Thirty-Four
Quell
“Quell!” Her brows kiss as she takes in the ruined room. “I’ve been looking for you!” Adola is covered in scrapes and bruises, but two shiny pins gleam on her collar. She scans me up and down. “I’ve been so worried. Are you alright?”
I search for the words but everything that comes to mind feels impossible to say out loud. All I can manage is to hold out the nearly shredded pink handbag.
She eyes it in confusion.
“My mother’s things,” I choke. “The wolves.”
She gasps, then grabs my hand. “We have to get out of here before Charlie gets back.”
The trip through the forest is a blur. In the distance, the commotion of loud revelry rattles beneath a tent strung with lights. But, given what I know, they may as well be floodlights on a graveyard. Once we’re inside Hartsboro, Adola leads me upstairs to her room. She checks that we haven’t been followed before closing us inside and turning the door’s dead bolt. I pull out the note from the guesthouse and study the handwriting again. I’m going to find out who wrote this.
“What happened?” She examines what’s left of the pink bag, which I’ve dropped on the ground. Her mouth moves, but I don’t hear what she says. Then somehow I’m sitting down.
“Quell, please talk.” She hugs around herself, eyeing the bruises on my hands. “I want to help.”
“She’s dead. Ripped apart by—” The words lodge in my throat. “I think someone sent her to be killed.” I show her the note.
Adola reads it and her brows draw together. There’s a glint of real sadness in her eyes. She stares off.
A tightness tries to well up in my chest, but I stand and pace, stoking my rage instead. Someone did this. When I find them, they’re dead. My toushana, still weakened, stirs. There aren’t many potential culprits. It was someone here, with guesthouse access. Someone who talked to my mom enough for her to believe they were trying to help her. I read the words again.
“It makes it sound like she was a prisoner here.” Which is a very different story from the one Charlie and Beaulah painted.
“I’m so sorry, Quell. I don’t know what to say.” She offers to hug me but I don’t move, so she wraps around me. “Deep breaths. You’re so strong. You’re going to get through this.” She pulls over a blanket. “You’re so cold. Can I put on a fire?”
I walk past her and run a cold bath, opening the window to let the autumn wind inside. She watches, her calmness uncanny. The longer I soak, the stronger I feel. And the bruises on my fingers begin to fade. After some time, I climb out of the tub and find Adola writing at her desk. She stands.
“Are you hungry?”
“For blood.”
She swallows. “There are no right things to say after something like this, I’m realizing.” She hooks her hands. “Maybe try to think of things that give you hope. Like the beach.”
A chill skitters up my spine.
“You like the beach, right? The sand and the sounds of the water.”
“When did I tell you I liked the beach?”
She goes pale. “Y-you must have told me. Something about how you and your mom loved it.”
“I never told you that.”
Adola trembles.
“Talk.”
She sighs. “I shouldn’t have lied. Charlie saw me with her, and I was worried that only made things worse. And then when I saw you and my aunt getting closer, I worried you would tell my aunt anything I told you.”
I don’t believe my ears. “Sit.” I push her into a seat. “The whole truth. Out with it.”
She pulls at the threads on her dress as she talks. “I met your mom one evening at a private dinner my aunt hosted for her closer friends and family. Afterward, Rhea approached me—”
Hearing about her memories with my mother feels like a dagger in my chest.
“She told me that I reminded her of you. That was our only interaction for a while. Then I noticed she hadn’t been around. Charlie was keeping her at the guesthouse, not letting her wander the grounds. So I visited her and that’s when we talked about your love of water and sand. And how she had this whole trip planned once you left your grandmother’s.”
My whole body quakes.
“Charlie caught us chatting and he shooed me away. I never saw her again. And next thing I know, my aunt told me she left.”
“You’ve held this back, all this time. I trusted you. I tried to help you, relentlessly!”
“I’ve learned in this House to not ask questions, alright!” She storms away, raking a rough hand through her hair. She starts to cry but it only kindles my anger more. How is she the one who gets to be sad? Her chin slides over her shoulder, and she starts to speak but stops.
Toushana hums beneath my skin. My fury rises with each step. I’ve been played, lied to, by all of them.
“Did you write this note?” I hold it in front of her face, seething.
“No! I would never. I didn’t even know she was interested in leaving.”
“Who else was my mother communicating with?”
She shakes her head.
“Who? Charlie, Yagrin, Jordan? Whoever it was earned her trust enough that she believed that note.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Tears stream her cheeks. “What they would do if they found out I betrayed them? We are ‘family first’ in this House. Our bonds run deeper than loyalty to any Order. I am a Perl.”
“You don’t want to be a Perl on their terms. You curtsy to their music, but you curse them under your breath. Loyalty doesn’t bind your tongue. Fear does.”
She glares at me.
“Which one of them gave her this note, Adola? Who did she trust?”
She rocks back and forth. “Stop, please.”
“Tell me.” Cold claws at my bones, writhing and unsettled. A sickening feeling lurches inside as I realize I know the answer. “Say it.”
She marches up to me, eyes rimmed with tears. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do!”
“I’m asking you to stand for something.”
“You think the truth is worth dying for? You think that’s so easy? Let me see you do it.”
“I didn’t say it was easy. Say the name, Adola.” I need to hear it. To be sure. I poke the pins on her chest. “You owe me that much.”
She balls her fists.
“Who—”
“Mother! Mother gave the order, alright!” She holds up the note. “This is Charlie’s handwriting, but my aunt had him write it. She tried to convince Rhea to bring you here. And she refused. So she ordered Charlie to.” She gestures at the note. “I overheard them fighting about it a night ago.” Adola’s eyes are bloodshot. “She caught me eavesdropping. She told me she’d feed me to her dogs, too, if I told you.”
There it is. The truth I suspected. The world bleeds red. Boiling, bubbling, the shade of death. Toushana burns inside, begging to seep through my skin. Adola tries to rush past me, but I grab her by the arm.
“Get out of this House. Fast. Before I burn it to the ground.”
Hartsboro is silent. The Trial celebration festivities officially ended, but the after-party thumps in the distance. I enter the smoking room, then slip behind one of the bookcases, determined to find Beaulah’s bedroom. When she’s asleep, when she feels safe, is the best opportunity to press my toushana into her skin and do to her what she did to my mother: tear her apart.
The bookcase closes and I imagine my mother’s screams ringing in my head. My hands are slick and the walls of the hidden corridor close in. I pull at my toushana, playing with it, urging it to freeze me down to the bone. So I can’t feel my racing heart or the sting in my eyes. But my mother’s smile forces its way into my thoughts.
Dead.
She’s dead.
I urge myself up and run the length of the estate. Picturing Beaulah’s shock drives my feet faster. When she thinks she’s safe, I’m going to take her by surprise. Maybe I’ll tie her up to ensure she can’t get away. I want to savor the terror of the unknown in her eyes. I want to make her feel every burst of fear and pain my mother must have felt in her last minutes of life. Trust my magical instincts, she’d said. They’re loud and clear right now.
Her bedroom is in its own wing of the House. I climb rungs welded into the inside of the walls.
I pull myself up onto the second floor and race behind the walls, burning tiny holes, room by room, until I find a bedroom that is lavishly outfitted in cracked-column decor and House colors. Framed portraits cover the walls above a large bed. In the middle of the room is Beaulah, asleep in a freestanding tub filled with ice water.
Her head rests backward. I knock along the wall, listening for a break in the hollow sound indicating there’s a bookcase on the other side. My fingers find a seam and I nudge the secret door forward. It opens silently. My bones burn with an icy, violent appetite I’ve never felt before. And I lean into it. Inside the room, my chest tightens, my toushana ready to strike. Beaulah’s eyes are closed, her breath slow and even. I stretch open my hands. Blood pools in my ears as my magic awakens, hungry to release this pressure chamber in my chest.
Know what I want.
Trust my instincts.
Break through the fear.
I thirst, imagining the shock in her eyes. The wounded way she will look at me when she realizes she made me this way. She pushed me to this edge. And it killed her.
I take another step. Someone grabs me firmly by the arm.
I know the touch before I see him. Murder darkens his green eyes.
“Hello, Jordan.”