Sixteen

Quell

A stack of books waits for me at the foot of Jordan’s bed. I grab one and cold writhes in my bones.

Darkbearers—A Misunderstood History

Darkbearers. Toushana-bound magic users known for pillaging, stealing, and killing. I’ve never called on my magic to purposely hurt anyone. Yagrin. A lump rises in my throat and panic flares in my chest. I shove the book away, scooting back in my bed. But black seeps from my fingers, connecting with the leather cover. The book crumbles into a bed of ash. I slow my breath and hook my shaky hands together until they are warm. Beaulah has me all wrong. They all have me wrong if that’s what they see in me.

When my heart slows, I peel myself out of the covers. I could hardly sleep, haunted by the way Georgie and the others had looked coming out of that forest. Maybe the reason Adola has been so on edge is because her own Trials are this week. There’s no way she’s prepared. I can help her draw on toushana. And she can cover for me to get back to that guesthouse. There’s no reason we should be at odds. I need to talk to her.

When light breaks, I throw on clothes and skirt past Della, who’s waiting outside my door with an armful of fresh linens.

“Didn’t want to wake you.” She tugs at my arm, trying to lead me back inside. “Can I run a bath?”

“I’m on my way out.” I pull away.

“To?”

Beaulah intends to have me watched every second of every day. “To take a stroll around the water gardens.”

“Please take a few attendants with you! In case—”

But I dash off before Della can finish. I stop by the House manager’s office with a letter for Abby tight in my fist, discreetly letting her know that I’m no longer at the safe house and we can’t meet up until I find a new spot. But in the meantime, she should send me anything and everything she’s heard about my mom. No matter how seemingly small. The outbox is on a desk filled with papers and packages; I drop in the note with Abby’s full name on the front. It vanishes.

The halls of Hartsboro are crowded. I skip over to the Instruction Wing and casually stroll past a series of open doors, where lessons are in progress. But there’s no sign of Adola. The dining atrium is filled with people eating. Charlie is there, talking with his hands in a passionate debate with Mrs. Kinsley over something. I hurry along, about to detour to Adola’s room and wait there, when I spot a gleaming red diadem and long jet-black hair.

“Adola!”

She walks faster before cutting a sharp left back toward the Instruction Wing and disappearing into one of the classrooms. How is she going to survive being buried alive if she doesn’t let me help her? I have to make her understand; I know what it’s like to be in a place like this, hiding what you really feel and think.

I smooth my clothes and grab the knob. Scorch marks mar the stone walls. A stale odor hangs in the air. Débutants in dark robes work by candlelight in various groups around the room, so focused that not a single head turns my way. Adola maneuvers around a maezre with a giant green-stoned ring on her knuckle, and I follow her.

“Can’t you take a hint?” she snaps at me.

“I can help you.” I pull up a chair and sit.

“I don’t care.” She retreats to the cabinetry at the back of the room, where she finds a wooden box. A set of thick rings with various colored gems are inside, and I recognize them immediately: Cultivator rings. Dexler taught me how each holds a type of magic. Green for Audior magic, purple for Shifting, and so on, enabling the Cultivator to channel each type of proper magic. But Adola doesn’t seem to realize I can help her in ways these rings can’t.

“Can we talk?”

The metal ring Adola slides on is dull, well used. Another in the box has the stone missing completely. She studies its empty gold prongs, which fold over each other like a bird’s nest, and I wonder how long she’s been going at this, trying and failing to get her magic to work the way she wants it to. I could hardly do it for the time I was at my grandmother’s. But everything about Adola’s desperate ambition suggests she wants to be here. For a time I fought to be in a prison, too.

Her nostrils flare. “No.”

“Now, Majorie!” the maezre shouts at a girl behind us, and the whole room tightens around them.

I move my seat beside Adola to whisper, “I need to get back to the guesthouse.”

She’s about to respond when the maezre shouts, “Transform it!” The room fills with hamster squeaks that rip into throaty screams, followed by a loud bang. “Off we go, straight to the Healer. Everybody out.”

Adola snatches off her ring and repacks her bag.

“I’m trying to help you!”

“You’re not helping. You’re interrupting.” She tosses her remaining things in her bag and returns the ring to its box before hurrying to the door. I stand in the way.

“Miss Marionne?” It’s Beaulah, standing in the hall just outside the doorway. Adola curtsies, and we all step into the hall. “Shouldn’t you be in the etiquette refreshers this morning?” Beaulah eyes the bag Adola is dangling behind her legs, and I can feel Adola clam up beside me.

“She was showing me some of the morning’s sessions.”

Beaulah’s whole expression brightens. “I won’t keep you two, then. Quell, I’ll see you shortly.”

My heart hammers, but I smile.

When she leaves, Adola cuts me a look that could kill. “Why are you covering for me?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Because I want to help you.”

“I was covering for myself just fine until you showed up.” She storms off and I let her go, torn between throwing her a life raft and leaving her to her fate. She finds a table in a deserted corner of the dining atrium, and I keep my distance. She pulls out a stack of note cards and studies them before emptying the contents of a pouch onto the table. She glances around before rubbing her fingers together, and the faintest whiff of darkness streams through the air toward her, forming tendrils of black in her hand. She works her magic on the items, but the thread of toushana dissolves as quickly as it came. I cringe. It’s worse than I thought. Her stream of magic is far too weak. She is going to suffocate in that grave, and she knows it. She bangs the table before burying her face in her hands.

I join her.

“You’re scared of it; that’s why it’s not obeying you. It isn’t like proper magic. It has an appetite of its own.”

“Would you just leave me be.”

“No, I’m not leaving. I still need your help.”

She shoulders her packed bag. “Don’t follow me this time.”

“Adola, I’m not your enemy.”

“Aren’t you, though? Isn’t that exactly who you decided to be when you arrived here? I know what your kind are like. Ambitious, incensed with self-importance, vengeful, cruel.” Her words cut in a way they shouldn’t. I don’t know this girl. Not really. And yet sometimes it feels like staring at a mirror.

My kind? “A toushana-user?”

She raises a brow. “Toushana-obsessed, more like.”

But her aunt…

Now I get it. Adola doesn’t just fear her aunt. She hates everything about her. After seeing Trials, I can’t say it surprises me.

“Adola, you don’t even know me.”

“Maybe not, but I know what you will become.”

A chill skitters up my arms. “A Darkbearer,” I whisper. Adola narrows her eyes.

“You have me all wrong. I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have blackmailed you to help me. I should have been honest with you from the beginning.”

Adola huffs, but she also doesn’t move, so I keep going.

“Look, I am just here trying to find out the truth. My mother…” I glance over my shoulder before leaning closer to her. “Had a stack of ball invitations people’d thrown away. I found them hidden in her room in the guesthouse. I think it means something. Only, I’m not sure what.” The release feels like a long exhale. “This place unsettles me, too, Adola. At Trials the other night—” But I can’t find the words to rehash what I witnessed. The revelry and horror. “I felt sick to my stomach when I left.”

“It’s revolting,” she says, reclining in her seat.

I let out a big breath. “I won’t ever twist your arm to help me again. I’m really sorry.”

Adola doesn’t respond for several moments. She twists the ends of her long hair around her fingers before saying, “I hope you’re being honest. Time will tell.”

“I mean every word.”

She meets my eyes, and there is a patience there I haven’t seen before. As if she sees me and not the monster everyone’s convinced I am becoming. So I tell her about my mother. How expertly good she is at hiding and covering her tracks. And how much I miss her, how I need to see her, especially after so much has changed these last few months. Once I start, the words won’t stop. And it feels good to just talk and be myself.

By the time I’m done, Adola’s hands are braided on the table. “I don’t remember my mother.” She tucks her chin down.

“You know,” I go on, “when I was at Chateau Soleil, I was terrified people would find out I couldn’t do magic like them. I lived every day worried someone would find out and kill me. But someone helped me.” I leave out her cousin’s name. “He ended up being awful, but without his help, I wouldn’t have survived.”

She swallows. “I lie in bed at night thinking about what it will feel like when the dirt hits my face. Sometimes I wake up gasping for air.” Her voice cracks. “I’ve tried everything. And all this time spent, I’m behind on Second Rite. My aunt is breathing down my neck to debut at the start of next Season.”

“I know what that’s like.”

We share a beat of silence, and it’s nice. I hadn’t realized just how much we have in common.

“The next time you pull on toushana, use your feelings from deeper inside. Channel that scary feeling you have when you lie awake. It’ll strengthen your ability to pull on the darkness. And when it touches you, hold on to the cold; let it spool itself up, allow it to get close, pretend it’s a part of you, let it linger—”

She stands. “I should go.” But before she turns to leave, she stops. “Thanks, Quell.”

“Sure.” This time I don’t follow her. Instead I check the clock and realize it’s time to meet Beaulah.