Seventeen

Quell

Beaulah is waiting for me in the main corridor of the Instruction Wing, holding a box of rings. I fill with dread.

“This way.” She leads me into a windowless room with scorched walls and no tables or chairs. In a dim corner is a tall, narrow shelf stacked with bins. Beaulah slides a ring onto her finger, and its stone glows purple. Beside her are manacles welded to the wall. She smooths her palms over them. They flatten, lengthening before Shifting into leather straps.

“These are a bit gentler, I think.”

I swallow. “What exactly are we doing?”

She holds up my hands, showing me fading bruises. “You’re hurting yourself when you use toushana.”

“Oh, those are nothing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She presses on an injury, and it feels like the bones in my fingers are breaking.

“You were going to study me,” I say, wincing.

“We’ll get there. But this should be dealt with.”

I had started to better control the toushana so that it didn’t hurt me, but when I used it on Yagrin, these bruises happened. I bite my lip and hold my hands out to her again. She inspects them closely.

“So wary of trusting people. I can’t say I blame you.” Beaulah lights a few long-tapered candles, fitting them into sconces. “Have you ever seen your kor, Quell?”

I recall the flickering red flame, the source that lives inside me, that energizes my own magic. The flame that Jordan pulled from his chest, unlike mine, was silver. “I have.”

“When toushana binds to a person, it alters their magical body chemistry. Your flame may be stronger, but it can be unwieldy, taking on a sickly shape or color. I’d like to examine your kor. Just to be sure it’s thriving.”

“You can, but you’re not strapping me down.”

“Very well. Come closer, back flat against the wall.”

I do as she says. She selects the golden ring without a stone from the box and slips it onto a free finger. “Deep breath in.” She lays a palm flat on my chest. “This will hurt.”

I hope trusting this woman isn’t a mistake. When I inhale, my chest feels like an iron hook is fastened to my ribs. Beaulah draws her hand away from me slowly, and it feels like a million threads of barbed wire are being pulled out of my chest. I writhe, pain quaking through my body.

“Still, now.”

I grab a fistful of my clothes, and Beaulah stretches the space between her hand and my chest. Air is being sucked from my lungs. I wheeze, trying to hold still as a flame grows in her hand, shiny like metal, with a dark black center. The silver fire flickers. She tsks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Relax, child.” She cups the flame. The air in the room thickens, and condensation drips down the walls. The metal of her empty golden ring brightens. Then she presses the flame back inside me in one smooth motion. My ribs ache, shifting aside as the cold fire disappears into my chest. I feel it snaking through my insides, all the way to my limbs, and the pain finally stops.

My hands! Both sides. “The bruises are gone!”

“Your kor was a bit withered. I shifted some oxygen from the air to freshen it up. You must have used it intensely recently.”

Sun tracking with Yagrin. Then attacking him when I found my mother’s key chain.

“It’s important to prepare your toushana before using it heavily. And afterward, to let it rest.”

“How do you know all this?”

“ ‘We cannot honor the integrity of the furthest bounds of known magic until we’ve contemplated its darkest capacities.’ That’s from Dysiis: Original Writings, volume one, section four.”

Dysiis. The name is vaguely familiar.

“My kor was red. Now it’s silver.” Like Jordan’s. “Is that okay?”

“Red’s fresh. Silver’s best. Once a Marked plunges their dagger into their heart, their kor takes on the color of the metal, giving it a silver hue. Your grandmother really didn’t teach you any of this?”

I don’t answer, which is answer enough.

“What a shame.” Beaulah smiles. “There’s much you don’t know. I mentioned mementaurs when you arrived. Memory magic is a fickle thing, but with practice, you can press your toushana to the temples.” She demonstrates. “Feel around for the threads of thoughts and pluck the one you want to destroy.”

“I’ve never heard of that type of magic.”

“You probably haven’t heard of tracer magic either. Draguns have a rich archive of magic specific to their vocation. Any other curiosities?”

There is one, but it sticks in my throat. She’s been open. Maybe there is room for me to be open, too. “I would like to search my mother’s room.”

“Because you believe I’m lying.”

“Because there could be lingering pieces of her there.”

She straightens. “Jordan made you out to sound conniving.”

I grind my teeth at the name and his judgment.

“I assumed his broken heart tainted his vision.” She folds her arms. “I’d hoped you and I would establish a bit of trust, Quell. Given how freely you move here.” She thinks I’m hiding out here while the commotion of House of Marionne is sorted out. I intend to keep it that way.

“I thought we did.” I sit up sharply.

“Have we?”

“My grandmother has toushana. The rumors about her binding students to her house with Third Rite are true. She’s wiped the memories of all her members. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Would I tell you that if I didn’t trust you?”

Beaulah’s palm flattens on her chest. And the corner of her mouth curls up.

“Fair enough. Now that we’ve bonded.” She winks. “Ready for a bit of experimenting, I think.” There are a series of bins on a shelf. She grabs a blue one from the tip-top. Inside are various stones.

“Draw your toushana.”

Waves of cold rush beneath my skin. Shadows push like sharp needles through my fist. Beaulah rummages through her bin of rocks. She tosses a gleaming yellow one at the magic thrashing in my grip. The shadows devour it, and her jaw ticks. She drops another stone in my hand, but it disappears immediately.

Her tongue pokes her cheek. “I’ll have to think on this more.” She replaces the bin on a top shelf, precisely where it was. “I’ll see you tonight.”

I grimace.

“Don’t you want to be there?”

“I watched you have your debs buried alive.” The truth slips out and I can’t force it back in. “No. I don’t have the slightest desire to go. Or to read the books you’ve sent to my room, if we’re being completely honest.”

“You act like his mother wasn’t right there. As if my Draguns weren’t all over that forest. We would never let any harm come to anyone. I watched Georgie take his first steps. I love that boy.” She pokes me in the chest, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Beaulah truly upset. “You won’t imply that I don’t.”

“It’s cruel.”

She puts the bin of rocks back on the top shelf and returns the straps to manacles. When she faces me again, her expression is kind.

“Do you know how many people live their entire lives trying to find the courage to face their fear? There’s nothing Georgie will hesitate at now.” She pets the ends of my hair. “After all the time you spent at your grandmother’s, you cannot tell me you don’t wish you could have stood up for yourself sooner.”

I can’t meet her eyes. There’s some truth to that I can’t deny.

She opens my palm. I know what she wants. I fill it with shadows—swirling, dark, angry shadows. “All this power, Quell, is useless if fear controls you. And if you want honesty, you’re desperate for your mother because you’re scared of the girl in the mirror.”

My heart hammers. “I love my mother and miss her.”

“Even now, fear erects walls around your conscience.”

I don’t believe my ears. “You want me to agree that burying débutants alive is a proper way to teach them bravery.”

“I want you to trust your magical instincts, Miss Marionne. Which are telling you that Georgie is more prepared to survive this Order today than he was yesterday. He will not be among the threatened, he will be the threat. And that is a good place to be in a world like ours. In your gut, you know that’s true.”

For minutes, we don’t speak. Then Beaulah sets a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“A good Mother trains the children she loves for their later benefit.”

“My mother loves me.”

“And yet your grandmother and your mother both left you so unprepared.” She dusts off my clothes and I let her. “You’ll be running forever until you look at that girl in the mirror and, without anyone’s approval, unleash her.” She walks toward the door.

“I am not a Darkbearer,” I mutter.

She marches back toward me. “What is a Darkbearer but a person who knows what they are capable of? A person who is not controlled by fear, or by an institution, but exists on their own terms? Tell me, Quell, if you made the rules, would other little girls like you have lived their entire childhood running for their lives?”

I can almost feel the ratty blanket Mom and I slept on in our first apartment before we had any furniture.

“Scavenging what you can?”

I can still feel the ache of my stomach and the often bare fridge.

“Moving around like some vagrant?”

I see the looks people gave, that time we had to ask strangers for change.

“Of course not.”

“Darkbearers of the ancient days are dead. And so are their crimes. Call yourself what you want, Quell.” She purses her lips in thought before continuing. “But the Order needs someone like you. Everyone has a role to play.” She gestures at the shelf. “Take advantage of all my years of research. Get acquainted, get comfortable. If you cannot be yourself around people, then are they your people?” She waits for a response.

I think of Abby and pull at a thread on my clothes, unsure what to say.

“You are not worthless; you are a gift.”

Beaulah’s words are a warm blanket in a blustery world that confuses me more the longer I encounter it. My toushana is who I am, but if I let myself give in to it fully, who am I then? Where does that lead me? The history books say one thing. Beaulah says another. Trust myself, she’d say.

She watches me go, and her words replay in my mind like a song. And I’m not sure if it’s stuck in my head or if I’ve put it on repeat. I’ve never heard anyone talk about me or my toushana that way. Embracing it at my grandmother’s was the epitome of defiance. And I worry every day whether my mother will even look at me the same way.

I don’t speak the entire walk back to my room, my mind whirring. Georgie did seem alright after he calmed down. But his fear wasn’t the only thing left in that grave. A piece of his humanity stayed buried. But if it makes him safer, allows him to have a life that’s his own, how can it be entirely wrong? I can’t pretend that part of me doesn’t wonder what it would have been like to grow up proud of my magic…instead of scared that its existence would get me killed.

I sit on Jordan’s bed. He endured these Trials. He has all six pins. His deft command of his magic, the confident way he draws on toushana, his saturated mind of Order history, even his perfect etiquette—Beaulah carved, designed, and carefully sculpted every part of him.

No wonder he is so rigid. There were moments when he would let me peek behind the mask just enough to deceive me into thinking that the Dragun in him is breakable. He isn’t. Beaulah made him that way. That will be Georgie in a few years.

I don’t love her methods. But there is something disgustingly admirable about that woman’s ability to breed resilience.

There is a letter with Abby’s handwriting on the nightstand waiting for me. I rip it open.

Here’s everything I have. I hope you’re okay!

She’s written a long list of locations, from Chicago to New Orleans, where my mom has supposedly been spotted. There are annotations underneath the locations explaining where she obtained the intel. In some cases it’s secondhand through word of mouth. Other times it is someone she trusts or, in the case of Chicago, video evidence that my mother was in fact there at some point. But Chicago was Yagrin impersonating her. I sit back, wondering which sightings were her and which could have been him. Abby’s list includes two balls: one in National Harbor and another in Manhattan.

An idea strikes me. I grab the invitations from between my mattresses and skim them again, looking for any similarities. On Abby’s list is:

October 17—Minneapolis

When Season was in, there was a ball in Minneapolis. I flip through the invites until I spot one in Minneapolis: the Foshay. The date on the invite is also in October. The dates! I hadn’t looked at the dates on any of these because they’re all so worn and old.

September 3

May 12

These are all dates when Season was in; I was at my grandmother’s. These invites aren’t random. The truth knocks the wind out of me. My mother collected them because she thought I’d be there. She’s looking for me. I keep flipping. January 23: a save-the-date for a spring tea next Season. And—my heart hiccups.

Veil of Mums Ball

November 20

That’s in three days. My heart races as I review them all again and find one other that hasn’t happened yet, but it’s months from now.

This is my chance. My mother will be at the Veil of Mums Ball, hoping to find me, in a matter of days. I grab a note to write Abby.

Meet at the coffee shop across from a library in Fairfield

(off Old Post) November 20 at 6 pm

Dress formal. I’ll explain when I see you.