PART ONE
ONE Jordan
Cold
eats away at my bones as I search for Lady Ruby.
The Sphere’s magic sludges through me, wrapping around my spine as I move my hand to my heart, which has been wounded in both the literal and figurative senses. The urge to sleep in a sunlit field of fresh jasmine and never wake up pulls at me. But the magic brings a face to mind, with dazzling brown eyes that glitter with defiance. My heart twinges with longing.
“Quell.” Her name slips from my lips like a song. A wish.
I should be with her. at was the plan.
Not here, in Washington, DC, hunting down a notorious Trader who might be able to help me contain the magic festering inside me. My ribs begin to pulse with pain. But Quell is the Headmistress of House of Marionne now. If I lose the Sphere’s magic—Quell dies.
Saving her is what matters most.
After everything I’ve done, I must. I try to blink her memory away and focus on the bleeding skyline of dilapidated buildings before me. The Sixth Ward’s lively retail district and vibrant nightlife of east DC used to pulse with the city’s heartbeat. But the few buildings still standing are boarded up and tagged with angry slashes of paint: distorted House sigils and elaborately detailed suns.
The silence reeks of death. I move carefully through the slick streets,
past torn-down streetlights, busted-out windows, and the singed metal hulls of what used to be cars. The stench of rotting flesh stings my nostrils, stopping me dead in my tracks. Three bodies are tied to a storefront.
Blood for blood is written across them in bright yellow paint.
The few windows of the shop that haven’t been broken are painted with the same number over and over: 1822. The year the first House was founded by the Upper Cabinet. Also the year Misa, the ancient magic city, fell and most of the residents were burned in their beds.
My throat thickens. But it’s the suns branded onto the corpses’ eyelids that make bile lurch in my gut. An old ritual of Darkbearers, meant to light a path to the afterlife; an act of mercy, they called it.
“Deaus misereateur.”
My hand moves from my throbbing side to the scar inches below my heart, where the Sphere’s magic disappeared inside me several weeks earlier. The gash has spread into a meaty, purpling bruise across my chest and down my left side beneath my heart. Every day the flesh there thins, hanging like draped fabric over my ribs.
Toushana-bound Darkbearers . . .
On the loose . . .
Guilt threatens to choke me as my head swivels. ere was no one here to stop them. My side throbs and I grit my teeth. I can’t save Quell if the Sphere’s vessel—me—is rotting from the inside out. I need to be healed. Then I need the magic out of me and into something safe. I tighten my fist and keep walking, staying out of sight, skimming for some indication of where the infamous Lady Ruby could be.
There are stories of a legendary Retentor stone with healing properties powerful enough to mend any severe magical wound. The hero always saved the day, rescuing his love from peril and curing whatever ill magic befell them with this elusive stone. Lore always has a seed of truth. Lady Ruby will know if the stone’s real.
She’s a Trader who’s been on the brotherhood’s wanted list for years. The rarer the item, the harder it is to procure, the higher the chance Ruby’s
tried to get her hands on it or knows how to. But she never meets for a trade in the same place twice. I couldn’t even find a consistent description of her. It’s taken me all these weeks just to suss out a whiff of where she might be. Tonight she’s supposed to be meeting up for a trade here.
I skirt a fleur-de-lis drawn across the sidewalk in a red that is not paint and walk quicker, the Sphere’s cold magic inside me stirring.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
My heart stutters at footsteps echoing mine.
I turn. But there is only darkness behind me.
I continue walking.
Clack. Clack. Clack. My jaw ticks. I despise games. Slipping into the shadow of the streetlights beneath an awning of a building, I listen for the direction of my follower, summoning my Dragun senses. A stir of hot magic rustles inside me like a reed tugged by the wind. Heat blossoms in my chest, pushing the Sphere’s toushana aside. My senses sharpen for the first time in a long time.
The world comes alive in a symphony of sounds. The footsteps have stopped, but I can hear breathing that isn’t my own. My bones tremor, the Sphere’s magic pulsing inside me with its own heartbeat.
A sudden pain shoots up my spine, a thousand icy needles scrape my insides. The Sphere’s warm magic retreats as the sounds and sights begin to dull.
The breathing quiets.
I ease out a shaky breath. I am broken.
Dueling magics, proper and dark, have lived inside me, constantly at war with one another. The warm thrum of my own magic is gone. I can’t feel it at all. When I reach for magic, the Sphere’s magic answers, weighty, like wearing shoes filled with lead.
After the fight at the Sphere, as the dregs of the Sphere’s magic finished siphoning into me, I lay there, unable to move. When I reopened my eyes, I was somewhere else, all alone and in excruciating pain. I thought I was dead. But by the fourth day of waking up with life in my limbs,
I dragged myself up, determined to form some sort of plan. Quell and Abby were supposed to meet me at the Tavern near Chateau Soleil. But I couldn’t be near them in this condition, this unsure about what the Sphere’s magic inside me was doing. I refuse to accidentally hurt anyone, but especially them. Especially Quell. My eavesdropping from one northeastern Tavern to the next led me here.
Someone crosses the street up ahead before disappearing between the buildings. Fear seizes my chest. I touch the cured paint and notice it’s peeling in several places. Whoever destroyed this neighborhood did it some time ago.
I hold on to the feeling of magic inside me as I close in on a girl in slick pants, a flowy teal shirt, and a silver diadem arced over her head.
Too young to be Ruby.
She dashes down the alleyway, and I catch up to her, grabbing her by the wrist. Cold snakes through my bones to my fingertips, ready to strike.
“Let me go!” She tugs against my hold. The girl’s a living work of art. Her face has been painted like a canvas. Strokes of every color coil and twist around one another across her olive skin. Icy rouge on her cheeks, earthy tones slope beneath her eyes. Sharp, bright pink paints her lips. Gems adorn her thick brows, trailing around her face and neck, disappearing into her clothes.
“An Emoter.” Prodigiously skilled painters who use colors to reveal emotion. My grip on her slips and she rounds her wrist, freeing herself before clamping her hold on me. She cocks her head, and surveys my chest with curiosity, not malice. I’m not sure if it’s the suddenness of her touch or the way it only makes me miss Quell more, but I don’t immediately resist.
“What’s your name?” I ask as she shows me her palms, which have turned blue.
“I’ll tell you my name if you tell me what makes you so sad.”
I shift on my feet. She’s far too young but maybe . . . “Ruby?”
Recognition glints in her eyes as she scopes the surroundings, looking for the Trader. My instincts were right. But she knows her.
“You’re meeting her tonight,” I say.
“The temperature is dropping. Can you feel it?” As she smooths her palms against her pants, the color of her palms returns to her olive skin tone.
“I’m Harmony, Secundus, fourth of my blood, Emoter candidate, sensor type. Oralia.”
“I’m—”
“I know who you are.” She gazes around again. Shadows begin to shift. The darkness thickens. “Look, if I were you—”
Silver protrudes from her throat and the sentence finishes with a gurgle. Her body hits the ground with a thud. Her attacker lunges for me, a fresh blade slashing in my direction, when several things happen at once.
TWO
Quell
Silence hangs in the air around me like a guillotine. I’m still cold from the cloak I used to travel to the Sixth Ward in DC. My heart rams in my chest as I skim the darkness, looking for Jordan. But there isn’t a person in sight. Only moonlight washing the ground in light, telling secrets the darkness was supposed to hide.
The last time I saw Jordan, he was surrounded by Draguns and I was riding away on a horse with Yagrin at the reins. He was supposed to meet back up with Abby and me at a Tavern. We needed to hatch a plan to deal with the Dragunhead and Beaulah trying to steal the Sphere’s magic— everyone’s magic, my magic!
But he never showed.
And worse, Yagrin and Nore agreed to find the piece of the ancestral House of Ambrose Scroll that promised immortality, so if the Sphere’s magic is lost and the Headmistresses die, Jordan could use it to save my life. But there’s no word from either of them. My mother’s remains at House of Perl, Beaulah trying to use me to steal the Sphere’s magic, House of Duncan showing up to fight House of Marionne, my grandmother dying . . . It all still haunts my dreams.
But it’s the whispered rumors about what Jordan might have done that congeals my blood more than any memory.
I move faster down the streets, careful to skirt the streetlights. I’ve
heard that magic is dying out, the Order is fracturing as Marked turn on one another, that House of Marionne didn’t hold a funeral for my grandmother. I’ve also heard rumors the Dragun brotherhood has disbanded and Beaulah’s niece, Adola, is recruiting ex-brotherhood to their side. Darker rumors suggest Jordan tried to steal the magic, and it killed . . .
A lump rises in my throat as I hug around myself, searching these battered city streets. When I intercepted a deal among a seedy group of Traders two days ago, I overheard that the Dragunheart would be in the Sixth Ward of DC tonight. It could be bad gossip, but I am taking my chances.
The boy who first saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself is alive. I know it in my bones. I just have to find him.
If the Sphere’s really broken, if the Order’s really fallen apart, we will face its destruction, and whatever it means, together. Like we faced Beaulah at the Sphere, her Draguns at the inn in Aronya. Together we are unbeatable. Together we are free.
My feet are lead, doubt trying to outweigh my hope as I read messages painted across what’s left of the buildings in this ransacked neighborhood. There’s no sign of Jordan anywhere.
Toushana moves in my chest, and I try to focus on the chill to grow its intensity to bring some comfort to my shaky hands. It’s been weeks since I felt my magic burn intensely. I assumed it was exhausted from how I used it, harder than I ever have—consumed with rage—trying to break the Sphere. Before realizing Beaulah was using me and no amount of fury would take away the feeling of not having my mom. My physical bruises have healed at least, thanks to Abby, and I’m lucky my travel cloak got me here.
I hustle along the sidewalk, searching for some sign of life on the streets, and my shoes slide against something slick, a fleur-de-lis—my House sigil—painted on the ground in angry strokes of fresh blood.
As my grandmother died, she urged me to find Nore, to work with her. For what, I’m not sure.
But I’m done taking orders.
I haven’t given much thought to the Chateau or my old maezres. Abby and I have kept our heads down the last several weeks, glancing only at the occasional headline. I look around and feel sick. The neighborhood’s retail shops are hulls of carnage. Hollow high-rises with shattered windows loom like soulless monsters. The world is blurring at its seams, bleeding two realities together that should never touch. is isn’t my mess. I tighten my fists. I need to know that my magic, and Jordan, will be okay. I was Beaulah’s puppet, I won’t be anyone else’s, even for a good cause. That is not freedom.
I cross the street, where a critter scurries away from a body, looking for some sign of Jordan. The boy who set out to take my life, but gave everything to save it in the end. I run harder, searching, listening, nails digging into my palms, until I hear a commotion, and follow the sounds around a building.
A hooded figure holds Jordan from behind, edging a dagger to his throat. My heart knocks in my chest. I’m flooded with memories of the last time we were together. He’d finally opened up to me about the scars of his past, about how trapped he’s felt his entire life by the Order, how in my eyes is where he finds courage to fight for freedom.
And I betrayed him.
I snatched the Dragunheart pendant right from under his nose.
And yet he chased me down and fought off the Draguns trying to kill me. When Beaulah tried to coerce me to break the Sphere, it was Jordan who reminded me of who I am. Finding him feels like finding a piece of me that’s been missing: a home.
That’s being ransacked.
Jordan wrestles the blade from him and shoves it backward into the attacker’s side. The assailant groans, keeling over. But Jordan holds his body against himself as a shield, spinning to block another strike from someone lurking in the shadows. Voices sound somewhere. The feeling of being watched sticks to my skin, and my world dizzies as another hurtles past me, my eyes too slow to translate the darkness.
Jordan howls in pain as a blade disappears into his shoulder.
One attacker shoves another. “No hurting him!” He reaches for silver restraints, and it shakes me back to the present. I pull at the bite of chill in my veins, determined to intervene.
But then Jordan’s body begins to bleed shadows. Dark magic engulfs the alleyway. And it’s the most comforting sight I’ve seen in a long time.
Until the others bleed shadows, too.
I blink, watching the magic come from inside them. All.
The way only those bound to dark magic, like me, can do.
The darkness around us deepens. Shadows swallow the fight, despite the dagger stuck in his shoulder.
At the same time, my toushana finally answers my call, seeping through my hands in a thrilling chill that jolts me into the nearest attacker. I wrap my toushana-bleeding hands around his face. He howls, clawing at my grip. I shove him with all my might against the brick, and he collapses. Jordan makes short work of the others, wielding darkness, piling up bodies on the ground.
He spots me and turns pale as he holds the last attacker’s body, silver buried in their chest as he checks some kind of mark on the back of their neck.
“Quell.”
“Jordan, I—”
He throws the body down, skims their pockets, takes their weapons, and sprints away.
Nore
Thetattoo shop doors were coated in yew leaf stickers and neon paint. Nore had always pictured her first trip to an Ambrose tattoo parlor under very different circumstances. Before stepping inside, she gazed around for the dead, her grip tight on her bag strap.
The Pact her House had with their ancestors haunted her day and night. It gave Ambrose the ability to push the bounds of magic. In exchange the House Headmistress gave the dead her heart. They channeled its magic to cling to life. But Nore didn’t have magic. Her heart in their glass box would be the death of her.
She had to find the full Immortality Scroll before her time was up.
She held in a breath, searching the skies outside, but they were clear. When she stepped inside, the place reeked of sour peckle smoke, but the three tattooists at their chairs didn’t seem to notice.
“The wait’s about an hour,” the tattoo artist farthest from the door said. Brown hair rippled down her back. The sides of her shaved head were branded with a gate of tally marks. Nore pulled her thick red hair over her shoulder, her sleeves down and collar closed. She had zero markings. And if anyone figured out who she was, she didn’t want to give them any excuse to look at her sideways.
A handful of seats were occupied. She’d discovered half the Scroll almost two months ago, digging up her inaugural Headmistress’s grave,
when the Sphere broke. Her brother, Ellery, tried to steal it, but the scuffle ripped the half Scroll in two. She needed the missing half.
Or when her brother went through with his threat to kill their mother, Headship of House of Ambrose would pass to her.
Nore sat and watched the door, waiting for the person she was looking for to walk through. He was the key to finding the rest of the Scroll. She was sure of it.
When it opened and the tall, dapper Dublin Kyn walked in, her nails bit into the underside of her thigh. He got the same greeting and strode over and sat two seats down from her. She sat up, trying to look casual, flipping through art samples. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Dublin, whose swept-back reddish-brown hair and lightly stubbled beard only punctuated his cavalier aura. He wore one of those shirts that didn’t look like it had top buttons, showing a sliver of chest. His brightly colored suit fit him with a precision that meant it could only be tailored.
She watched him with a hand gripped on her seat. For someone who’d built a reputation for methodically skirting the Order’s control over his life, she’d expected someone more . . . discreet.
Dublin was one of her House’s most infamous graduates. He was offered his top internship choice after Third Rite but publicly announced he was going to take a sabbatical year to visit the Order’s most mystical locations instead. A slap in the Council of Mothers’ face. At first, the Council tried to stop Kyn from making a mockery of the rules. But everything they could hold over him—status in the Order, membership in a House, camaraderie, access to Marked venues, wealth—he didn’t actually care about. Escaping the Order sounded impossible, but somehow this man had done it. Questions scraped at her skull as he settled into his chair, unbothered.
He’d spent weeks in the Sahara; winter in Mali; months, one headline said, in a tiny village in the Paro valley of Bhutan. He was famously quoted saying, “I want to tour places so remote, not a living soul would dare follow me there.” Unmarked headlines had Dublin’s name everywhere, heralding
his travels to the most gravity-defying, difficult places in the world to reach. He published excerpts from his journals that had detailed depictions of everywhere he traveled and all he explored. Proof he’d seen it with his own two eyes. He used magic to build the life he wanted, gloating for all the glory the Unmarked world had to offer. He returned to the Council after two years of travels with a journal chronicling all he’d seen and said that after seeing all magic had to offer, he was bored with it. Then he rescinded his membership in the Order himself.
If anyone alive had tried to hunt down the missing piece of the Scroll, Dublin Kyn had.
And Nore’d bet he’d written about it in his legendary travel journal.
One of the tattooists’ chairs emptied. A client with a fresh cherry blossom tree snaking around their arm slung their bag over their shoulder and eased in Dublin’s direction.
“I don’t mean to be weird,” they said. “But, um, are you Dublin Kyn?”
He flipped his hair back, foot propped up on his knee. “I am.” He felt around for something to write with. “And you are?”
They fanned themself. “Could I have your autograph?”
Nore grimaced as they raised their shirt and had Dublin sign across their ribs, then professed they were never bathing that part of their body again. Another couple of waiting patrons hopped up courageously as well. He signed whatever they asked and suggested taking a few pictures before the shop settled again. Nore caught herself staring and jerked her chin away. Dublin grinned as he pulled a brown leather journal with a brass clasp around it from his satchel. Nore’s heart skipped a beat. She leaned forward in her seat, trying for a glimpse of the pages.
“Is there something you’d like me to sign?” he asked.
Nore hesitated, chewing on how she could get close to someone like him, who lathered in attention. He didn’t even bother to look anyone in the eye who approached him. And the way he kept flipping his damn hair.
Yagrin had long hair, and he never flipped it. He was too serious to flip his hair. But he’d rake his hands through it when he felt pensive. Some-
times he’d ask her to play in it, raking lines down his scalp. It relaxed him like nothing else. Of course, he had no idea Nore knew any of that. Because he had no idea the girl he was in love with, the girl he thought was dead—Red was also Nore. She slumped in her seat, more irritated than sad at her predicament. She made sure to appear indifferent to Dublin, awaiting her answer.
She would deny him the one thing he wanted—her interest.
That would lure him in so she could get a better look at that journal.
“My body parts are just fine without your endorsement, but thanks.”
He closed his journal and smiled, drawn to her numbness of his ego. Sarcasm rarely failed her. Dublin flipped his hair again and she tossed him the hair tie on her arm.
“Seems like you need it.”
He rotated in his seat to look right at her. “You’re funny.”
“You’re . . . good at signing things.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I’m sure you would love to tell me.”
Again, he smirked. “It’s said the view from the top of the Kenetican mountains will make anyone cry.”
She’d heard. Her brother had taken her hiking twice. It was pretty, but not her idea of recreation. If Dublin was intrigued by her wit, she definitely wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of the punch line.
“ From the peaks of the Kenetican, the clouds condense on your face, forming what looks like tears. Only one human has ever actually been there before.”
“You do know who I am, or you hike.”
“Both.”
“But you said you didn’t know—” His mouth bowed as he remembered what she’d actually said. “Clever.” He extended a hand. “I’m Dublin. It’s nice to meet you.” When she let his hand go, he held on to hers and quirked a brow. Nore held up three fingers, then knotted them. One for each yew leaf of the sigil of their House.
“What other hobbies do you have?” He sat back in his seat with a sugary grin.
“I enjoy painting. I’ve dabbled in oils. I enjoy fire made with my hands, really anything with my hands. I used to—” The truth formed a lump in her throat. “Have a farm.”
“The more simply we live, the wiser and happier we are. The layers we add are full of complications.”
“So much complication.”
“It’s odd to meet someone . . .” He grasped at the air. This was an Order-approved tattoo shop, though still open to Unmarked. Discretion was paramount. “Who has such a fresh way of seeing things.”
Oh gosh, is he irting? She fought the urge to vomit.
“What do you make of the extreme weather we’ve been having? Everyone is talking about it.” e Sphere shattering, I mean.
“I don’t worry about the weather. I try to act as if the weather doesn’t exist at all.”
“What if a storm is coming, Mr. Kyn?”
“I suppose I’ll have to find a really good umbrella. And it’s Dublin.”
“There was just a huge storm, actually, Dublin.”
“So glad I was out of the country for it.”
There were so many things she wanted to ask him, such as how he got away from the Order. And what it cost him. How he created a new life without changing his name. Or living in hiding. He jotted something down in his journal on the page he’d held before. As he wrote, he tucked his bottom lip, pausing to tap his jaw a few times.
“You’re up.” The tattoo artist gestured at her. “My gun is sparking.” She tucked away her tools, sliding them into metal drawers before tidying up her workspace. “Let’s move to the back room.”
“Would you care to join me?” Nore stood, hoping she’d played her cards right with Dublin.
He slapped his journal closed and tucked it under his arm. He watched her eye it, then said, “I would hate to impose.”
“It’s a lot less crowded back there,” the artist said, and Nore made a point not to look her way. “I can probably work you in faster.”
“Sure,” Dublin said. “Why not?”
The back room was elaborately decorated with Ambrose paraphernalia. The artist ducked out to get her things and Nore took it all in. Framed clippings from Debs Daily commissioning this location. Another with a ribbon cutting. A poster for an upcoming Audior concert.
Beside the shop owner in one picture was someone Nore recognized, with cropped bangs, a severe expression, and gray hair. Mother, decades younger. Nore’s jaw locked.
Dublin set his satchel in a chair before walking the length of the room with hands clasped behind his back.
“Reliving the glory days?” she asked him.
“Just observing. I meant what I said about the weather.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Truly, I’m not lying. I have nothing to hide.”
Her chest squeezed. A life I dream of. “Surely you’ve found some discoveries satisfying. The Immortality Scroll is quite impressive as far as magical accomplishments go.” Her heart hammered.
“Eh.”
She slid to the edge of her chair. “Is that indifference?”
“Ambrosers have tried to find that Scroll for generations. I looked, too. Learned all kinds of things about the places where it’s hidden. But death is what makes living life so thrilling. I don’t need an endless one.”
His satchel with the journal inside still sat on a nearby chair. “What brought you here today?”
“I just returned from Croatia. I get a new tattoo to commemorate a trip. Call it a tradition from my House that stuck, I suppose.”
He might live on his own terms, but he was Ambrose-bred. How is such a thing even possible? Their world couldn’t give him the fame he craved. So he found it elsewhere. Loyal to himself, like everyone else in the Order.
“Ready?” the tattoo artist asked when she returned.
“Oh!” Nore hadn’t actually planned to get a tattoo. “Dublin, why don’t you go?”
“Ladies first. I insist.”
Nore hesitated. Dublin’s brow furrowed.
She climbed into the chair.
“Tally mark? How many?”
If she was going to get a permanent mark, it wasn’t going to be anything her House made her. She agreed with Dublin on that. Instead it would be something that meant a lot to her.
“Can you do hemlock flowers in the shape of a heart?”
The tattooist nodded, and Nore adjusted her clothes to expose her hip. She didn’t want to answer questions about what it meant. Dublin jotted something in his journal before setting it back on the chair.
“Why poison?” he asked.
Her heart pounded in its cage as a flood of frustration reddened her cheeks. “You defy possibilities. But in my experience some are finite. For me, love is an impossibility. And this is a reminder of that.”
“You only grow more intriguing,” Dublin said, as the artist started the drawing. “You’re very brilliant. A deep thinker.”
“I’m aware.”
He took more notes.
“You’ve been writing in that thing since you arrived.”
“Not writing. Revising, tweaking, making minor adjustments.”
“Still, it’s rude.” She held out her hand and her pulse thrummed. He handed the journal to her. She looked at what he was sketching. He’d crammed a drawing of her in a tiny space between all kinds of dated notes. Several were about travel. Her grip on the journal tightened. Next to the sketch he’d written then erased a word. He took the journal back and thumbed through the well-worn pages before returning it to his satchel. “Not much room left these days.”
He said a few more things but something struck her.
Had he said places when he was talking about looking for the Scroll?
As in, not one.
“I take it everywhere. There are certain first impressions I don’t want to forget. You’re a rare find,” he said, just as the tattooist finished.
She stared at the sprawling buds carving red lines through her irritated pale skin. Her heart twinged. She let the tattooist bandage it before readjusting her clothes. Dublin moved into the chair. He took off his shirt, and the artist began a drawing on his clavicle. As he stared at the ceiling, Nore moved closer to his satchel.
“Your Unmarked accolades are endless,” she said. “How well rounded are you in the Marked world?”
“Try me.”
To keep him distracted as she snooped, Nore questioned him about every manner of magical anatomy that she could think of. When she ran out of those questions, she asked him to name every discovered enhancer stone in alphabetical order. Only once did the tattoo artist glance at her as she traded the journal in his satchel for a book she’d brought with her.
The tattooist finished. A small pair of dragon wings ornamented his clavicle like a pendant. He sat up, adjusting his clothes.
“Oh, look at the time,” he said, grabbing his bag strap and roping it over his shoulder. “I’m only visiting for a few days. But I’d like to see you again. Are you free tonight?”
“I might be,” she lied. Anything to keep him from growing suspicious as she hooked her own bag, with his journal hidden inside, onto her arm.
“Meet me at Le Blanc on East Third at seven.” He stood, dusted off his clothes, and moved toward the door.
Nore smiled, willing herself to blush.
“Hope to see you then, miss?” He scrubbed a palm down his face. “I can’t believe I don’t know your name.”
She froze. She told herself she wasn’t hiding anymore.
“Delia. Which reminds me, did you do all of your traveling alone?” Who else knows what he discovered about the Scrolls? A friend? A lover?
“I have instant friends everywhere I go.” He grabbed the knob. “I’m never alone.”
“Funny, to me that sounds very lonely.”
He laughed as he pulled the door open. “Well, perhaps you could be the first one. See you tonight, Delia.” He tipped his head and left. Nore collapsed against the wall.
The tattooist exhaled, too. “I never want to do that again.” She held out her hand, and Nore filled it with a few gems she’d brought from Dlaminaugh.
“Thank you, seriously, so much.”
“Sure. Give my love to your brother.”
There was that sick feeling again. Everyone loved her brother, Ellery. The brother who wanted to kill her to take Headship of their House. The brother who was out there somewhere, plotting to find her.
“Sure thing.” Nore dashed out the shop’s back-alley door toward a waiting Yagrin.
FOUR
Yagrin
Nore
strutted toward Yagrin with a satisfied smirk, hand clutched around something. She was smart. Long red hair. Soft-spoken but with angry eyes. When she focused intensely on something, she’d chew her bottom lip so hard it was often swollen on the right side.
“Well?” he asked. “Did you find out if he’s ever looked for the Scroll?”
The Immortality Scroll outlined the steps to achieve a one-use sort of magic for an endless life. Even for someone who had already died. Her brother had a piece of the Scroll. They needed to steal it back. Jordan wanted him to assemble the Scroll pieces to be ready to save Quell’s life if it came down to it. But the other half was still somewhere. And that seemed easier to focus on finding first.
Yagrin was going to find the pieces of the Scroll, alright. And steal them for himself.
Red will live again.
Jordan was doing just fine with the world of magic on his shoulders, he bet. It was just like him to take the Sphere’s power literally into his own hands. Yagrin didn’t care about magic or the world. He just wanted Red back. If it meant stealing from his brother, so be it. Jordan Wexton would be just fine. It was Yagrin who lived at the bottom of the barrel. No more.
But he and Nore had been searching for weeks and turned up nothing.
Nore agreed to help in exchange for kidnapping her mother from
Ellery once the Scroll was in hand. The bargain had surprised Yagrin. She didn’t seem close with her mother. Over the last several weeks, she hadn’t mentioned her more than once, and when she did, her tone was rife with disgust.
Yagrin wasn’t sure stalking Dublin Kyn was the best idea either. But Nore drafted a chart to explain the statistical likelihood that someone of Dublin’s reputation and experience would have at least researched where the missing piece of the Scroll could be. All the endless research Nore’d done on Order territories and geography, the deep dive into archival maps in Unmarked history in case it was hiding in plain sight, had gone nowhere.
Yagrin didn’t need research. He worked on instinct. A person’s actions revealed their truest desires, not their words. And it was clear to him that Nore was desperate to find the lost Scroll half. Almost too desperate . . . Either she feared what Jordan would do if she failed to keep her end of the bargain or she had ulterior motives. He cleared his throat.
But so did he.
They would be on the same team until they weren’t anymore.
Nore’s smile widened as she drew out the anticipation, and it ground his annoyance. Another reason he preferred to work alone.
“Out with it,” he demanded, reaching for what appeared to be a book in her hand. “What is it?”
“Stole it right from under his nose.”
He tried to take it from her, but she didn’t let go, raising a single brow.
“Can I, er, see it, please?”
She released it. Intellectus secat acutissimum was inscribed on its leatherbound cover.
“The personal discoveries of Dublin Kyn. How?”
She went on to tell him about how she made a deal with the tattooist to help her get them alone when the sky suddenly darkened. Nore grew pale, looking over her shoulder.
“Not here,” she said, taking the book and walking off at a quick stride. “Can you cloak?”
“Magic’s been funny since the Sphere broke. You have any transport powder?” he asked.
“I—um, no, I don’t. All out.” She hurried, leaving him there, and he had to hustle to keep up when she stopped several blocks away to find a discreet spot.
Lit-Tea-Rally was a quaint used-bookstore teahouse. Yagrin opened the door and stepped aside to let her through. A line stretched from the counter in a room full of books, bistro tables, and cozy chairs. But she skirted the crowd and stared out the shop window.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
His jaw set at the lie. Running around with an heir in the Order, what had become of him? When the sky began to brighten, Nore blew out a sharp breath and held her stomach.
“Would you like a lemon poppy-seed muffin? I read the heir of House Ambrose likes lemon.”
“You’ve read about me?”
“I’ve read about all the heirs, their families, their histories. It is part of Perl’s House studies.”
Nore hugged around herself. “I’m fine.” She skipped the line and traipsed through towering bookshelves to the back of the store near the historical section. He followed. She slid into a seat at a small table, and though the chair beside her was open, he sat across from her.
Yagrin knew he was selfish, but he wasn’t a monster. So he’d done his best to keep his distance to avoid giving her the wrong impression while they worked together. The nights she spent researching, he’d rest. Then they’d switch. When they ate, they’d take turns, never opening an opportunity for conversation. This girl would hate him by the end of their time together—because the minute they got their hands on that final Scroll piece, he was done helping her.
And he wasn’t sorry for it. Since when had anyone ever given consideration to what he wanted? His father’s shadow loomed, the sting of his
“love” still hot on Yagrin’s cheeks so many years later. His aunt had left her mark, too, in bruises and canine bite marks all over his body. He had been broken, beaten, and bred to be an assassin errand-boy for House of Perl. He was resigned, at first, to do what he was told and steal inbetween moments to live his life with Red.
That would be enough, he had told himself. Until the Order killed her.
But if Red could live . . . He forced down the lump in his throat. Maybe revenge wasn’t the only thing worth his life’s devotion. For once, he was putting himself first.
Nore reached for the journal. “You’re going to have to get closer.”
He hesitated but moved to the chair beside her. The smell of her assaulted him. Rubbery and plastic, with an undertone of florals. “You smell like . . . paint?”
Her face flushed.
“Didn’t take Ambrosers for the creative type.”
“I’m not your typical Ambroser.”
Yagrin’s lip twitched. A pair sauntered by, flipping through a stack of books. When the coast was clear, she pulled out the journal and set it on the table and they both reached to unlatch the strap at the same time, fingers brushing.
She snatched hers back. He did, too.
“Go on,” he said. With a twist, the brass hook opened for her, and his heart skipped a beat. For once, thoughts of the Sphere bleeding out weren’t swarming in his head. Instead he could see a nest of dark red hair shrouding a face bright with laughter. He could hear her laugh deep in his soul. A laugh that set his heart on fire. A laugh that once comforted like a hug but now haunted him like a ghost. In the Unmarked world, she wasn’t consumed with anyone or anything, other than what brought her happiness. She lived wild and free.
And she died because of me.
Yagrin tightened his fist as Nore opened the journal. She flipped pages, noting the dates on each one. The pages weren’t long entries as he expected,
more of a smattering of one-liners. Some pages had sketches with a word or phrase next to it. And a date. Everything had a date.
He found a page with a sketch of a girl with large eyes. Next to it was the word conundrum. And today’s date. Nore peered over to see what he was looking at, her fiery hair grazing his arm. It sent tingles through him. It wasn’t the same shade as Red’s, and Nore didn’t look anything like her, really. But the touch was enough to send shock waves through him as he stood on the precipice of possibility that he could see Red again. Nore pulled her hair over her shoulder. He cleared his throat.
“That one is from the tattoo shop,” she said. “He drew it while we were talking.” She turned the page and gasped. Scroll research. Nore’s mouth pushed sideways. Yagrin put some distance between them and blinked, staring at the words. The letters had been traced several times.
A simple title, in minuscule handwriting, inconspicuously placed at the bottom corner of the page. Like an afterthought. There were comments on the weather. Some doodles of a rose garden. The next several pages were mostly missing. Black and jagged as if they’d been burned out.
“There’s something here.”
Yagrin watched Nore trace a constellation drawn on the page. Each of its four corners connected to a sketch: Flowers. A wolf’s head. A book.
And a drama mask. Her tongue poked her cheek.
“There’s some connection between the Houses and the Scroll. This means something.”
“Does it, or is he just an amateur artist?”
She slammed it shut. “We have to get him to tell us what it means.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He did when he asked me to dinner.”
Yagrin didn’t know what he was expecting her to say, but that wasn’t it. So be it. “Where is the dinner and what time? I’ll make him.”
“You’re going to hurt him.” There was a lilt of surprise in her tone.
“He’s going to tell us what we want to know.”
“You don’t strike me as a violent person. There has to be another way.”
“I could care less what a little heiress thinks of me.” He pulled out and flipped the Dragun coin in his pocket. Just because they’d been working together for weeks didn’t mean she knew him.
Last Season, she was a name on a page, an invisible heir to a House he couldn’t give two shits about. Oh, there were all kinds of rumors about the heir to House of Ambrose and her overprotective mother. Some said she was sickly. Others thought she was conceited so she separated herself from everyone. There were other strange rumors, like her mother had possessed her magically. And it went horribly wrong, which forced her to keep to herself. But House of Ambrose was a place for the magic obsessed. It was the last place or people he ever thought about.
Nore’s lips pursed and a challenge glinted in her gray stare. But she only turned and gestured for him to follow.
Dublin hadn’t wandered far.
They found him interrogating a host outside a restaurant. He was exactly as the media described him: neat, long hair, warm tan skin that oozed with ask me where I’ve been, and a tone that dripped with condescension.
Nore folded her arms. “I don’t think he should see me.”
“Stay. You will alarm him.”
As if on cue, Dublin turned and gaped at Nore.
“You!” He strode toward them, glaring at her with a dark expression. Something sharp flashed, hidden in his hand.
Yagrin reached a protective arm backward. The hostess yelped, pulling out her phone.
“Look, we’ll return the book.” Yagrin had expected him to be furious, but this he didn’t expect. “We just have a few questions.”
Dublin’s gaze darted to the bag on Nore’s arm. “I should have recognized you.” An ambitious gleam shined in Dublin’s eyes. “You have any idea of the value on a vial of your blood?” He swiped at Nore and the silver tip of a knife poked from his fist. She cried out, holding her arm. Yagrin urged her back.
A guy like Dublin didn’t need money. Yagrin dodged as the blade swiped past again.
“Maybe we can make a barter,” he said.
“Yagrin!”
But he held up a hand. He knew what he was doing. “Tell us what the sketches mean on the constellation. Somehow it’s connected to the Scroll. And we’ll give you a sample of her blood. You can gloat in all the glory you want. Just say she got away.” No one would touch Nore’s blood. They had to send the message to her brother that they had the upper hand.
“Your brother would accept that excuse?” Dublin asked her. “For some useless details about each of the Houses.”
What a piece of work her brother is. To put a hit out on his own sister. When Yagrin turned to look at Dublin again, he prepared to lunge.
“Perls are all liars.”
Muscle memory took over, his Dragun senses awakening. He shoved Dublin in the chest, knocking him backward. Then he gripped his throat, closing his fingers tight against the windpipe. The blade hit the ground and he kicked it away.
The hostess’s eyes grew as she watched, filming.
“Handle her,” he said to Nore.
The air was crisp, trees still. He broke out in a cold sweat. But he held tighter, waiting for the cold toushana to answer. Nore hadn’t moved.
“Nore, the host. Her phone. ”
No toushana zipped through the air to aid him. Dublin clawed at his grip. He felt his hold slipping. He needed her magic. “Whatever you’ve got, Nore. I need it.”
“Help!” Nore screamed. “He’s deranged, please !” Nore staggered into the hostess stand, hard, and it tumbled over. Menus, the hostess’s purse, and all manner of things spilled out onto the sidewalk. What on earth is she doing? Magic, he meant—magic, for Sovereign’s sake! When the hostess bent over to gather her things, Nore slipped the thinnest blade from her sleeve. But before Yagrin could see what she did with it, Dublin pulled free.
He shot them one last hateful glance, snatched the bag with his journal Nore had dropped, and scowled before rushing into street traffic, disappearing. Yagrin grabbed Nore, who was dislodging her blade from the hostess’s hand, and dashed down an alleyway.
They came to a stop once Yagrin could feel his head throbbing harder than his feet on the cement. His lungs burned. He couldn’t remember the last time he literally ran from a consequence.
His magic didn’t answer. A chill slid up his spine. The Sphere’s magic lived inside Jordan now. Was his brother okay? He paced and noticed Nore still catching her breath.
“Are you alright?”
She used the hem of her skirt to wipe the blood off her arm, staring in the direction Dublin had gone.
“You said I didn’t seem like a violent person.”
“You don’t,” she said. “I never said I wasn’t.”
He was speechless.
“Besides, she’ll be fine. And—” She dangled the girl’s phone.
He collapsed against the brick wall in the alley, replaying everything that just happened. Something irked him. “Why would your brother want your blood?”
She was sweating. “It is probably some way he’s trying to steal Headship.”
Yagrin raked a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of how things got so out of hand. “I asked you to help. You didn’t even try to use magic quietly.”
She fidgeted, refusing to look him in the eye.
He stepped closer.
Her hand tightened around her blade.
Quell
AsJordan 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
