I wake and there is a gong inside my head. Bang. I steady myself against the dregs of kiziloxer before standing to shake off my deliriousness. Bang. Something flicks at my window. I hurry over, and there is Mom, two stories below in a dark coat, her hair pulled back.
“Mom!”
Abby stirs as I stumble into my shoes and out the door. How did she know where my—the key chain.
Downstairs, the night’s air bites at my heels as I rush to the courtyard below my window. I weave around the maze of tables and chairs to the gate where Mom was just standing. But there is no one there. My heart ticks faster.
“Mom?” The night is silent. Empty. Tears burn my eyes. “Mom!” A dog howls somewhere far away, followed by a chorus of snarls and barking. In the distance I see her, and my heart leaps. She’s a dot against the forest’s edge, sprinting away.
“Mom, wait!” I say, dashing her way.
“No, Quell,” she shouts in a strained voice. She waves her arms, gesturing for me to turn around and not follow her. I don’t understand. I shake my head, unlatching the iron gate to run after her, and a letter with my name tucked between its rods tumbles to the ground.
“Mom, please, come back!” But I can hardly see her anymore.
The air thickens with an eerie fog, the night darkening. Draguns. I slink back into the shadow of the Chateau and hurry back inside to avoid being caught outside after curfew. Once in my room, I rip open the letter to her familiar handwriting.
I’m so relieved to hear you’re doing okay.
Darling, someone is onto you outside of these gates.
Stay at Chateau Soleil until it is safe.
Stay. Whatever it takes.
Remember, there is good in you, Quell. <3
—Love, Mom
I climb into bed but toss and turn, Mom’s letter playing on repeat in my head. She didn’t even mention my plan to get rid of my toushana. I stew over her words again and grab a paper.
I wish I could have talked to you! And okay.
Don’t worry, Mom. After I complete Cotillion, it’ll be safe.
Then we can go wherever we want.
—Quell
I write her full name on the envelope and read the words a few more times, then drop the letter into my bag to mail tomorrow.
Sunlight peers through my window before my alarm goes off, and I hop out of bed with a renewed sense of determination. After an hour of posture and curtsy practice and reviewing the table manners Plume has gone over, I grab my dagger and slip out the door.
Second Rite starts today. It took Abby two years to pass this thing. As if mastering magic, and hiding my toushana, isn’t hard enough, a Dead Languages session has been added to my schedule. Somehow I have to familiarize myself with basic Latin before finishing. The halls are a traffic jam as I sift through the breakfast line before rushing down Sunrise corridor to session.
Dexler’s room is arranged differently today. Round tables are set around the room with a pile of colored stones in the centers. There are more seats than usual, but everyone present has a diadem or mask. I recognize a few from last night at the Tavern, but there are tables full of faces I’ve never seen. I spot a square of bubble gum on a table and I head in that direction looking for Shelby. Her bag is under the chair.
“Primus, what is your charge?” Dexler asks, surveying her box of rings before plucking a gray one.
“Honing one’s dagger. Arduous is the work of the laborer.”
Secundus performs their recitation, and then the door opens and Shelby rushes in.
“A bit late, aren’t we, Miss Duncan?”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Shelby slides into her seat, pale as a ghost.
Dexler rolls up her sleeves. “Daggers out.”
I set mine in front of me. It’s simple and plain compared to most of the others with fancy handles, some gilded, others with silver filigree, another sleek and nimble with a curved handle wrapped in leather. Each style seems to complement their diadem or mask. My insides shrivel. I hope I don’t need Octos again.
“I have a special guest to help us understand honing,” Dexler says.
The door opens again, and a handsome guy in a dark gray coat with piercing blue eyes and unkempt hair strides in, moving with a poise not unlike Jordan’s. Something about him is familiar. Beside me Shelby turns rigid.
“You okay?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer, her fist white-knuckled on her dagger.
A pair near the front giggle, eyeing our visitor, and I roll my eyes. He slips out of his jacket, and a silver coin marked with a cracked column shines at his throat. My nails dig into my desk at the familiar mark. My sleeping toushana tremors. But he looks past me without a flicker of recognition.
“Felix happened to be on the grounds today. Please introduce yourself.”
“I’m Felix. Class of ’23, Dragun, House of Perl.” His mouth tugs sideways in a self-assured grin.
My grip on the desk tightens.
House of Perl.
That’s Jordan’s House! I guessed it was some rogue group after me, not a leader in the Order. Someone in a position like Grandmom. Last night unfurls in my memory, and the hairs on my neck rise as I replay every exchange Jordan and I have had since I arrived here.
“I’m a complex Shifter.” Felix works his magic, pulls his hands apart wider until a woodsy pine scent fills the air. “I can sweeten the air you’re breathing or shift it to a toxic gas if I want.”
His mouth is moving as he roves around the room, but I’m too preoccupied with thoughts of Jordan. Is that why he keeps a close eye on me? For his House Headmistress? But if Jordan knew I had toushana, I’d already be dead. That I’m sure of. So either he and the Dragun after me don’t know each other, or he and his Headmistress aren’t close. Or she only has the one Dragun on my tail.
“My magic is more developed and easier to reach because of the enhancers I chose for honing. Whatever you fold into your blade affects your magic,” Felix goes on, rounding on my table, and I realize I’m behind on taking notes. He grabs a purple stone from Shelby’s and my pile.
“A Strength Enhancer is going to double the impact of your magic. I folded six of these into my dagger.”
“Six! Heavens,” Dexler says. “Headmistress Beaulah is quite militant, isn’t she?” She pulls at her blouse.
Beaulah. I know that name . . . Mom mentioned it when we parted ways.
“In manu exercitus tui merces legatorum.” He knocks his fists together, one on top of the other, then pounds them to his chest. “At the hand of an army legacies are formed.”
Dexler’s brows slash.
Felix plucks a few more stones, detailing which and how many he used with a lilt of arrogance that’s actually nauseating the more I listen. “A demonstration.” His eyes find my diadem. His lips part as he marvels, taking all of me in.
“That’s quite impressive,” he says. “Might I see your dagger, Miss . . . ?”
Once more, I search his face for some seed of recognition. Some slight tell that he knows my secret, but nothing even close simmers beneath his expression. Headmistress Beaulah hasn’t told him. He’s here for some other reason. Could she really only have the one Dragun after me? No one else seems to recognize me as if I’m on some shared hit list. But if that’s true, why would a headmistress keep that a secret? Why not run to the Dragunhead and turn my name in so everyone knows? The truth occurs to me so suddenly I have to steady myself on my chair. Because she isn’t absolutely sure I have toushana. A wrong accusation of that magnitude would not go over well.
I hand Felix my dagger.
Shelby fidgets under the table.
“Shelby?”
But she ignores me, picking at a scab over and over.
“Today’s your lucky day.” He takes the purple stone and sets it on the flat of my blade and glides his hand over it in one smooth motion. The purple stone melts like butter into the metal. He hands it back to me. “The stones can be stubborn. Some are just harder to fold in. But that’s the gist of it. Choose your enhancers carefully, a dagger can only hold so many.”
“Ah, Mister Felix forgets that in our House, the enhancers you’re given are a set list,” Dexler says.
“Right, forgot.” His eyebrows bounce. After a bit more fawning from Dexler, Felix takes a bow and winks at Shelby. “Maybe I’ll see you tonight.” He leaves, and Shelby exhales.
I almost ask her if she’s okay, but it’s obvious she isn’t and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Dexler parts a thick leather tome. “On page six hundred thirty-three is a list of what each enhancer does. You must memorize them all. And by tomorrow, the first three must be folded into your blade successfully. Understood?”
Heads nod.
“I laid out a few others for your observation only.”
I take out the speckled enhancer from Casey at the Tavern, trying to remember what he said it did.
“Any more Strength Enhancers?” someone asks.
“I’d like to see a Lumen one, you have any of those?” another says.
I gather the three stones first on the list plus the one from Casey and set my dagger on its side.
“I’m out, okay? Good luck with honing.” Shelby shoulders her bag before I can respond, and she’s gone. I should check on her later.
Light catches on my dagger as I turn it in my hands, its steel rippling purple. I study the stones. One’s a jagged red rock that gleams silver in its crevices. An Endurance Enhancer, which helps magic last longer, according to the book. Another is a deep blue like a glassy ocean. A Purifier Enhancer, which wards off magical impurity. And the third is spiky and green and apparently unique to House of Marionne, mined from the caves of Aronya in a precise location only our House knows.
“Binding Enhancer,” I read, under my breath. “It aids in binding magic to the blood with far greater longevity and precision. What on earth does that mean?”
“It means Marionne puts out the best stock!” Dexler winks. “A cut above the rest.”
“A cut above the rest,” I repeat. The House motto. “Right,” I say, still confused about what that has to do with this green stone. Dexler moves on and I pick up the enhancer unique to our House, turning it in my hands, picturing how to set it on my dagger. Then the red one. It’s radiant and deep with various hues, depending on tricks of the light. I hold my dagger next to the green and the red one, trying to decide which to do first. But the blue stone, the Purifier, grabs my attention. It’s by far the prettiest.
Felix made it look so simple. I set the others down and hold the blue in one palm and reach for my dagger.
My hand stiffens as my fingers graze its handle. My heart patters faster. I try to stretch my fingers, to close them around the dagger, but they’re rigid. Cold. The blue stone burns my hand and I drop it, pushing up from the table. The cold in my bones retreats.
“Miss Marionne?” It’s Dexler, and at the sound of her voice every head in the place turns in my direction. “Everything all right?”
“I . . .” I flex my fingers, and to my surprise they move, as if nothing ever happened. I glare at the blue enhancer on the ground. Then my dagger. I grab it first, then bend down to pick up the stone, but my toushana shudders through me, threatening to rise up again. It won’t let me touch them at the same time. I skim the page for a description of the blue stone again.
Wards off magical impurities.
“Miss Marionne!”
I realize that in my haste to get up I knocked my chair over.
“Yes. Sorry, I’m fine.” I swallow. “Did you say we could work on this in lab?”
She nods, and I gather my things and toss them into my bag but wait until my magic has settled all the way down before grabbing the Purifier and hurrying out the door.
I dash down the hall toward my room and bump into a tall carved frame.
“Quell?” Jordan’s gaze twists in surprise. “Session’s out already?”
“No, it’s not . . . I—I mean yes. Sorry, yes, session is out.”
Jordan’s brows cinch and I notice he’s not alone. Felix is with him.
“You know this one?” Felix asks, and I swear I see Jordan’s jaw clench. “She wouldn’t tell me her name. Feisty.” Jordan eyes Felix and something shifts between them.
“Anyway, I better be going,” he says. “Good chat, Wexton. Next time answer the damn phone so I don’t have to come all the way to this sweaty armpit. See you in the field in no time.” They do some sort of handshake. “I’ll tell Mother you said hello.”
“Mother?” I ask as he walks off.
“Headmistress Perl, he means.”
I put more distance between us. “Are you and she close?”
His eyes narrow. “Why?”
“As a Ward, I’m sure she likes a good check-in. Is that why Felix was here?”
“He was here . . . on Dragunhead business, if you must know.”
I can’t tell if he’s lying or giving me half-truths. But if Beaulah is anything like my grandmother, she wouldn’t just let her nephew be here without keeping tabs. His stare deepens, his head cocked, but he says nothing for several moments before checking his watch. “How is honing?”
“I was going to skip lunch and work on my dagger in lab . . .” On my own. When no one’s around. I start in the opposite direction.
“I’ll come with.”
“No! Sorry, I have a handle on it so far.” In a perfect world I’d be able to ask him for help. But he can’t be near me with my toushana reacting to the enhancers. Also I’m not sure how much I can trust him.
He tidies his coat and shifts as if his ego is wounded. “The next offered honing exam is in five days. I’ve signed you up.”
“Five? You’ve set me up to fail!”
“Hardly. I’ve set you up to shine.”
None of my peers have to deal with this. “What do you get out of this?” It has to be more than a reputation as a good mentor.
“Who said I get anything out of it?”
“Something I’ve picked up on from being so observant is that you’re very calculated. You requested me specifically, you shadow me almost everywhere I go, now you’re pressuring me to finish well and fast. The only reason that makes sense is if my performance is somehow tied to your own.”
His brow bows up in surprise, but his chin rises in its familiar arrogance. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t need a reason to push to be exemplary. You should want to be. You’re a Marionne, it’s expected.”
“I appreciate the help, but I’ve got this.”
The severe angles of his face sharpen. He steps closer.
“If you take my insistence for altruistic encouragement, you gravely mistake me, Miss Marionne.” His stare darkens. “There is much on the line here, for both of us.”
I was right. He doesn’t see me; he sees my performance. The idea of me. He pulls my chin up to his, and a stranger stares back at me. He is not just the boy who walked with me through the park. Cold and heartless, he can turn off his humanity like a light switch. He is a trained killer. Trained to hunt people like me.
“Five. Days.”
I shove his hand away and storm off.
