Sixty-Three

Quell

Yagrin’s horse comes to a stop beneath thick green trees covered in snow, where my ex–best friend and a redheaded girl are waiting. Dlaminaugh Estate looms in the background, touching the clouds. My body still writhes with a dull heat. I dismount, still haunted by my grandmother’s final words to me.

The girl’s hands are not gloved and her posture isn’t timid. Her sharp shoulders are pressed back and her lips are in a thin line. I only saw the girl once. But she looks like Nore.

“Quell.” Abby hooks her hands. I stare, unsure what to say.

“I’ve got to help my brother,” Yagrin says.

“Meet at my cottage on the south end of Dlaminaugh Estate.”

She sounds like Nore.

She steps forward, fidgeting with the pockets of her dress.

Nore Ambrose is alive.

“Right,” Yagrin says. “Quell, Jordan will meet you at the Tavern down south, the one by your gran— You know the one.”

Abby’s gaze falls to her feet as Yagrin rides off.

“Good to see you again, Quell.” Nore offers a hand.

“You are supposed to be dead.”

She tosses her chin over her shoulder at the Sphere, tiny in the distance. “Draguns are all over these woods. We should get going. You both have a long journey. Abby doesn’t know how to cloak, and you’re probably too weak to. We can stop at my cottage. Traveling by night is safer.”

“Quell.” It’s Abby. “You have to say something to me.”

“Do I? The last I saw you, your boyfriend plotted to have me killed. And you ran off.” I fold my arms, a bit stunned by my upwelling frustration at Abby. I’d shut out those feelings; I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.

“I didn’t know, alright? Mynick didn’t tell me.”

“We need to get out of here,” Nore says, looking around warily.

“And when it happened, I was scared,” Abby goes on. “So I ran. I’m a coward. I was trying to get away from the chaos at the Sphere when Yagrin found me and took me to Jordan. I heal people; I don’t battle Draguns. And what about you! I hear you have toushana? When were you going to tell me that?”

Nore grabs me by the wrist. “We need to leave now.”

Abby’s and my eyes meet, and we stick to Nore’s heels. She leads us across a snowy stretch of graveyard, gazing over her shoulder every few moments.

“What is it?” I ask, but she only urges me to come along. Her estate grows larger the faster we run. When the gate comes into view, she cuts a sharp right.

“This way.” We stop at the stables, where she offers Abby reins. “Do you ride?”

She nods. I shake my head before she can even ask and swing into the saddle behind Nore.

“No questions. Let’s go.”

We ride quickly, the Sphere’s commotion at our backs, around the wooded perimeter of Dlaminaugh Estate. We squeeze through a break in the stone wall, which Nore has concealed with shrubbery. Once inside the grounds we stop at a small house. The minute my feet hit the ground, everything feels different. An eerie feeling of being watched covers me in shivers as I tie up my horse.

“Get inside,” Nore says.

“I don’t under—”

A whoosh of wind sweeps past, so strong it knocks me forward. The howling wind blows again, and I realize it doesn’t feel like wind at all—it’s more like something is pushing me around. The hair on my neck rises. Nore grabs me and Abby and dashes up the porch steps. The bones of the rickety wood creak and the sky seems to darken. She whips the door open and shoves us inside just as her porch chair comes flying and smashes into the door. She barricades her back against it, breathless.

Abby is frozen in shock.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I think the ancestors of my House are after me.” She peeks out the shuttered windows; the wind hasn’t stopped its assault. “Stay away from the windows. Just in case.”

I huddle on a spot on the floor with my back to the wall.

“What does that mean?” Abby asks. “Are we safe in here?”

“Are we safe anywhere?”

Bang!

I jump. Abby shrieks. Nore peeks out the window, where a thick branch just cracked the glass. As she stares outside, Nore sucks in a breath but doesn’t let it out.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Can you see them?” she says.

I look but only see a violent windstorm destroying the outside of her house. “See what?”

“The shadows. They’re here. They’re everywhere.” She chews her nail.

“Oh my goodness, it’s gone!” Abby rubs the spot where the scar pierced her at Cotillion. “Quell! There was a cloudiness in my head, a kind of fog, whenever I’d think back on certain things. But it’s gone.”

“My grandmother’s dead. So her curse would be, too.”

“Dead?” Nore clutches her chest. “Darragh?” She looks as if she might actually cry.

“We didn’t know the same person, clearly.” I feel sick thinking of my grandmother’s atrocities. “She accidentally gave toushana to girls. And then killed them.”

“Darragh Marionne killed girls with toushana?” Nore says. “I’ll never believe that.”

The window shutters rattle.

“It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.” I pull a blanket from her couch and hold it to my chin, realizing I need to stop dwelling on the past and start preparing for what’s next—starting with how to get out of this cottage. The Order is in shambles. I’m not even sure if, come morning, I’ll have magic.

After a long silence, Abby asks, “What do you think is going to happen with the Wexton brothers and the Sphere?”

“Beaulah is a demon they’ve been battling most of their lives,” I say. “Today was a long time coming. They better win.”

“The Sphere can’t break,” Abby says, and I can hear the fear between her words.

“The innards of the Sphere can be preserved in something else,” Nore says. “It just needs the right magical composition. Stones, a blade, even, depending on how it was forged. There are options. What does Jordan have on him?”

“Nothing,” I say. “He has nothing.”