Eighteen

Jordan

Liam’s face lights up, and the sight tugs at my lips. He spins the guitar I just gave him, smoothing his hands along its glossed surface. I check my watch. The Dragunhead is away, finally investigating Francis’s death: ruled a murder, but expecting me in his office with an update on my progress in two hours. In that time, I need my brother’s guard down so he can open up.

“I thought you forgot me in that cell,” he says, resting against a bench on the rooftop of Wexton MidCenter Hotel.

“Uh, hardly.” I had sent Yagrin extra meals and an actual bed while I caught up on the stack of work at my desk and avoided the Dragunhead’s persistent questions about how Sphere tracking is going. I busied myself with papers while he spoke to me, unable to look him in the eye. He stressed that I shouldn’t be worried about Quell. I told him I haven’t been. Partly true. There are no signs of that girl anywhere. I have no leads to worry about.

But Yagrin is going to help me in more ways than one today. I need him to start teaching me how to sun track and tell me more about his time with Quell. My jaw clenches. How far did their friendship go?

“I wasn’t sure,” he goes on, and I put thoughts of him and Quell to rest. I need his help. “Especially after you lied about me helping—”

“Hush.” I cut a cautious glance around. A Dragun is inside, guarding each entrance to ensure we’re not interrupted.

“It was more wishful thinking, I’d say.” I watch for an eye roll or shoulder shrug, but my brother only strolls, stroking the guitar’s strings. I follow at a distance, careful not to push too hard.

“It’s impressive how you’ve mastered holding your Anatomer magic so well. I avoid it. Hate the way it feels.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Will I get to see my brother’s actual face today?” I ask, checking the sun’s position overhead. High noon is supposed to be a great time to sun track.

No response and no change.

Yags stops at a pair of lounge chairs near a glistening bed of rocks full of dancing flames. I sit beside him, and Liam’s blue eyes find me.

“Thanks for this. And the bed.”

I nod, trying to find the right way to phrase what I want to say next. Yagrin’s brown eyes bleed through Liam’s and stay. I stare at the glimpse of the brother I know. The slant in his eyes has tilted more over the years. He plays his strings and I let him, listening in silence. When the song finishes, he plays two more. By the time that’s done, I gather the words I’ve been tossing around in my head, none of which feel quite right, and force them out of my mouth.

“It’s a perfect day for sun tracking.”

“Indeed it is,” he says without any bite in his tone. I move closer to him, and my hand moves to the vial in my pocket. But just as it feels like the chasm between us is closing, his gaze falls to the virtue pins on my lapel. He sneers.

“I don’t get how you can stand her.”

Beaulah.

“I hate her as much as you do. But I won’t apologize for my accomplishments.”

“There’s more than accomplishment that comes with those pins.” The blue of Liam’s eyes hasn’t returned. Yagrin still stares back at me. I shift in my seat. Beaulah is very insistent about virtue pins and what they mean in her House. When she pins them on, asking the receiver to accept them, it always feels a bit like swallowing an eel. But my brother only ever earned a single pin, for discretion. And not because he couldn’t earn more. By the time his magic showed strongly, he had already grown apathetic, refusing to practice anything but sun tracking. He loathed the pressure. So he slacked in every way.

I adjust my coat, the sun catching the gleaming line of gold on my chest. My brother turns the pegs on the headstock of his guitar. He has nothing to show for his life but bitterness. All things considered, he’s probably, in some small way, jealous of me.

The next time he looks at me, the brown in his eyes has returned to Liam’s blue. Walls back up. I prop my leg on my knee and settle into my seat, hoping I look more chill than I feel.

“I was thinking about that ordeal with the butler you reminded me about,” I say. “It was quite ridiculous. But I liked old Brisby. He smelled a little weird.”

“It was that tonic he used in his hair, I think.” My brother smirks.

“Remember when we swapped it with Father’s aftershave?” The picture forms in my mind: my father’s red face, his greasy beard, and the stale-smelling liquid dripping over his face and clothes. A guffaw bubbles up and bursts from my lips. It feels foreign and jagged, almost painful, like a hammer hitting a brittle piece of concrete. Yags chuckles, too. When our laughter settles, I feel lighter.

“What an awful waste of space that man is,” he says. “Not Brisby.”

“Father,” we both say at the same time.

“You know, as much as I loathe the brotherhood and how you are sliding further into its clutches—” He glances at the ruby heart pendant. “The best thing you’ve ever done was tell the Dragunhead about Father’s health so he had to be sent away.”

“That was good, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely brilliant. It’s almost like we’re related.”

I slip the vial of Sun Dust from my pocket. But I hold it in a closed fist, realizing how bringing it out right now will look to him. Talking with him like this is…nice.

Yags glances at my closed fist. “Sometimes I think you forget I know you better than you know yourself.”

I open my hand, my cheeks flushed.

“You were awful at sun tracking last time I saw you.” Yagrin learned to sun track during a session Beaulah offered for her inner circle of pupils. He’d try to talk to me about it, but I was busy trying to attend as many raids as possible. I would give anything to go back to those conversations now.

“I was fourteen, Yags.”

“You probably still can’t do it.”

My heart skips a beat. “Try me.”

“You know who is really good at sun tracking?” He smiles and the answer mocks me. Quell. Between gritted teeth, I force out, “Oh, because she is bound?”

“She can suspend Dust like you wouldn’t believe.” He’s practically giddy. “I would bet anything she feels the Sphere’s magic in her bones, like those old stories Nana used to talk about.”

Heat thrashes in my chest as I think of my brother and the girl I stupidly used to love colluding to destroy magic. Rage is a snake inside me, ready to strike. But as my brother turns to face me fully, his posture slacks. I ask, “How did you two evade us so long?”

I don’t breathe.

His hands glide along his guitar before he meets my eyes again. Familiar brown is back. He waits several beats, and I force myself to take a deliberate breath. Eventually, he glances over his shoulder before leaning in. “There are entire communities who are very good at evading your brotherhood.”

Communities…

Safe houses.

They’re notoriously wary of outsiders. Once they’ve gelled as a unit, they don’t usually let anyone in. I hadn’t even considered them. How did he convince them to let them stay there? I have so many questions. But I feel like the mountain between us is starting to move, and I don’t want to destroy it. If I find Quell because of intel Yagrin gives, that could save his life. I want my big brother to live. I swallow my questions and instead say, “That is clever. Truly.”

“Thank you.” He snatches the vial from me, but I can’t stop thinking about the safe house network. I wonder if any recent raids have turned up any hints of her. I’m going to pull those files. My brother spills a tiny hill of Dust in his hand, and I tighten my grip on the seat, not believing this moment could get any better. His mask bleeds through his skin.

“Suspend. Count. Flare. Cloak.” He tosses it up in the air, when the door to the rooftop bursts open. Maei runs toward us, as pale as a ghost.

“Mr. Wexton!” She looks at Yagrin. “This Wexton, I meant.” She pulls me aside, her hand trembling. “There’s been an urgent security breach. The Dragunhead’s out until your meeting! A whole flock of Draguns left this morning on raids.” She reddens. “Territory deployments are shifting this week, so plenty of folks are gone for that.”

“Maei.”

Her heart flutters like a bird.

“Slow down.”

She shoves a file folder in my hand. Each highlighted point rends my heart.

Marked person has taken control of an Unmarked residential building in Boston.

There are thirty residents; six are elderly, seven are children.

Unmarked law enforcement is there, bewildered and unable to even get into the building.

Only demand he’s made is to be left alone; the hostages are not coming out.

“I need two teams.”

“That’s what I meant, sir. We just sent out so many, I don’t have many easily reachable.”

My brother watches us from a distance, no longer wearing Liam’s persona. I wave him over, and Maei chews her nails off as I share the privileged details of the situation with him. Technically, he is still a Dragun. He lets me finish without a word, but the etch of his brow deepens.

“That’s awful,” he mutters.

“Will you come with me?” I hang on my brother’s response. At this chance for him to meet me halfway on whatever we’re doing here. He sighs, and I know his answer before he says it.

“I can’t betray my conscience and stand with the brotherhood anymore.”

“Yagrin, there are lives of innocent people on the line. The brotherhood does good things. You have to concede that.”

He holds out his wrists to Maei.

“Take him back to his cell.”

“Sir, there’s one more thing,” she says, fiddling with his restraints. “The perpetrator says he is from House of Duncan.”