Abby’s a great friend, the best roommate, super smart, but not at all a morning person. She didn’t wake up at eight to take me to the library and was still in bed snoring when I slipped out of our room at eight thirty. Fortunately breakfast was grab-and-go ready, and despite some possible indigestion later from eating so quickly, I’m at the library’s entrance by nine.
It’s on the second floor between the dining hall and yoga studio. Its carved doors with half-sun handles tell a story. Inside, shelves are stacked floors high with clusters of study tables peppered among them. Walking inside feels like slipping on my favorite cozy socks. The first place Mom and I visited after each move was the local library. I skim an electronic catalog hungry to figure out what exactly Jordan did to that plant in the Tavern, and how. Any books on Dragun lore should be shelved in the Secundus section. Signs lead me to a small room with its own set of glass doors where a woman with mousy brown hair is repairing the spines of worn books with the shift of her hands.
“Excuse me,” she chirps, removing her cat-eye glasses. “I need to see a permission slip to check out books in here.”
“I don’t have one.”
“It’s fine, Mrs. Loudle, she’s with me.”
I turn and the precise person I didn’t want to see, all six foot something of him, is right behind me. My grip tightens on my bag strap as he walks past. His skin brushes mine. I jerk aside to get out of his way a bit harder than I mean to and knock over a stack of Mrs. Loudle’s books. I pick them up hastily.
“Quell.” He dips his chin in greeting.
The way he stormed off last night makes me prefer rolling my eyes, but I think better of it and dip my chin back. “Jordan.”
“Mister Wexton,” the librarian, Mrs. Loudle, says. “My bright and early bookworm, find anything good today?” She turns to me. “This boy reads more than anyone I’ve seen in my thirty years here.”
He likes books?
“I did find a few this time actually,” he says, showing his stack to Mrs. Loudle, and I peek for a glimpse of their spines. He catches me watching, and I promptly look away.
Mrs. Loudle smooths a thumb across a badge, and my name appears in bold black ink. “Here you are.” She hands it to Jordan.
I reach for it, but my fingers crash into his. He takes my hand and gently unfolds my palm and sets the badge inside it.
I clear my throat. “Thank you.”
“Are you surprised I like to read?” he asks.
I snatch my hand away and loop the lanyard around my neck.
“You wear everything you’re thinking on your face, Quell.”
“Not everything.” I grind my teeth. “Thank you, Mrs. Loudle. I shouldn’t be too long. Session is starting soon.” I hurry off, hoping to avoid any questions from Jordan about why I’d want to peruse the Secundus section.
“So have you been busy with . . . you know?” Loudle asks. “Nasty whispers about the Sphere, I’m hearing. Do you know if toushana has something to do with it? Darkbearer days are gone, they say. But ‘they say’ a lot of things.”
I slip past them inside. Hopefully she’ll keep him wrapped in conversation for a few beats longer so I can peruse without a stalker on my heels.
The Secundus section is much quainter, with lounge chairs for reading. It’s completely empty, which is a small relief. Shelves cover every inch of wall space. There’s even a decorative ladder of blankets in a corner. I pick a section and scour the book spines, periodically checking to be sure Jordan’s still tied up in conversation outside. Nothing on Draguns.
I graze another row for anything even close to toushana, Dragun lore, or Order history. A set of cracked leather spines embossed with gold lettering catches my eye on a low shelf. The Rare Breed. I have to get down all the way on my knees to pull them out. They are unyielding when I tug, like they haven’t been touched in forever. I pull harder, and one gives.
The rest of the letters on the spine have worn off, but inside, the title page is intact. Draguns: The Rare Breed, vol. 1 of 3. I grab it and the two others, creating a small stack in my arms. I glance back again, and Jordan’s pulling away from Mrs. Loudle. My heart thrums faster as I move to the checkout table. I slip the books under the scanner and shove them in my bag, and then a low voice spins me around.
“So you like to read, too, I gather? Only bookish people are impressed by that.”
“Who says I’m impressed?”
“Your surprise—”
“I’m surprised you do anything for fun.”
For a moment, he says nothing, his mouth parted. “It’s good to see you up and at it early,” he says.
By all indications, nothing about him seeing me pleases him, other than his persistent ability to get in my way.
“I have to get going,” he says.
“Oh, I’m so disappointed.” I could kick myself for letting his annoyance bait me.
He taps the lanyard on my chest, ignoring my snide remark. “You’re welcome.”
I offer nothing more than a tight smile.
“Remember, your best today, protégé.” He turns on his heel and leaves, and I stay and read as long as I can.
When I get to a section on “Dragun Legacy,” I skip over a few parts about “Early Wars” but stop at “Draguns: Multifaceted and Lethal.” I pull the book closer, my eyes flying across the words as my brain tries to sift them into meaning. Draguns are a brotherhood that spans Houses and supersedes House loyalties. Their universal sigil is a single, hooked dragon talon. Draguns have the unique ability to master multiple areas of magic. I twist my shirt hem between my fingers, remembering the cracked column at the throat of the Dragun after me. Who was he if not with the brotherhood? I bite my lip and try to remember what Dexler said on my first day. Binding with one form of magic usually dulls the other forms. Draguns are the exception.
I sit up and flip the page, looking for examples. Some comprehensive list of the types of magic Draguns wield. The dark kind, especially. But I find nothing but a pressed mosquito, guts smashed on the page. I slap the tome closed, and I realize the time. I toss my books into my bag and hurry to session.
I arrive to Dexler’s room and crash into my seat. Despite being a few minutes late, things haven’t started. Today’s my second shot at proving I can do this. I can’t afford any screwups.
“Easy there, tiger. We don’t do track tryouts here.” Shelby tosses me a bubble gum.
“Funny.” I tuck it away. “I didn’t see you at the Tavern the other night.”
“Oh, yeah, this guy and I were out doing stuff.”
Rose flings herself into the other chair beside me, apologizing for her tardiness—still no diadem on her head.
“I was actually going to ask you about emerging,” I say to Shelby.
“Nothing yet, huh?” She glances at my head.
Rose flinches, eyeing our conversation, and guilt hooks in my stomach.
“Never mind,” I say. “I’ll ask you later.”
Shelby gives me a you’re-too-nice look.
“You didn’t miss anything,” I tell Rose, trying to change the subject when I notice puffiness under her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She doesn’t say a word, and that says everything. I glance at her disheveled hair and the rest of her. Wrinkled clothes, the same she wore yesterday, are stained with makeup on the sleeves.
“Rose, I’m sorry. Any itching?”
She shakes her head, her eyes watering.
“How long do you have?” I whisper when Dexler calls everyone’s attention to the front.
She points to her desk.
“Today?!”
Shelby nudges me with her elbow to keep it down as Dexler glances our way. But it’s too late.
“Miss Marionne, what did I just explain?”
There’s no way out of this one. “I wasn’t listening, I apologize.”
“Is that because you don’t think what I have to say is important or . . . ?”
Cold flickers through me. “No, it absolutely is. I—”
“Then I expect you to act like it.”
The tongue-lashing leaves me hunched over my paper of notes, fixated on every next syllable out of Dexler’s mouth. Rose is stiff next to me and silent. I think of Octos, hoping it doesn’t come to the worst for her.
The way things unfolded with Octos still doesn’t sit right with me. Something about him was so genuine, so honest. The way his shoulders shrugged with pride when he spoke of his family. The surprise on his face when he saw what the elixir did. I’m pretty good at reading people, and I’m not sure Jordan’s pegged him entirely right.
When our materials are passed out, we’re arranged into groups. Shelby, Rose, and I link up and scoot our chairs to an island of our own in the corner of the room.
“Decomposing,” I say, spacing out our materials. Two different types of bones and a beetle. “We have to fossilize these ingredients and collect their ash in a jar.”
Rose broods, her hands shoved in her lap.
“You want to ready the kor?” I ask her. “It’s fire again today.”
“What’s the point? Nothing’s helping. I’ve tried everything.”
Shelby glances between us, sighing before grabbing the kor. I don’t miss her slight eye roll. She works her fingers over the wick to ignite the kor. I grab the bone, rolling it in my hands. It’s light and fragile. A little bendy. I shiver at the thought of where it could have come from.
“The closest natural path, remember,” Shelby says.
My toushana could turn this to dust in one point three seconds, but that’s not going to fly. I search for a glimmer of warmth, turning the bone over the fire. I picture it decomposing under soil, the sped-up process of time. The warmth in my fingers hums louder as I tug at it.
It crumples at its edges, pieces falling away. I tighten my grip, determined to hold on to my proper magic. But something causes it to stutter and the heat dissolves. “No!” But the flicker of progress is lost and the bone is an unchanged log in my hands.
“What’s wrong?” Shelby asks.
I shove back from the table in frustration.
“Here, let me.” Shelby works her magic over the bone, turning it in the flicker of the kor as she focuses intensely on the ingredients. Its edges crumble a second before the whole thing collapses into dust. “See?” She eases it off the table into a funnel attached to a jar.
“You make it look so—”
“Agnes,” Grandmom says from the doorway, and I smooth the edges of my hair.
“Headmistress,” Dexler says with an inflection that suggests she’s just as surprised to see her as the rest of us. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a visitor.”
Chairs scrape the floor as we all stand. “Good afternoon, Headmistress Marionne.”
Hearing my name in a chorus pokes me with an unfamiliar sensation. They’re not talking to me. But still, it’s weird.
“To what do I owe this treat?”
Grandmom enters, and there isn’t a single eye in the room that would dare look away. Awe swivels every neck, flattens every back against its chair. Grandmom’s gaze finds mine, then quickly shifts to Rose. She whispers something to Dexler, who glances at Rose as well. Her posture sinks with disappointment.
“Ro—” I start, but she shoulders her bag.
“Good luck to you, Quell, I mean, not that you need it.”
Grandmom guides her through the door with a dainty hand cupped on her shoulder. As it swings closed, Rose glances back at me, her face pinched with sorrow, reminiscent of a lonely Trader in a bar. I look away, but her despair lingers like a bad perfume. I turn back to my materials, but time and motion seem out of balance. Rose’s exit replays in my mind over and over except it’s my head on her body.
“Well.” Dexler’s voice snatches me from my spiraling gloom. “Staring isn’t going to get those ingredients decomposed.” She claps. “Back to it! Once you turn it in, you’re dismissed. Remember, practice independently, seek out your mentors. You have much to master.”
Session buzzes with whispers about Rose being kicked out.
“What’ll happen to her?” I whisper to Shelby.
“She couldn’t cut it in the House she’s zoned to, so unless her family relocates to a different territory, she’s done,” Shelby says with equal measure of disinterest and surprise. “Shunned, barred from growing her magic.”
“What’ll happen to it?”
“It’ll become stunted and eventually unreachable.”
My chest aches for her.
“You want to try the beetle? It should be a little easier since it’s still alive. I can do the others.”
“Sure.” I don’t mean it to come out so dreary, but it does.
“Hey,” Shelby says, sensing my sullen shift. “It happens. It gets easier.”
I don’t know if that’s true. But I need to focus on this lesson, do it well.
“I’m serious. I’m a Duncan, Quell. No one in my family’s been inducted for decades. But I wanted to, and Headmistress knew my grandmother personally. So she gave me a shot. Four other girls started the week I did. We got close, fast, made a pact to stick together, determined to survive. My Cotillion is in just over a month. I’m almost out of here, and guess what . . .” She picks up her ingredients. “I’m the only one of my friends left.”
“That must have sucked.”
“Sort of. You begin to understand, you’re different. And you can either own that and step into it or be tortured by everyone else’s failure for the rest of your life. Rose is gone because she didn’t deserve to be here. You do.” She walks away and my resolve fractures.
But I don’t.
Head down, I carve out a work space for myself away from Shelby and everyone. My hands shake as Rose’s departing stare and Shelby’s words tangle together into a nightmare.
Focus.
Rose was here one day and gone the next.
I blow out a breath and bite down with new determination. A texture of warmth hums to life beneath my skin. I clench my every muscle, holding it there tight like I read in Abby’s notes. The beetle writhes on his back, moving slower. I grow hotter, my proper magic revving up as what feels like bits of sand spread from my head to my toes. Each place they settle tingles with heat. A quiver of cold tugs at me, but the magic burning through me sends it back to the pitless depths from which it came. I hold on to the feeling, and magic sears through me like a furnace, raging and in control, hotter than I’ve ever felt it.
The beetle snaps flat. It’s working!
I tighten, pulling harder at the sensation of my magic all over me. Now, decompose.
But the heat shifts like a cool gust on a summer day. My insides quaking with fire, then shuddering cold. Back and forth, the oscillating temperature of my magic threatens to unsteady me. I strain, urging my toushana deep down. But it fights me back with a frigidness like I’ve never felt before. The world blinks white, and for a moment a cold like death seizes tightly in my chest. I think of Mom and her strong hugs when she would whisper in my ear: There’s good in you, Quell.
Something shifts, and I latch on to it.
I warm a little.
There is good in you, Quell.
Now hot.
So close.
Harder, I urge, pulling from my core, imagining those Dust granules piling one on top of another until I’m warmed to the brim. When suddenly everything bleeds cold.
The beetle erodes into a tiny hill of ash, my toushana decomposing its little body at warp speed. Then, it retreats as quickly as it appeared. I shove out of my seat, blinking in disbelief. I gaze around, but the cyclone of panic only swirls around me.
I couldn’t fight it off. I tried and it fought back. My throat is a desert and swallowing doesn’t help. My freak-out garners pinched glances and I tug at the ends of my hair to keep from clawing my skin. Remember where you are. I clear my throat and try to slow my breaths.
The mess on the table looks . . . correct.
Decomposed dust from a beetle.
I did that with my toushana.
“Quell.” Shelby grabs me by the arm. “Are you okay? You’re as pale as a ghost.”
I snatch my arm away. “I’m— Yes. I’m okay.”
She coaxes the dust into a jar. “This looks great. You sure you’re all right?”
I clear my throat, still chilled all over. “Yes, I’m good.”
“Okay, I’ll turn it in.”
“Thanks.”
“Catch you later in the dining hall if you’re around?”
“Sure thing.”
Shelby gathers our supplies and takes them to Dexler. She beams, inspecting it, but it doesn’t ease the nausea welling in my gut. I couldn’t stop my toushana. No matter what I tried.
I shoulder my bag and head out the door. I distance myself from the crowds lingering in the hall, and when I round on the Belles Wing where my room is, the coast is clear. I pull the book out of my bag that I borrowed from the library, thumbing through it for any mention of toushana. It’s a long shot, but I’m desperate.
“Oh, hey, there you are.” It’s Abby.
I slip the book away.
“Want to grab a bite? Sorry about this morning. I was wiped. I want to hear more about what happened the other night. You didn’t say much on the way home. I saw you follow Jordan out of the Tavern and—” She reaches to brush up against me playfully, but I move away. “Why are you being weird?”
“Sorry. I have a headache. I’m going to go back to the room to lie down. Can I have some alone time?”
“Sure. Jordan was looking for you though.”
“If you see him, can you make an excuse for me? He’s just really intense about this mentor stuff.”
“Ugh, not mine. I rarely hear from her.” She folds her arms. “Fine, but I need the entire rundown on what’s going on with you later.”
By then I should be able to make up something believable. “Deal.”
“Feel better.” She turns. “And drink water!”
I hurry to our room and shut myself inside.
I move to my bed, tucking myself under my covers, and bury my head in another book, trying to find something I can use. Something about toushana, something about controlling dark magic, or even emerging. But I turn and turn and turn, and it’s just more about how Draguns were created and why.
To kill people with toushana in order to “protect the integrity of magic.”
I drift off to sleep to the image of being ejected from session with a dagger at my throat.
Down the corridor,
Through the dark halls, something chases me.
Up the stairs to the balcony’s ledge,
Air whips beneath me.
I stare at the ground so far below, breathless.
My foot slips on the edge,
but I catch myself, nails digging into the unforgiving stone.
I gasp for breath, my ceiling solidifying in focus. Abby’s faint snores ease me into the present. A dream. It was just a dream. I try to sit up, but my head throbs. I reach for my temples, rubbing circles into my scalp.
My fingers touch something cold and hard.
I throw off the covers and dash to the mirror above my dresser. I flip on a lamp and see coils of metal snaking up from my scalp, tall and robust. My diadem sparkles, speckled with gems. But it’s not gold, or silver, rose gold, or even copper like other diadems.
It’s black like death.
Black like rot.
Black because of my toushana.
“Oh my god.” I’m strengthening the wrong magic.
