Page 133 of House of Marionne

I trace the edges of his hair, and I can feel him relax against my fingers. If home could be a moment, a feeling, I’m pretty sure this is it.

“I moved a lot when I was little.” I let out a huge breath. “My mom was always afraid . . . someone would find out about my magic.” My heart ticks faster as I skirt so close to the truth.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve found your way back to us.”

I set my head on his shoulder. “Play me something.”

His fingers dance along the piano, and the strain permanently etched in his expression melts away. The melody races my pulse, low and fast at first, then high and soothing. I sway to the rhythm. The song rises to a pinnacle of notes clustered together like a starry sky before it ends with a crisp, sharp finish.

“Where did you learn to play like that?”

“I was eight, in piano lessons when Audior magic came to me for the first time. I’d—” His expression darkens for the second time tonight as he thinks of home. “Seen something earlier that day and was trying to get it out of my head. Playing so fierce and fast, my fingers stopped, but the music went on, my magic transfiguring the sounds in the air. My parents had me tested right away.”

“Tested?”

“Yes.” His shoulder tenses beneath my touch. “I was able to reach two forms of magic so young that I was moved in with Headmistress Perl that same day.” He’s never truly known a home either. He meets my eyes, his narrowed in concern. “I didn’t learn about my third strand of magic until I’d left home.”

“Toushana.”

“No, Quell. That’s something we touch when we have to, not something we nurture to grow.”

“Oh, you didn’t exactly explain it to me.” I laugh to keep the mood light, but as he turns to me, I grip the wood of my seat.

“I don’t talk about these things because I don’t want you to fear me.”

A flutter of chill raises hairs on my skin. “It doesn’t scare me.”

His thumb grazes my jaw. “It should.”

I swallow. I cross and uncross my legs, commanding the cold angst coiling in me back down. Nothing is ruining this moment.

“There’s a reason Draguns only really socialize among themselves. It’s easy to lose yourself in all of it. The power. The proximity to forbidden magic. Toushana is different because it feeds off of a person to grow stronger. Poisoning their ability to reach their real magic. Part of the reason the Order is so adamant about hunting people with toushana is that the bounds of its power are unknown. It’s not clear when it stops growing. But once it takes a person over completely, the person is no longer in control, the toushana is. Many of Dysiis’s findings were actually burned.”

I twist the end of my skirt, teetering on the edge of my seat. “Why?”

“Darkbearers.”

The diadems in the glass cases on display all over Chateau Soleil. “Toushana worshippers. Early Draguns—Sunbringers, I believe they were called back then—hunted them.” I hug around myself.

He nods. “Centuries ago, some magic students found Dysiis’s teachings and distorted them completely, saying toushana wasn’t to be feared, it was to be used. A weapon the Marked were blessed with by Sola Sfenti to use as they pleased.”

Is that what they worry I’ll do? Is that why they’d kill me?

“That’s of course not at all the point of Dysiis’s teachings. But that’s when Sunbringers were born. That’s why.”

I’ve stopped breathing.

“So yes, I can summon toushana outside of myself and use it. But it takes much intentional focus and lots of training to keep it from seeping into my bones and binding with me. To not bend to its will but keep it bent to mine. But judging by the Sphere’s crack, there are many more using toushana out there.”

Nore’s face flits through my memory.

“Killing those with toushana is also what keeps the Sphere in balance. We think.”

My breath snags on the word kill. I want to plug my ears or tell him to keep playing.

“My peers have been busy lately trying to find more with toushana.” He twists his mouth.

“Yes?”