Chapter Twenty-Two Quell
Twenty-Two
Quell
The chaos of Draguns flooding the ball, looking for me, precisely where I was looking for my mother, plays like a horror reel on repeat in my head as I escape. I could have been killed. Charlie pulls me along, running with a limp, looking more withered than the last time I saw him, just days ago.
My Anatomer disguise had dissolved the minute Draguns swallowed the dance floor. So I cloaked in the middle of the commotion and re-formed outside the hotel, watching the doors in case my mother fled as well. When Charlie ran out of the hotel and spotted me, he said Draguns were coming down the elevator behind him. He had urged me to follow him and stick close.
“Did you see her anywhere?” I ask, hurrying to keep up with him as he leads me down the alleyway behind the hotel.
“She’s not here, Quell,” he says, fiddling with his phone. “I’ve been patrolling for hours, waiting for you. Your mother didn’t show.”
My pace slows. My chest is heavy.
“Come on,” he says. “Almost there.”
The truth hits me. This was a trap. Did Abby know? She watched the dance floor flood with Draguns. She watched as Mynick gave the signal for them to surround me. And she just stood there and did nothing before running off! “Mynick set me up. He suggested I go to the ball, then ambushed me.”
“Don’t know the guy. But he didn’t want to try to capture you one on one. That isn’t a bad thing.”
That may be true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Rage burns in me, frigidly cold. There’s really no one left I can trust. Abby is as good as dead to me. How dare she and Mynick play me like that! Charlie’s head swivels as we cross an intersection to put more distance between us and the hotel.
“How’d you even know I’d be at the ball?”
He looks at me, bewildered. “Mother sent me to make sure you got out of there safely, of course.”
“How’d she know my plans?”
“Mother knows everything.” Charlie holds his side, wincing, before narrowly skirting a car laying on the horn as we cross another street.
“You don’t look so good. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine.” He tugs his jacket tight across his chest.
“Did you know the brotherhood would be here tonight?”
“Mother told me. It must have been a quiet raid. The guy leading it is as green as an Electus finding their kor the first time. He made a mess of that place. What an idiot.” Charlie laughs and it grates against my skin. How could anything be funny right now?
“I was almost killed .”
“Sorry.” He clears his throat.
The scent of Jordan lingers from the dance. Once my nerves wore off and I realized he wouldn’t know who I was, the music took us. For a breath, it felt like we were in on the same secret. Admitting that I enjoyed the dance sets my teeth on edge. Was he in on the raid? Did he know it was me all along? The chaos seemed to catch him off guard. My bones twitch with an ache, my toushana in a frenzy. Finally, we stop running; we rope arms on the back side of a convenience store, preparing to cloak.
I exhale, oddly relieved to be going back to Hartsboro.
The thrum of my heart is steady when I return to House of Perl. Beaulah is probably furious that I left without a word to her, but at least here I know I won’t be ambushed. Charlie escorts me to my room. When I enter, Beaulah is sitting in the armchair. A dog that looks too large to be a dog but too small to be a wolf is curled up by the fire. It rises when I enter, and my toushana unfurls, bleeding through my hands. The wolf pup growls.
“There’s no need for that, Irish wolfhounds are complete pushovers,” Beaulah says. “Please sit. I’ve asked Della to have my personal Healer visit you tomorrow, after you’ve had some rest, to make sure you are truly alright.”
I hesitate, unsure how to respond. I was expecting her to greet me with anger…But the lines carved into her expression are relief, not irritation. I may have been wrong to judge her so harshly.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the last hours whirring like a hurricane in my head. And now I’m back here, no closer to finding my mother than I was before. I pull a blanket over my legs and resist the urge to curl into a ball. Maybe Charlie missed her. Abby said she didn’t see her either, but how can I trust anything she’s told me now? The more I ponder, the more I spiral. And I realize Beaulah’s still staring at me.
“Did you find her?” She strokes her pet.
“What?”
“At the Veil of Mums. You were so determined to get there, it wasn’t hard to figure out what you must have been after.” She holds up the stack of invitations that I left under my mattress. “A little digging confirmed my suspicion.” She crosses her legs. “Was she there?”
“You’re smart enough to know the answer to that question.”
“Quell, I want to keep you safe.”
“I told you, I don’t need you to protect me.” I get up from the bed, kick off my shoes, and remove my earrings and bracelet at the vanity. But the necklace won’t unhook.
“Don’t you, though?” She rises from her chair and gestures for me to turn. She works at the hook of my necklace. “Had I not sent Charlie, would you have gotten out of there unscathed, without making a mess of things?” She sighs. “Quell, I knew your plan before you left. And I admit I was upset by it. Because it tells me that you still do not understand that I wish you no harm.”
“Not wishing me harm isn’t the same as wishing me help.”
“How have I refused to help you?”
“You’re keeping details from me about my mother’s time here.”
“I am just focused on what really matters. You’re at a critical stage of development.”
She isn’t going to convince me that reuniting with my mother is a bad idea. “Tell me about the day she left again. Did she even hint at where she might be going?”
“There’s not much to tell. I was traveling.” She circles me. “Your focus on your magic right now is a much better use of your time. The first several months after binding with toushana are vitally important if you’re to reach your full potential.”
My full potential. My whole life, I’ve only been a girl with the wrong kind of magic. Beaulah sees something in me beyond who I was, or who I am now—some fugitive in hiding. And the thought unsteadies me.
Everyone focuses on my toushana. Yagrin wanted me to train. Adola can’t separate who I am from what I can do. Beaulah wants me reading her old books. My mother wants me to live as if I don’t exist at all. But what if I want to be more than my magic?
The truth cuts: I am my toushana and I always will be. And I’ve been trying to separate it from who I am, trying to be something else.
Beaulah pulls out the vanity’s cushioned seat. “If I may?”
I sit, and her dog finally settles on its paws and lies down. She takes my hair down and pulls a wide comb through it. Her gentleness surprises me. Perhaps Beaulah is more misunderstood than anything.
“You’re distracted.”
“I’ve never been more sure of what I really want in my entire life.” My mom and I, back together.
“That’s what you tell yourself. But it’s obvious you haven’t even taken a moment to consider what you want from life, Quell. Who you are.” She parts my hair into three pieces and starts braiding it.
“You mean a Darkbearer.”
“That label has such a negative connotation. But yes, Darkbearers embraced their dark magic. And lived in full command of it. That didn’t make them evil. Why did you bind with your toushana, Quell?”
“Because I wasn’t willing to erase part of who I am.”
“And what was your plan after that? You find your mother and then what?”
A house near the beach. A life away from this madness, from the Order, from magic. My stomach twists. But is that what I really want? To have my magic but keep it in a box as I have been? To leave this world of possibility behind? I hated wearing that fake diadem tonight. I hated the way I had to walk into that ball as someone else to survive.
I refused to live a life at my grandmother’s without my toushana.
A shiver scrapes up my arms.
I stare at my hands; the faintest whispers of toushana dance on my skin. I remember how Mom and I would hide, how she would be riddled with fear at even the chance of anyone seeing my magic. How she would chastise me for even thinking about using it. It’s only been a few days, but something in this place calls to me, despite my misgivings.
I don’t want to live a life hiding it either.
If Beaulah can actually show me how to fully step into all that I am—the girl who everyone else already has decided I am—why fight it anymore?
I play with a tendril of toushana and touch a leaf on a small plant on the vanity. It blackens, coiling into itself, then crumbles into dust. I bite my lip and glance up at Beaulah to apologize for destroying her pretty plant. But she beams with an affection I’ve never seen before or felt from anyone. And I can’t look away from her.
Everyone wants to kill me for what I am. This woman, despite her secrets and her half-truths, saved my life because of what I am. She sent Charlie to find me, despite my determination to write her off as a monster. Who else has ever pushed me to consider myself? To think of what I want? My own mother never said those words. Beaulah has only accepted and helped me. That matters.
Maybe it matters more than anything.
Everyone believes I’m a Darkbearer, no matter what I say or do. So maybe I am one. I’m done running from the name. Beaulah ties my braid and lays it over my shoulder.
“I’d like to do a full day of experiments with you tomorrow, but my way. There are some parts of my toushana I’d like to explore,” I tell her.
A smile spreads across her face.
“Do you have time tomorrow? I realize it’s the day before Adola’s Trials.”
“I will make time, dear.” Her wolf pup stretches, then laps my hand with its slimy tongue. I grimace. Beaulah shoos him away.
“Rest tonight. We will work tomorrow. We have quite the celebration planned for Adola. It will be a long, but rewarding, end to a busy week. You’ll have fun. That I’m sure of.” She walks to the door and pauses at the doorknob, her dog at her feet. “Quell, I am proud of you for realizing there are people who will never understand you. Not the Order. Not Jordan. And not your mother.”
You’re wrong , I wish I could say, but I can’t stop thinking about how desperately my mom and I hid. How buttoned-up she was about anything about the Order. How she never told me there were other people with magic like mine.
“I don’t care about the Order. It never served me anyway.”
“Good.”
“And Jordan and I aren’t a thing.”
Beaulah’s brows widen in surprise. “I hope that’s true about you and my nephew. He will kill you, dear, and not lose a wink of sleep. I know because I bred him to be that way myself.” She tosses the invitations in the fire before closing the door behind her. I stare at the hungry flames, stewing on Beaulah and how differently she regards me versus almost everyone else in my life. My mother is out there somewhere. And I will find her eventually. But maybe it’s okay to do something for myself for a change.
I take out a notepad from the bedside table and settle at a desk with a Darkbearer book.