Eight

Quell

The look in Yagrin’s eyes when I shut the door on him still haunts me as I sit, waiting, at the dinner table. He really thinks he’s doing the right thing. Boiled potatoes, rice, and roasted meat are laid out. Every face at the table, all dozen or so of us, is tight-lipped and wide-eyed. But it’s Willam whose attention sends a shiver down my spine.

The gentle giant doesn’t say much, but he’s hard to miss. His skin is drier than leather, the plaid shirt he always wears is buttoned all the way to the tip-top, and usually a straw hat covers his head. But this evening he sits across the table, staring right at me with narrowed eyes. The top button of his shirt is undone, and an angry, circular red burn scar is on his throat. Someone passes him a plate and his broad frame rotates away to grab it. But when he hands it off, his eyes settle back on me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Knox asks, and the events of the last half hour send goose bumps up my arms. She heard everything.

“Why did you do that?” I ask, reconsidering the glass of water in my hand. “Offer to let me stay but make him leave.”

Willam and Knox meet eyes.

“Because I know your mother,” she says, and my glass slips from my hand.

“I—”

She shakes her head. “When we’re alone.”

I’m frozen. Kedd, one of the younger men here, nudges me with an empty plate and I take it, my body and mind out of sync. My mother never mentioned anything about a safe house or anyone named Knox. Someone else passes me a tray of something and I go through the motions. Dimara, across the table, hands me a warm bowl of potatoes. A question glints in her eyes, but the scrape of Willam’s chair as he gets up from the table grabs my attention. As he passes, the scar at his neck is easier to see. Faint lines for a column, cracked in half, are as red as if they were dug right into his neck. The symbol reminds me of the coin Yagrin wore when he was after me.

“Are you a Dragun?” I blurt.

“I’m just Willam,” he says as he leaves the dining room with Knox on his heels.

My stomach gurgles but I force a bite into my mouth. I lean in and listen, my hearing senses keenly sharpened since binding with my toushana.

“I’m going to make preparations,” Knox says. “You leave by midnight.”

“Rein is almost full-term, and the twins are sick.” Willam’s voice is pinched with frustration. Knox sighs.

I don’t know how they ended up here, or how they know each other, but Willam and Knox run this house like a well-oiled machine, always in step with one another. I’ve never seen them disagree.

“This is hasty,” Willam says, and I imagine his domineering frame hovering over Knox insistently. “Yagrin isn’t stirring up trouble. He’s running from it.”

“We follow protocol,” Knox says. “Always.”

“He’s not like the rest of them. You can see the heart better than anyone, Knox. You know I’m right about this.”

“I’ll start a search for a new nest,” she says. “Midnight.”

For a moment, there is only dining room chatter, the others oblivious to the way all their lives are about to change. Then Willam blows out a heavy breath. “And the girl?”

“We’ll talk about that when she’s not eavesdropping.”

I straighten in my seat. Willam and Knox rejoin us. He looms at the edge of the dining table like a tree with heavy branches.

“After dinner, everyone will prepare their things. We begin roaming protocol tonight.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin, then leaves.

Dimara slaps her fork down on her plate and glares at me. “What have you done?”

I’m sorry, I try to say, but the words come out as a crack. This is their home. I know how much that means. The two bites of food I did eat reappear in my throat. I wish I could put Knox at ease and promise that Yagrin would never do anything to jeopardize their location. But I don’t know where Octos’s mask ends and Yagrin’s begins. There’s no way to know how much of the person I trusted the last few months was real. I push my plate away.

“May I be excused?”

“No. You need to eat.” Because who knows the next time I will be able to eat this well…Knox doesn’t have to say. I look for her eyes, but she won’t meet mine. Guilt tugs at me like an anchor.

“Who are you really?” Dimara has a fistful of tablecloth. Rein’s lip quivers and her hand strokes her swollen belly. Everyone stares in my direction.

“I’m exactly who I said I was: Quell. I fled from House of Marionne. It was the other guy who lied.”

“Your friend.”

Someone sucks their teeth. Another tsks.

“How long have you been here, Dimara?” I ask, refusing to take the bait. Arguing will accomplish nothing.

“I was born here. Like most of us.”

My next bite halts at my mouth. I’d envisioned Dimara finding her way here like Yagrin had.

“You didn’t flee from a House.” I’d assumed this was a welcome safe space for anyone fleeing from the Order. But the way Dimara looks at me makes me shift in my seat, and I realize they function like a tight-knit family here. Outsiders must not be welcome…which means Knox and Willam made an exception for me. I meet Knox’s eyes, trying to think of something to say, when Dimara slams her knife into the table.

“I could smell it on you, you know?” Her top lip curls. “Magic. I tried to warn you.”

Knox clears her throat, and Dimara fills her mouth with a hunk of bread. “Finish in silence.”

Other than the twins’ hacking coughs at the end of the table, the tension in the room for the rest of the meal is sharper than our dinner knives. My brain won’t stop whirring through questions about my mother and wondering what I should do next.

“Knox, may we speak alone now?”

She tugs at her necklace. “Clean up and meet me in the mudroom.”

I open the door to the mudroom and Knox joins me inside.

“How do you know my mother?”

She pauses to close the door before rolling closer to me.

“Are you going to be okay, child?”

“I will. My mother?”

“Everyone knows about the prodigal daughter of Darragh Marionne.”

“You made it sound like you knew her.”

She pulls at the end of one of her white locs. “She used to live here. Both of you did.” Before I realize it, Knox has grabbed a pack of matches from a shelf and strikes one.

I jump back, my heart stuttering at the sight of even a small flame.

“Still scared.” Knox blows out the match and flicks the whole thing in a bucket of water.

“I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t. You were very small. And it wasn’t for long.”

“What happened to Willam?”

“A lifetime of people-watching has made you very perceptive. He was a Dragun. But he found himself stuck between loyalty to the brotherhood and loyalty to his Headmistress. Years ago, I found him nearly lifeless in a ditch.”

Branded. The red scar at his neck. “Draguns are awful. That’s terrible.”

Jordan’s warning the last time I saw him runs through my mind. When he said it would be him to come after me. I wonder who he’s told, how many Draguns are out there looking for me. My toushana churns. I’ll be ready. I wait for Knox to tell me more, but she starts unclipping dried laundry from lines.

“So that’s what you and Willam do here? Keep certain people running from the Order safe? Visitors aren’t welcome, it sounds like.”

“Safe houses are descendants of families who’ve escaped the Order’s worst evils. And you’re correct. No visitors.”

“But Octos…Yagrin.”

“A fellow named Octos used to live here a long time ago. But he left suddenly. That happens from time to time. We don’t take others in, but on occasion we’ll lose one who thinks they have a better chance at life on their own. Yagrin must have known him. I don’t believe your friend wishes us harm. But someone could pry information out of him and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

“He’s not my friend. I hardly knew him. He was just the only person besides my mother that I thought I could trust.”

“I would imagine that list has grown tonight.”

I shift on my feet and eye Knox’s legs.

“Dragun attack when I was a child.”

I gasp. “The world is cruel.”

“The world is what those in power make it, Quell. My mother and I were coming home from the store when she was attacked by Draguns. If I were smart, I’d have run. But instead, I ran to her. When they realized I was her child, the descendant of a—” Her chin slides over her shoulder as if the word to finish that sentence would bring up her dinner. “They finished her. Then they came after me. I was seven.”

“I’m so sorry.” An image of my mother dead on some sidewalk tears its way into my mind. My heart thuds. “So, you have toushana?”

“Not exactly, no. But they thought I did. I managed to get away and a Shifter, Healer type, amputated my legs before the magic could kill me. My father was a Shifter, really good with metals. He made me this fancy chair.”

“It’s magnificent.”

She blinks and the blue in her eyes deepens. Then her gaze cuts to my heart. “The Great Sorting was a bloodbath.”

I swallow. “I’m not familiar?”

“In Misa—the ancient magical city—all manifested magic was welcome. My ancestors only had toushana then. But they had a reputation among the citizens of Misa for responsible moral character and trustworthiness. Toushana was powerful, but they did not abuse it. When the magic city fell, none of that mattered. The Upper Cabinet had carefully placed members in Washington by then. They’d discovered rumors of Misa’s existence and immediately ordered that the magic city be razed to the ground. From then on, Marked members would need to blend in to the Unmarked world through a House system. House of Perl was founded. Decades later, Marionne. Then Duncan, and so on. But those who manifested toushana were ordered to be killed during the Sorting because they posed too great a risk to the Order’s power. The Houses would not be equipped to train the use of toushana, and it was too volatile to risk. The Order only saw who my ancestors could be, Quell. The horrible things they could do. They ordered my family to be burned.”

My nails dig into my arms.

She shrugs. “Magic is dangerous, and safer to just be left alone. My great-great, many-greats-grandmother created the first of what became a network of safe houses for Misa refugees. But she still lived every single day of her life in fear. I refuse to. That is why there is no magic used here, and if you do stay, you may never, ever use it again.”

“Stay? I—”

“So you’re going to help your friend, then? Tear down the Order?”

“He’s not my— Look, I have to know what’s going on with my mother.”

“Mine died on a sidewalk. My great-grandmother was killed by Draguns as well. My grandfather burned alive. I have cousins I’ve never met, but I hear they’re doing fine. Living without magic on the West Coast. I know, and how does that help me thrive now?”

“You can’t expect me to ignore that she’s out there somewhere.” Toushana pulls at my bones as my frustration rises.

“My expectations aren’t what matter, Quell. Yours do.” She squeezes my arm affectionately. “Make your decision quickly. We leave at midnight.” The calm confidence of her expression makes me feel like it’s possible. That if I go with them, the Order will never catch us. That they have a trustable safe haven and I could be happy. Why didn’t we stay here, Mom? So many questions.

But my mother’s out there somewhere…

And giving up my toushana?

Cold shudders through me. “I’m not like you. My magic is who I am.” I sigh. “Thank you for offering me a place and for not judging me. Other than my mother, no one has ever made me feel…Anyway, I can’t go with you. I have to find her.”

“Willam expected that to be your decision.” She parts the door wider, rolling aside to hold it open for me.

“I think what you’re both doing here is really important. And I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t want it to go this way.”

“I hope you find what you’re truly looking for, Quell.”

I grab my bag from the door and leave. I will find my mother and master this toushana inside me, whatever it takes.

When the fall wind hits my face, I pull a slip of paper out of my pocket, stewing over Knox’s words. The paper Beaulah shoved into my hand as I fled my Cotillion has faded a lot. My path is mine to choose. And I’ve made my decision. I’m not sure what the future holds, but it includes my mother and my magic. No one will take that from me. I summon the comforting chill in my blood to cloak.

I have to go to the last place my mom was seen: House of Perl.