House of Marionne

Part 5

I blink, wondering if this is the afterlife, black fog around me. But then I breathe, realizing my lungs fill. I am not dead. Jordan surrounds me in a cloud of black, the world hardly perceivable through its mist. His hand is tight around my neck, not squeezing but holding me there, and however it works, I can’t move.

There is no love in his touch. Not anymore. But because I’m stubborn and hurt and lost, so lost, his name lingers on my lips. I want him to look at me one more time with the sunrise in his eyes. To promise me after this dark night there is a morning. My entire body is stiff when the air clears and Grandmom’s double doors appear.

His grip on me makes it impossible to do more than think. I try to glimpse his features to glean what he’s doing. He didn’t take me to Beaulah.

“What is this?” Grandmom looks past us, down the hall in both directions. But there’s no one else up here. No witnesses to my impending death.

“In here, now,” she says.

We move, though I don’t feel it.

“Release your magic, Jordan, now!”

He does and life rushes into my limbs.

“What is the meaning of this?” Grandmom’s entire sitting room is different than it was a moment ago. The fire that burned is out. The newspaper I left strewn about is gone. The bouquet that sat on her writing desk is gone, too. Her bedroom.

“Jordan, the records. They’re all in here.” I rush at her bedroom doors and halt. The floor, which was just a mountain of books, is cleaned up. The shelves are neatly arranged with ornaments, plants, and doodads. There isn’t a single leather-bound book in sight.

“Quell Janae Marionne, is there something I can help you with?” Grandmom hovers in the doorway, and her composure shifts with knowing, a single brow raised. Now she knows it was me. Jordan’s gaze darts between us with a flicker of doubt.

“It was all here. It was all just—” The books. The shelves. I pull at the bookcase doors, but they’re locked.

“I apologize for bursting in, Headmistress,” he says. “But I’ve come into grave news about Quell and needed to tell you immediately.” He holds my gaze for one more beat, but when he breaks it, it shatters my heart. “A private word, please.

“Your granddaughter is afflicted,” he says beyond the door, and my heart hammers, imagining Grandmom’s face. “She has toushana. I felt it myself, just a moment ago.”

They step out of earshot, their voices too low to hear, and I tear through Grandmom’s things for some glimpse of the truth. Grandmom, with Jordan as her shadow, reappears and my fingers dig in my pockets, squeezing my key chain. Wishing I could tell Mom I’m thinking of her one more time. There’s no escaping. Death is my fate and has always been, I suppose. One I foolishly hoped I could outsmart. Grandmom grabs my wrist so tightly I yelp. She runs her nail along my finger, and it feels like fire is attached to my fingertip.

“Ow!” I try to tug away, but her grip on me is iron as a dot of blood pools under my fingertip, answering to her magic. She smooths her finger over it, and it feels like rubbing sandpaper into a fresh wound.

“This is not possible,” she mutters to herself. “I took a sample when you arrived.”

I writhe in her grip, the pain rippling down my spine, into my head. She steadies me with an aggressive shake, and I squeeze my eyes shut to manage the pain. The blood under my finger shines bright red a moment before gleaming black. She sucks in a silent breath. “How did I miss this?” she mutters, then her lips part in understanding. “The test shows what was last used,” she mutters to herself.

My heart thuds in my ears, and I can’t find a single word to say. I glance at the door, but there is no way out of here that doesn’t end in my death. For several moments the only sound is the beat of my hammering heart. I glare at the floor, trying to think of something to say or do. My toushana unwinds, but I don’t even try to calm it. I can’t muster the strength.

“Jordan, I’ll take care of this. Please see yourself out.”

“Headmistress, I said I could do . . . what’s required of me.” He clears his throat. I look for some glimpse of scheme in him but only find resolute duty. I shake my head, my heart grasping for straws that aren’t there. He wouldn’t!

He would.

He did.

“I would never doubt your sense of duty, Mister Wexton. You have served me well. Please, see yourself out.”

I wait for him to look at me, to shatter the fragments of me left into nothingness, but he doesn’t. And somehow that hurts more.

“I’ll be outside the door should you need me.” He hesitates a moment, his gaze lowering before he turns on his heels and takes the last bit of wind in my lungs with him. The world swims as Grandmom motions me to her velvet armchair beside the fire in her bedroom. She fills the hearth with flames and motions for me to sit. I back away.

“Closer to the fire, Quell. Relax.”

I hesitate. My heart pounds, but I can’t ignore the lure of the fire that could chase away this poison. I step closer, tentatively, and a sigh shoves its way up and out of my mouth. The heat is an undeniable relief. My toushana soothes, beginning its retreat. Grandmom hovers near it too, warming her hands.

“Better?” She offers me tea. I ignore it.

“I’m surprised I didn’t see the signs. Sometimes we’re so good at seeing only what we want to see. Your coming back here, Quell. I can’t put into words just what that means for our House. For me, too, yes, but for our House. And now to learn this.” She sips from her tea again before retrieving a hair clip from her drawer. It’s a tiny butterfly clip with pearls for eyes, one missing. “I am grieved. But fortunately for you, grief is something my shoulders have learned to carry well.”

“What?” I manage.

“I was ten when my mother burst into my little sister’s room in the middle of the night and caught me trying to help her warm her hands by the fire. I didn’t know what it was called then. I just knew my sister was in pain and cold.” Grandmom stands just feet away but she’s somewhere else entirely. “I didn’t have the ache then, but Moriette did.” She strokes the clip. “I’ll spare you the details, but I saw then what happens to those with toushana. So imagine my surprise when on the night of my own Cotillion, after I’d bound with my magic, my limbs turned to ice.”

I sit up. I can’t have heard her correctly.

“I knew it was toushana, even though it shouldn’t have been possible since I was already bound. But toushana is an ever-elusive mystery. There’s only so much we understand about it, still. From what I understand about it now, my situation is extremely rare.”

I sit straighter, hanging on her every word.

“That night, I lied to my mother, said it was a migraine, and buried myself on the bathroom floor. It took some time, but I figured out how to manage it.”

“You have . . . toushana . . .” The words break something in me.

“Closer to the fire, dear. It really will help.”

I scoot closer to the heat, trying to untangle what this truth means.

“It’s been my life’s work to keep it secret and create a fortress around myself and my House. You’re lucky yours has shown itself before Third Rite. We should have some options.”

I swallow, gaping at the woman I thought I knew.

“My duty is to House of Marionne. Not the Order. That was my mother’s mistake.” She lets out a huge breath and meets my eyes, hers full of prideful defiance. “So I added a bit of magic to Third Rite for all who debut from my House. Whenever someone plunges their dagger into their heart here, it will bind them not only to their magic, but to this House, in servitude.”

My pulse quickens.

“Plume coming over from House Ambrose had its benefits. Nabbed one of their best-kept discoveries—a way to cloak the ceremony stage with reverse tracer magic.”

“Tracing magic . . .” I hold my chest, remembering the silver flame. “How?”

“A tracer on one person tethers them to another, allowing them to go to them wherever they are when they sense extreme emotion. House Ambrose stretched the bounds of that magic somehow to trace many at once and reverse the direction. Thanks to Third Rite, I can summon any of my graduates and they will come to me in an instant. They are tethered to this House. That way I can use them, their magic, how I see fit and against whom I see fit.” She tidies the collar of her dress.

I scoot away from her.

“The Sphere is under great duress, Quell. And with the tensions between the Houses, finger pointing is only growing worse. The Headmistresses have banded together before to commit atrocities. I wouldn’t put it past them to do it again. Should the House relationships come to blows, Marionne will stand with an army at her back.”

Chills skitter up my arms. “None of that explains all those names of people who have died. In your books.” I point a shaky finger. “You tried to hide your dirt, but I saw it all.”

“See, that all started with an accident. I am a Cultivator, dear. When I first took this post, inductees would enroll here and I would work with them. But my toushana would on occasion be deposited by mistake. I couldn’t very well let it grow in them.” She shifts in her seat. “I’ve had to clean up things a bit.”

She’s so close to me I can smell her. She is honey and lavender, jasmine, and yet her heart is made of rot.

“But I hired Dexler and now she does the hands-on cultivating. Not me. I did that to fix this, can’t you see? To stop being the one working directly with inductees.”

I shake my head, not believing my ears.

“I had hoped your mother would fill that role, but alas . . . she left.”

“Because she didn’t want the Order to kill me!”

“Your mother has never understood that I am on her side.”

“And I wonder why? The Perl girls and Nore weren’t even in your House!”

Grandmom crosses her legs, and I can feel her burgeoning irritation.

“Nore had toushana, Quell, and I think you know it.”

I look away.

“So there’s more than one liar sitting here.”

“We are not the same.” I don’t know what she’s playing at, but nothing she can say makes this okay. I refuse. “You didn’t have to hurt her.”

“I didn’t hurt Nore.”

“She’s in your death log. I saw her name.”

“You are right, she’s dead. I lied about sabbatical because I was asked to. That’s the end of that topic.” She sighs, exasperated. “I wish you no ill, child, and I understand you have questions, but my patience is wearing thin. I am not your enemy. What else do you want to know?”

“So that’s what the Order does, then? Just kills whomever gets in their way?” I feel sick. “Why keep records?”

“Because . . .” Now it’s Grandmom who breaks our gaze. “I began to notice changes in the Sphere as I cleaned up things.”

I cringe at her word choice—“cleaning” as if she did a favor, picked up someone’s mess. She murdered them.

“The bookshelf being visible was an oversight. I received a delivery today that I had to follow up on immediately and neglected to disguise it.” Grandmom’s lip flinches. “And for the Perl girls. They have been snooping around safe houses for some reason, on Beaulah’s orders, I suspect, and they got a little too close to the truth of the Third Rite tracer I have in place. If that got out, it would dissolve our House on the spot. All the other Houses would turn against me. Even our own. I had to do something. And they were already rumored to have toushana, so.”

“You build a fortress around yourself to protect your toushana but condemn others for theirs. You’re a hypocrite and a liar. A monster. No wonder Mom left.”

“I’ve heard enough of this. Bind with your proper magic at Cotillion. You will go through with everything as planned. It’ll bury your toushana and we can put this nonsense behind us!”

That’s been my plan the entire time. But how can I stay here now, knowing all this?

“No, I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I won’t!”

She snatches me up by my collar, but I manage to pull myself away. I grab a letter opener from the table. It’s the sharpest thing I see. The air ripples black from her fingertip. The letter opener rots in my grip. I look for something else. A book. A vase. I kick an ottoman into her path as she pursues, but with the stroke of her hand, that turns to black dust, too.

“I have done nothing but give you more than you’ve ever had!” She reaches me and grabs me by my neck like Jordan did. Everything in me stills, her magic paralyzing me head to toe. “Jordan would have killed you if I’d ordered him to. Don’t you doubt otherwise. I saved your life tonight and you would judge me? As if I’m anything but in your corner! Our corner.” She pulls open a door and shoves me inside a small room. I hit the ground hard, pain rippling up my spine.

“You will do as I’ve said or I’ll turn you over to the Dragunhead and let his flock have its way with you. Your choice.” The door slams.

I curl up in a ball and crumple on the floor of my cage.

This has to be worse than death.