Page 102 of House of Marionne

“I’m fine. I hope the girls from your House are okay.”

He squeezes my hand. “Cultivator, right?”

“Right.”

“Good night.” He turns to go, and I try to settle back on the couch, but the mood has passed. The news of Beaulah’s girls going missing stinks. I don’t like it. The Tavern vibes around me, oblivious.

Jordan’s last words dig at me, souring the dregs of the night. I shiver, remembering the way Beaulah’s Dragun who stopped me at the convenience store glared with murder in his eyes. Draguns use a form of toushana to kill. They’re in charge of protecting the Order’s secrecy. It makes sense. And I’ve never seen anything more destructive than this poison in my veins. But how does Jordan “manage” it, as he called it?

An idea strikes me, and it’s so, so foolish. I’m out the door before I can talk myself out of it. I’m going to follow him.

* * *

Jordan stops in the forest farther than I’ve ever ventured. Thin tall trees, some towering, others in piles on the forest floor surround us like a burned building caving in on itself. There isn’t a glimmer of the Chateau or the way to the Tavern in the distance. Like we’ve wandered to a part of the forest swallowed in darkness that has been altogether forgotten. Dying bushes of flowers in every color curl into themselves and their withered petals litter the ground.

I hook my hands, careful to stay out of sight, watching Jordan navigate through these woods with knowing. He moves like the wind, in a blur of black fog. I follow, sticking from tree to tree, leaves shuffling under my feet as quietly as I can. A deep cold presses in on us. The air tastes of cedar and smoke. Until suddenly he stops and gazes in every direction.

In front of him is a thorny bush with red blooms. He glances around once more before stroking the bush’s petals. Then he inhales and stretches his arms wide.

He exhales and tendrils of wispy dark magic appear in his hands, thrashing violently.

I press so hard into the bark in front of me, it scrapes my knees. He shudders, fog suddenly at his lips, and my legs threaten to go out from under me. I blink, but he is still there, holding his wrists together, pointed at the branches beneath him. As the plant crumples in on itself, rotting, leaf by leaf, the writhing wisps of magic in Jordan’s hands slow, more deliberate and controlled. When he finishes, the bush and every other one near it are decayed piles of ash. He exhales. Jordan shakes out his hands, then flexes his fingers, rolling his shoulders. His expression has darkened, his mask bleeding through his skin. He hunches forward, turns in on himself, and cloaks, disappearing in dark fog.

I stumble backward, forcing down a dry breath.

I gape into the nothingness of the night, trying to put words to what I just saw. I claw at the roots of my hair, scrubbing a palm down my face, blinking a thousand times.

This . . . this is how he manages it.

Using it, feeding it, to keep control.

And he does it here in the dark distant forest where no one would ever notice. I glare at my hands. I have so many questions. If we could just talk about it, if I could ever trust him like that, he could save my life. I let a tree hold me up as I realize what I have to do. If I’m going to maintain control, I can’t keep fighting it off, denying it air.

I have to use my toushana.

I swallow. The only time my toushana has ever really listened to me was when I destroyed the lab table. As if it suffered of a thirst that had just been quenched. Afterward it did as I asked, listened when I commanded it, which was to lie quiet.

Could this actually work? The woody scent of damp moss fills my nose as I step out of my hiding spot. The silent woods are wreathed in fog, and I follow the pine-needle-covered paths around and through the litter of broken trees. I manage to find a few stumps splintered or covered in fungus. Here goes nothing . . .

I call to my toushana, and a chill like death answers in a breath. I lay my icy fingers on the stump and its hard exterior crumbles into blackened sand. I work my hands up and down its long trunk, glancing over my shoulder every few moments, listening hard. As my cold, dead magic rushes out of me, insatiable, the tension in my shoulders eases, like a much needed release.

The sky is somehow darker by the time I finish. I fall to my knees, but my chest is lighter.

“A secret part of the woods,” I mutter, a soft smile pulling at my lips as I catch my breath. That’s what this place could be for me.

I scatter the evidence until the ashes mix with the deadened leaves imperceptibly. No one will even know I was here. I reach for magic again, this time the proper one. And the ache that lives in my side is hardly there, my toushana so sedate I can’t even sense it. Instead, warmth unfurls in me, and I play with the leaf of a plant, shifting it into a paper flower.

This is what I have to do.

I try to exhale but can’t. Using my toushana on purpose risks strengthening it, because unlike Jordan’s, mine is inside of me. My chest tightens, and I clutch it, determined to stay calm. I have no choice.

I will let my toushana satisfy itself in secret if that’s what it takes.

Until Cotillion.

Then this cursed life will finally be behind me.

THIRTY-ONE