Page 83 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Sixty-Seven

Nore

Nore climbed the steps to the Caelum. She snaked her way through the library and rapped her fist on Winkel’s door.

The door parted, revealing the priest in a shockingly bright blue robe.

He was chatting with Kimper and Pizor. They adjusted their drab gray linen robes as they rose from their seats before excusing themselves with only contemptuous glances in Nore’s direction.

“Is everything alright, child?” He let her in.

She had been to Winkel’s private quarters countless times. When she was little, sometimes he’d let her hide in there to get away with her mischief a while longer. But that morning, the mirth in Winkel’s expression was replaced with a frown.

“I’m sorry for coming without notice.” She sat on his kneeler by the fire and a large window overlooking the ice garden. On the ledge of the window was a mug-sized ring of condensation. His hand trembled as he poured her a cup of tea.

“How can I pray for you, my dear?”

“I want answers.” She sipped the warm drink, and he sat on a bench beside her. She felt bad for snapping at him. “Sorry. You’ve been watching the forest, too?”

“I pray day and night for whatever is afoot in there.”

“Ellery is determined to get rid of the ancestors in case they try to protect me. And the Dragunhead is helping him by killing the dead.” She watched him for surprise. “Necrantomy.”

Winkel straightened his glasses and strode to his shelf. His finger trailed rows of spines. “Hmph. Must have lent it out.”

“What is it?”

“Ancient Studies of Ascension. Only ancient Marked knew how to use ancient magic techniques. It’s been lost to modern magic.”

“It hasn’t if it’s being used by Ellery.” Nore’s mind raced ahead of her words, rumbling over questions. There was a world of things she didn’t understand. Like why the Dragunhead would help Ellery. What could Ellery have promised him? What would someone who can live forever want?

“How do I beat someone with a magic I don’t even understand?” Someone who’d changed personas like clothes for centuries?

“Mmmm,” he muttered. “I suppose it’s understanding what this someone truly wants. Have you pondered that?”

“I’ll take any books you have on Necrantomy.

” This wasn’t helpful. She wanted him to answer her plainly, not in riddles, or give her more questions than she already had.

“I should go.” She’d hoped he would be less cryptic.

She stood to leave, but when she reached the door, Nore said, “Kendall Dorset. Do you know the name?”

“Your cleverness leaves no stone unturned.”

Nore let go of the door’s handle and faced her old friend, the shock of the last few hours fusing together in her mind impossible conclusions. “Who was he?”

“Kimper and I were told that your mother’s suitor had to be Kendall Dorset. A fellow we didn’t even know. Our votes and review of him were perfunctory.”

“Who told you that?”

“Priest Pizor. He said the Sovereign had appeared to him and gave him a divine revelation of the name of who should be chosen.”

Nore couldn’t sit still. The Dragunhead could appear as anyone to Priest Pizor. And say whatever he wanted. The pieces fell together.

Kendall Dorset didn’t debut from House Ambrose.

He didn’t drop out.

Nor was he one of their esteemed dead.

Because Kendall Dorset was one of the Dragunhead’s aliases.

Her head hurt. She would bet everything she had to her name.

“Priest Pizor was fooled by a master trickster of many faces,” she said.

My father is immortal. And he is helping my brother plot to kill me.

She stormed out the door past a gaping Winkel.

Her mother was going to finally tell her the full truth!

Nore found Isla wandering the halls near her own quarters. When Isla spotted her, she rushed toward her.

“There you are!” Her mother was out of breath. “I’ve gotten a message from your brother.”

Inside Nore’s room, she snatched the letter from her mother and tore it open. It was addressed to Isla, not her.

It’s not too late.

Nore ripped it in half. “What does it mean?”

Isla scrambled for the confetti floating to the floor. “He wants me to support his claim for Headship, which I will never do. It’s you. It’s always been you.” Nore met her mother’s eyes and waited for the snippet of criticism, but it didn’t come.

“He is writing to you because you two were close, I assume? He thinks he can turn your loyalty.”

“He is my son, Nore. My firstborn.”

“And I am your daughter. So excuse my surprise that he’d think you suddenly have a conscience.”

Her mother flinched but held her tongue. Nore’s gut twisted. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” She wasn’t sure how to relate to her mother anymore. Dealing with her now, considering all the secrets and distance between them, only made matters more confusing.

“It’s forgotten,” her mother said, but Nore could tell from the way her mother’s bottom lip shook that she was deeply hurt.

“I’m sorry, Mother, really.”

“Thank you.”

“Ellery is in the forest, digging up graves, killing our dead with ancient magic that he didn’t learn here.”

Her mother bit her lip and looked away.

“You knew.”

“I feared it the moment I saw something was happening in the forest.”

“You feared more than that.”

Her mother held her shawl around her as if it were armor. As if this conversation risked shredding her to pieces.

“My father, our father, is helping Ellery—the Dragunhead.”

“I did not know, Nore, for a very long time! He showed up at my door decades ago, and I thought he was hand selected by the priests and confirmed by the House through vote, like the custom. I even grew fond of him. He knew I couldn’t love him, but we had an understanding.

He was as close as I could get to having someone.

I didn’t get pregnant right away. It was difficult.

But he stayed.” Her mother’s broken heart was evident all over her face.

“He became a maezre under a different name to keep close by. We shared a life. I believed…” She sighed.

“When I told him I was finally pregnant and it was a boy, he was disappointed. He wanted to make an heir with me, he always said. When you were born, I never saw him again. Nore, I didn’t have a heart, and it hurt like hell.

I grew angrier year after year. I had my Draguns hunt for him, but he was a ghost. Then I discovered that Kendall was a persona.

I still feel nauesous about it.” She rested a palm on her stomach and turned her back to Nore.

“I kept digging. When I realized it was just one of his many aliases, I spent a decade, most of your childhood, trying to track him down and figure out exactly who he was and how he infiltrated this House.” She white-knuckled a seat back near her.

“It took years, and you were growing so fast. I never found conclusive answers. I feared he might want something from you when you took on your Headship.” Her expression darkened.

“I won’t lie. I wanted to find him and kill him. ”

She’d never heard her mother talk this way.

“Then his name faded and mention of him or any of the aliases I’d uncovered completely disappeared.”

“Mother, he’s immortal. Think about it.”

Her mother stared blankly. Then her smile faded as Nore’s words sank in.

“He’s been changing aliases for lifetimes. And now he is coaching Ellery to get rid of the ancestors to get to me. What I need you to tell me is why. I need to know everything.”

There was no way out of this without blood. Either Ellery died or she did.

“All those years.” Her mother smoothed her bangs off her forehead. “Your brother would take trips away. I wonder if he was maintaining some kind of relationship with him behind my back.”

“My brother changed bedrooms when he entered induction. Which was his?” Nore was going to search it for any hints of her brother’s weaknesses. She had to bring down a duo who felt impenetrable, who had all the advantage and lifetimes of magic on their side.

“It’s the fourth suite in the family’s private wing. There’s a faulty lock on the door. I never had it fixed.”

“Stay here.” She crossed the room to her door.

“Nore, fight for what you really want.”

She stopped, remembering Yagrin’s plan to break the Pact. She didn’t like his plan, and she was terrified to let herself hope something like that was possible.

“I made a life with someone who wasn’t real. That was the beginning of the end for me. I stopped trying to make something beautiful out of my mess.” She grabbed Nore’s hand, and Nore let her. “Don’t be like me. Grow roses in a field of ashes. Dare to get your heart back if you want it.”

Nore stared, speechless.

“You are far cleverer than I ever was. If there is a way, I am confident you will find it.”

Bang. Brrrrang! Bang.

Nore jumped. The sound came from the estate’s grand entrance. Nore rushed out of her mother’s room and down the hall as débutants piled in, pulled from their studies by the noise.

Quell Marionne and Jordan Wexton appeared in the foyer of Dlaminaugh Estate.

Jordan looked like death. And Quell was haggard, along with another of those traveling with them. The crowd of Ambrose in the entryway corridor of the estate swelled with débutants gawking at the guests.

“It’s him,” someone whispered.

Nore elbowed her way through the crowd. She heard her brother’s name shouted. Someone stumbled into her as she tried to get to Quell and Jordan. Glass hit the ground and shattered.

“Headmistress, should we lock him up?” someone yelled as she passed. Nore clenched her fists. “If the rumors are true—”

“Are the rumors true, Headmistress?” another asked. “Did he steal magic? Is he the reason our magic is intermittent?”

The building rocked with voices and people. The walls felt like they were closing in.

She screamed, “Eyes here!” She wouldn’t live a lie anymore. The deception had to stop, and it could, right now, with her. “I have an announcement you’re going to want to hear!” Nore climbed halfway up the stairs for a better view of the foyer teeming with a hundred or more.

“This House has been steeped in deception and secrecy since its inception.”

Every voice was silent.

“The Headmistress of this House has a Pact with the dead ancestors. They get to channel our magic to keep themselves in spirit form. And we get to channel their magic to enhance our House members’ born-magic, making our magical intellect sharper than the rest.” She wanted many things.

But more than anything, she wanted to be done living in secret.

She held up her hands. “That Pact should have killed me. Because I don’t have magic. ”

A gasp swept across the foyer.

“That is why you never saw me in your classes. That is why I was whisked away to my cottage and on sabbatical. That is why I have hated this place.” Her voice broke.

“But these last few weeks it has grown on me. We are in crisis, my fellow Ambrosers. And I can get us out of this mess. I know I can. But I need you to trust me and our guests.”

Stares shifted to Quell, Jordan, and now Yagrin, who’d joined them. He stood beside Nore.

“Ellery is killing our ancestors, which is a threat to all our highly developed magic. And he’s trying to kill me to take this House for himself. I have no intention of letting him. If you don’t like that, there’s the door. But if you turn your back on me now, you are never welcome to return.”

At first, no one moved.

Then a few shoved their way through the crowd, muttering to themselves, before storming out into the snow.

“Anyone else?” she asked. She spotted Lauren in the crowd, who pressed a palm with knotted fingers to her heart. Nore felt something strange bite at her lips. A smile. She drew strength from her mother’s words, who watched from across the crowd.

The audience parted, allowing their guests through.

“About the other matter. We will need to be careful,” Yagrin muttered to her. “My brother is a naturally suspicious person. And nothing gets past Quell. Are you with me?”

“If it’s the only way, yes, I am.” She was going to get her heart back. Whatever it took.