like a magnet.”

That’s how it felt. Like my magic was going to rip itself out of my skin.

“Because we’re bonded, there’s a bridge between us that magic doesn’t have to work very hard to cross. And I can’t seem to stop it. I tried.” He widens the distance between us and shakes his head. “You have to stay away, Quell.”

His words hit me like a hammer to glass, like the wings I just dared to spread have been clipped. But if his magic pulls at mine and he can’t stop it, he is right. Until we can get the Sphere’s magic out of him or better control it, touching is a risk.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I need this out of me.”

“Then we keep a distance. But we still do this together. I know a place where you can be healed. Please, Jordan, come with me.”