Shadows of Perl (House of Marionne #2)

Chapter One Quell

One

Quell

Every time I close my eyes, he is there.

I blink away the face of the boy I used to love and focus instead on the buzz of the streetlamps as they flicker off, one after another. The city lights always remind me of my mother, and the busy street fogs through my tears. We had nothing. We had no one. And somehow everything’s changed and yet nothing has.

I hug around myself. When she and I first started running from the Order, before we could afford an apartment, before my mother could find a job, those first several weeks, we would sleep wherever we could: a random unlocked car, a boarded-up building, an alleyway. Each night she’d leave to find food or other things we might need. It’s easier to go unnoticed without a little one at my side, she’d say. A lot of things would have been easier without me at her side. But I’ll be back before the streetlights are off, I promise.

I wish she knew how strong I am now. How I can protect her, once I find her . Magic prickles the crown of my head, and on the back of my eyelids I can see my regal black diadem encrusted with bloody, dark-pink gems. I wish I could show it. I wish I could show everyone. But I hold the tightness at my center to keep my diadem hidden, a skill I saw Abby do the first day I met her, one I’ve finally mastered.

I settle deeper into the park bench and watch as strangers scamper across the street and enter the park on East Capitol. Car horns usher them hastily. I groan, checking my watch. One last test. The sky continues to brighten until all the streetlights I’ve stared at the last few hours, as far as I can see, are off.

Octos clears his throat next to me, his face hidden behind a giant newspaper. Its outer pages are from The Washington Post ; its inner pages, Debs Daily. It’s been a couple of months since I fled Chateau Soleil, where I shared my grandmother’s tethering secret with Cotillion guests before plunging my dagger into my chest to bind with my toushana. And yet, the chaos that engulfed House of Marionne still haunts me. There’s been no official word about any of it—my grandmother or her House.

“Anything yet?” I ask him. He leans over the paper, his blackened-bluish fingernails curled tightly over a magnifying glass held up to a few lines of text. Then he furiously jots down notes on a pad of paper.

“Almost,” he says. Despite his attempt to blend in, his withered olive skin, tally marks beneath the rolled sleeves of his threadbare coat, and greasy straight hair crawling over his shoulders have won us a few quizzical glances. “How’s Lincoln looking?”

“Still a few stragglers.”

Octos has been training me while Abby looks for my mom. We’ve spent the recent weeks hunting for places I can push my toushana to its limits without hurting myself. Today’s the final test. After that I’m going to meet Abby, and then we’ll find my mom.

I flex my hands and pull on the hum of cold lurking in my bones. It shoves through me like a tide swallowing a shore, until iciness pools beneath every inch of my skin. I picture the release of my magic, and tiny plumes of smoke seep from my pores. I tighten at my center and draw in a deep breath. As my lungs fill with air, my shadows retreat back inside me. Sometimes I just call on my toushana to feel its nearness.

“Save your strength, you’ll need it,” Octos says. His tone is even. Always calm.

My training has gone well. But he insists we try my dark, destructive magic in various environments and under different amounts of stress. Once he had me bring down an abandoned multistory building. Purple bruises covered my arms from using the toushana for too long, and it was several days before I could even get out of bed without blinding pain.

“And those are only the bruises you can see, ” he’d said.

My control over my dark magic, balancing the oscillating cycle of release-release-rest, has grown over the past several weeks. I still have splinters from the walls I collapsed to trap a robber in a basement. But he was apprehended and I left there without a single bruise. I thought Octos’s and my time together would be over then. But today he insisted on one last big test to push my toushana harder than I ever have. The only place in this city with enough tree cover to do magic is Lincoln Park, which was closed to the public for construction last night.

“And you’re sure about this place?” I ask, wary of being in a big city. It was his idea to get far away from Louisiana, or any place my grandmother could stumble upon us. Crossing into new territory was safer, and everything on the East Coast north of the James River is House of Perl country. We settled at a safe house in a rural town several hours from Washington, DC, in the middle of nowhere, but you can’t use magic in or close to a safe house, so DC it is.

“As sure as I can be.”

I leave Octos to his newspaper decoding. Cars whoosh by and I peer at the drivers, foolishly searching for a face that looks like my mom’s. She’d take me to time the streetlamps early in the morning and at night so that I’d know she was paying close attention. Then she’d return me to wherever we were staying and tuck me in. I would rarely sleep. Instead I would stare at the glow the lights cast on the walls outside, imagining it was the light in a hallway outside my room, in a real home somewhere. A reminder that my mother was never far, always just a few steps away. The hum of the lamps was her voice, I told myself. Any moment, she’d come back and we’d be together again.

What will she think of what I’ve done? Binding to toushana. Leaving House of Marionne in complete chaos.

“Did you hear me?” Octos folds his paper into a tidy rectangle. The fedora on his head shades his dark hair and sloped cheeks. But I can still make out the circles around his eyes. The way he fidgets.

“No mistakes today,” he repeats.

“Right.” I am not Octos’s hostage, but sometimes it feels that way. I want to know how to use this magic coursing through my veins more than anyone. Without harming myself or people I love, but he seems to forget that.

I thought Octos might be bound to toushana, like me. Though I’ve never seen him use dark magic, his instruction is always intimately detailed. But no, he told me he just dabbled in it and studied it for a long time at House of Ambrose. That earned him a slew of tally marks and expulsion. Only Draguns are permitted to use toushana. Anyone else is executed.

So maybe it’s jealousy. Sometimes there’s a shadow to his encouragement. A fatigue to his smile. An odd gleam in his eye. I’m not sure why, but at times it just feels like he’s holding on to me, too tightly. I survey my hands and arms, which, thanks to his help, have only ghosts of healed bruises. He transfigured my black diadem at Chateau Soleil. Even if he is jealous, Octos was the only person willing to show me how to use toushana.

“Thank you for helping me.”

He meets my eyes. And for several moments says nothing.

“Of course.”

“Three minutes,” I tell him.

He slides me a fold of the paper and taps a tiny byline.

I don’t recognize the name, but I skim the article; it’s a blur of meaning. Some Houses are restructuring their leadership, lengthening term limits for Headmistresses, refreshing their security protocols.

“This means nothing to me.”

“This article is written by Amelia Brendalin. She usually covers entertainment and gossip. But she’s written the top story this week.” Octos flips to the obituaries and points to some guy. “Frank was young and healthy, the hotshot headliner at the Daily , but now he’s—”

“Dead.”

He nods and it sends a shiver down my spine.

He shows me his notepad, where he has written in block letters the message he decoded from the paper.

H E K N E W T O O M U C H

“The dead guy knew too much about what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Worry carves Octos’s face. I try to find some concern for this reporter I’ve never met, for this Order that has never accepted me. But the only thoughts that come to mind are how my mother and I were forced to live our entire lives on the run because of my toushana, and how my grandmother—Headmistress of House of Marionne—was binding débutants to her House in servitude. How the boy who I let see pieces of me that I’d never shared with anyone found out my dark secret and betrayed me to my witch of a grandmother.

“I don’t care, Octos. About any of it. We finish my training. Then I find my mom.” If Abby doesn’t find her first.

His mouth parts, but he closes it when we see the street empty. I stand, buttoning my coat.

“The park is clear. Let’s get this over with.”

Lincoln Park is an oasis of trees and a natural clearing in the otherwise concrete desert of Washington, DC. The rustle of leaves accompanies our footsteps as Octos and I slip through the barricade. There are no buildings or residences inside the park’s gates. Only tiny outhouse structures, monuments, and objects that I could disintegrate in a blink.

I think about the last note I got from Abby weeks ago. I’ve read it a hundred times. Nothing to report. I’ll tell you the minute I get eyes on her so that you can come meet us. I honestly thought Mom would be easier to find. That she would be waiting nearby, waiting for the streetlights to turn off. A lump rises in my throat and I can’t force it back down. I pick up my pace, hustling through the park. To prepare for this moment, Octos would not let me use my magic for days.

“What’s the test?”

He points toward a clearing farther ahead. I ready myself, inhaling deeply. Toushana reawakens, buckling in my chest like a block of ice cracking open. Suddenly I can hear a bird assembling a nest, tiny branches scraping against one another as they’re fitted together. Earthiness from yesterday’s rain grows more intense and I can smell it, stronger than anything else. Octos’s heart beats calmly next to me. My heart thuds against my ribs.

“How are you so calm?”

“Calmness lends itself to a clear mind. You should try it.”

“I’m perfectly calm,” I lie.

He gives me a knowing look. The trace. He’s worried Jordan will sense me and find us. Before my life fell apart at Chateau Soleil, before we fell apart, Jordan broke off a piece of his kor and put it in my chest, connecting us forever. It allows him to sense any intense emotions that I feel and see where I am so that he can come to me. At the time, the trace was to protect me.

If he found me now, he’d kill me.

Jordan is a fully fledged Dragun.

And his one job is to execute toushana-users, like me.

Jordan. My fingers snap to the lump in my inside pocket, where there’s an old Debs Daily clipping from early fall commemorating a new flock of Draguns. Jordan was spotlighted. He glared at the camera; a round coin minted with a talon was pinned at his throat. Even in black-and-white print, his eyes were depthless, and his edges were more razor-sharp than I’ve ever seen them. Regret tugs at a knot in my chest. I never imagined we’d end up this way. Octos watches me with interest. My toushana is volatile and dangerous, yet somehow it’s easier to control than my feelings for Jordan Wexton.

“Just up ahead,” he says.

“I’m not so sure the trace works the way it’s supposed to anymore.”

I have had a roller coaster of emotions these last few months, and Jordan hasn’t shown up once.

“Maybe.” He walks faster, reshouldering his bag, and I hustle to keep up. When he finally stops, he pulls a silver vial out of his coat pocket.

“You’re going to use your toushana to sun track the location of the Sphere.”

I blink. “What?”

“Sun tracking is the most demanding way to use your magic. Your binding to toushana gives you a unique relationship with the Sphere.”

“So I’m not destroying anything?”

Something shades his expression. “Yes and no. Let me demonstrate.”

He takes the vial and spills a tiny hill of glowing yellow dust into his hand.

“Sun Dust. Ground from ancient sun stones, the source of magic itself. Watch.” His mouth hardens and his complexion flushes, but before I can ask if he’s okay, shadows ribbon through the air and spool in his free hand. I don’t blink, watching as he draws toushana from outside his body to himself. He tosses up the fistful of Dust, and a hazy cloud forms in the air around us, obscuring everything. I blink to clear my vision, but it doesn’t help. Octos’s eyes roll in their sockets. When he opens them, his pupils are small as pinpoints. I gasp.

The toushana in his grip suddenly dissolves and the cloud of dust around us vanishes. He grunts, exasperated.

“The few times I’ve been successful at it took me many tries.”

“So you’ve sun tracked the Sphere before?”

His throat bobs. “There’s no greater test of your handle on dark magic. You will be able to do it much easier if your grasp of toushana is strong enough.”

“It’s strong enough.”

“Suspend. Count. Flare. Cloak. Say it.”

I do, and he checks the journal where he was taking notes earlier before handing me the vial. “Sunrise was four minutes ago. It’ll crest these trees shortly. When it does, start. Say it again.”

“Suspend. Count. Flare. Cloak.”

“You’ll have one chance. If you miss the flare, it could be weeks before we spot another.”

I tighten my fist on the vial.

“When the Sun Dust suspends in the air, pull on your toushana until it feels like cold needles are pushing behind your eyes. When you open them, your toushana will tear through the haze of Dust to allow you to look directly at the sun. Count every spot you see.” He glances at his journal again. “High number of sunspots these last several days indicate a flare is imminent. When you see a burst of light, it means the Sphere is on the move. Cloak immediately and command your magic to take you to wherever the light goes.” He clamps a hand on my shoulder and stands with his feet shoulder-width apart.

“Then what?”

“Then we will gaze on the majesty of the Sphere with our own eyes.”

My heart knocks into my ribs. “Then I’ve mastered my toushana?”

“ Mastered is a strong word. I’d say you’ve mastered not hurting yourself.”

“Good enough. How many minutes?”

He points at a cluster of maple trees in warm oranges and bright yellows, tinged by the shifting season. An ember of sunlight glows behind their branches. “Any moment now.”

I pour a hill of Dust into my clammy palm and ready my magic. Threads of cold pulse through me. There isn’t even a whisper of the warmth of the magic my grandmother used to anoint me. Toushana is the only magic I have now.

Toushana is who I am now.

Sunlight winks between the trees against the soft blue sky. I roll the fine grains of Dust in my hand and toss them up. They hang in the air. Cold scrapes through me, wrapping around my heart. The sharp chill claws its way up my chest, rib by rib. Pressure builds in my throat, then releases in a ripple as an icy feeling wraps around my head. Icicles prick behind my eyes. I open them and the world is black

“That’s it.” Octos’s grip on me tightens.

A piercing dot of light appears, my toushana tearing through the darkness. One spot at first, then a rush of several.

“Ten, eleven, twelve.”

They flash faster, lighting up my vision like an empty night sky hand-dotted with stars .

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.”

I count silently, numbers rolling through my mind, faster than my words can keep up. When I manage words again, I blurt, “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight.”

“It’s coming,” he says, breathless, his grip on me trembling. “Don’t look away. Not even for a second.”

The dots stop appearing. The blackness bleeds to soft blue. Then a swatch of morning colors. And I realize I’m staring at the actual sky again. Panic takes flight in my chest. Suspend. Count. Flare. Cloak. Where’s the flare? But before I can get the question out, the morning sky shifts, brightening.

“Something’s happening.”

“A flare,” he says.

The sky ripples orange, then purple. A bright light flashes and streaks across the sky.

“Cloak, now!” He locks both arms around me.

I steady my feet and twist into the coldest depths of myself, willing my toushana to transfigure us into fragments of matter. Cold magic seeps from my pores, swallowing us in shadows, disintegrating every part of me until I’m nothing but a floating feeling, a dark cloud of air. Weightless, I can still feel Octos attached to me. The flare sticks in my mind’s eye. Follow the light. The world darkens and my stomach drops as if the floor has gone from beneath me. Take me to the Sphere!

Pressure builds, and my magic thrums. For several moments that’s all I feel. Then thick, salty air fills my nostrils. My feet thud onto the earth, and I barrel into Octos but catch myself before face-planting. I gape at the back of my hands, then my palms. No purple, no pain.

“No bruising!” I stumble up.

But Octos’s head swivels in every direction. “The Sphere. It should be here.”

There’s only night sky and rocky grasslands. The glowing orb that holds the magic of the Order together is nowhere in sight.

“Suspend. Count. Flare. Cloak. I did what you said.”

“You did,” he says, still searching. I hold up my hands for him to see. But Octos looks right past them before storming off toward the coastline. “We should at least be closer.”

“Octos!” I hustle to keep up with him. The ground ends abruptly at a stretch of ocean. Below, waves batter the rocky mountainside, bathed in moonlight. “I don’t know why the Sphere isn’t here, but that can’t be my fault.”

He faces me with a slouch of disappointment. “No, it’s not. Sun tracking is an imprecise science. The steps, though, you performed beautifully.”

I stand straighter and show him my hands again, which finally he studies. He flips them to either side.

“Any pain?”

“None.”

“Very good work, but we’re going to have to try again.”

My heart stops. “What do you mean, try again ?”

“We’re going to sun track again, another night or so. Maybe a month.”

Something hot turns in my chest. “I don’t have a month.”

“We gain nothing by rushing your training.” He pats my shoulder. “Come on, at sunrise we can try again.”

“No, Octos.” I ball my fists.

“What do you mean, no ?”

“I’m done training. I have to find my mom.”

“You know you can’t do that. Draguns will expect that. Abby will be more successful without you with her.”

“I’m not afraid of them.”

“Then you’re arrogant. You overestimate your own power, something else our training can address.” He walks away. I don’t follow.

He stops, sliding his chin over his shoulder to glare at me. “Come. Along.”

“I said, we’re done training.”

“Quell, you have to trust me.”

“I have. And now you have to trust me. I’ve mastered not hurting myself, you said it yourself. I passed the last test.” I offer Octos his Sun Dust vial back and tighten my bag on my shoulders. “I’m going back to the safe house to see if there’s been word from Abby. From there I’ll figure out what to do next.”

“Quell, please. A few more nights.”

“For all I know, Draguns could have found my mother by now! Do you have any idea what they’d do for information on me? Because it’s all I think about when I lie awake at night!”

“You must stay calm.”

“I’m as calm as I can be!”

“The trace,” he whispers, as if the words alone will summon Jordan.

“He’s not coming.” I hold my chest, remembering the silver flame that burns inside it. Jordan’s flame. “I’ve experienced a whirlwind of emotions these last several weeks, but Jordan hasn’t found me. Either binding with my toushana ruined the trace or he’s choosing not to respond. If and when I see Jordan Wexton, I will be ready to end him before he ends me.” I unleash my toushana and it swallows us in a dark fog. My fingers throb with a pain I thought was behind me.

Octos tries to step closer to me but my shadows push him back. He won’t stop me this time. At first, he told me to stay at the safe house until he got there. A month I waited, with the person in charge, Knox, and her helper, Willam, side-eyeing my every move. I didn’t know what lies Octos told them to let me stay there. I didn’t know what to say or not say. Every night I worried they’d try to strangle me in my sleep. Then he showed up and finally began training me. But that took several weeks. I am done waiting. I need to find my mom, with his help or not. I pull my shadows back into myself with a big breath, and Octos gapes at my growing bruises.

“I can handle it.” I walk away.

“Quell!” The unfamiliar lilt of anger in his voice stops me dead in my tracks. He catches up to me and shoves the vial back into my hand. “One. More. Night!”

Then his eyes widen.

He turns pale.

“We both have to go now.” He grabs me by the sleeve.

“Stop telling me what to do and listen for once!” I shove away and push the vial back to him, but his hands fumble the metal. He gasps. I watch as the vial of Sun Dust plummets toward the ground. He grabs for it, but it lands with a smash. Sun Dust bursts from the top, spilling all over the grass, dusting it in a bright glow.

“No, no, no.” Octos whimpers, trying and failing to grab handfuls of fine Dust before it disappears into the ground.

“Maybe now you’ll start listening to me.”

His eyes widen.

“I’m leaving. Now.”

He follows without a word.