The next evening when I return to my room, a mountain of boxes, bins, and books awaits. Everything from the geography of speleology, the study of caves, to the Victorian era’s influence over Western style and fashion, several history books, and a new list of Latin vocabulary. Abby is at her desk asleep in the chair under a pile of invitations. She startles when the door closes.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” I pull a thin book by Emily Post with a familiar name from the top of the stack on my bed. Then another. Putting the Charm in Charming, A Member’s Guide for Proper Living, The Language of Style. The list goes on.
“It’s fine. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” Abby smooths a drip of drool from her mouth but misses the rhinestone stickers stuck to her face. “I need to get these invitations out.” She joins me at my bedside. “What happened to you after the Tavern?”
“Do you have to do those tonight?” I ask, removing the first bin from my bed and starting a stack by my closet. A little black journal with a fleur-de-lis on the front slips from the stack.
“My mentor said the calligrapher is running behind. And these have to get out, like, now. The Art of Manners chapter seventeen: Send an invitation too late and the guest may already be booked. Twelve days is not early. Ugh!”
I peel the rhinestone tape off her face. “I can help you.”
“Are you sure? Have you seen your stack of things?”
She’s not wrong. I pick through the bins and pull out a bound manual thicker than a dictionary. A quick thumb through is telling. “A checklist?”
“Yep.”
“It’s like four hundred pages!”
“This is Third Rite, Quell.” Abby smiles awkwardly. “The kid gloves are off.” She plops onto her bed, falling back on her pillow.
“Abby, you need a break.”
She hugs her pillow, faux sobbing. “There’s no time!”
“All right, that’s it.” I roll up my sleeves. “I need to learn to do this stuff, too. We’re doing it together.”
I grab an invite from her stack and toss her sparkly, studded tape. “First off, we’re ditching this. Less is more.” I wrap a thin ribbon around it. “There, that’s enough.” I stuff it in an envelope and grab another.
“What happened to you last night after the Tavern?” Abby asks again, joining me to fold. “Mynick told me Jordan ditched early, but then you weren’t home for a while.” She hands me my invite, trying to situate the ribbon on it.
“Speaking of Mynick,” I say, ignoring her question, “I’m so bummed you can’t take him.”
“Yeah, that sucks. I even asked Cuthers if Headmistress would make an exception, and it was a flat no. But Jordan? Last night?”
I hand her a roll of ribbon. “This one is kind of cute.”
“Quell! You’re not getting out of answering my question.” She takes the ribbon and tosses it back at me.
“I just needed some time to myself.”
She sits on the bed. “Because you like him, and he likes you, and y’all are pretending like you don’t.”
That’s part of it. “I, ugh . . . I don’t know.”
“And I suppose you went with Jordan to the Tavern together just because.”
“He’s my mentor. We were celebrating passing my exam.”
She makes a face, and I remember the way his eyes light up every time we talk about books. The way he looked at me without surprise when I completed Second Rite.
“Don’t look at me like that.” I wish I could tell Abby everything. “Sometimes he just frustrates me.”
“Is that what you call it? How you get all fidgety and smiley when he’s around. The way you can’t stop looking at him when he’s in the room.”
“Abby, shut up! I do not.” I gnaw my lip. Wait, do I? hangs on my lips, unsure how much to share. “He is the last person in the world I should be thinking about that way.” If only it were that simple.
“Why?”
“Because he’s rigid. He has zero ability to loosen up. He does everything perfectly. He even has perfect lips. His cheeks slope flawlessly to them. Have you looked at him?”
“No, I don’t look at Jordan’s lips. But the admission that you do says a lot.”
I roll my eyes. “He is wrong for me in every way.” In more ways than I can say. “And yet . . . he is all I find myself thinking about. I—”
“Hate him, clearly.”
I collapse on her bed beside her. “I’m hopeless.”
“Quell, he’s a Dragun. Every girl wants to—”
“Abilene Grace Feldsher, I swear if you finish that sentence.” I hold up her invitation and a pair of scissors.
“You wouldn’t!”
“I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.”
She snatches the scissors. “Fine, I’ll drop it, but that’s how I know you really like him. My advice? It’s your life, and you should live it like you want. If you want Jordan, go get him.”
“My feelings for Jordan don’t matter. Not that I have feelings for him! I like him a little bit, yes, but that doesn’t mean— Let’s just get these done.”
She winks at me, and I pretend to dry gag to show her I mean it. We work, tying ribbons onto her invites, and I tie the first few too tight, distracted entirely by how I wish I knew what Abby really thought. But that would require me to tell her the full truth. That Jordan would kill me if he knew what I was hiding. The thought tugs at my insecurity and I feel the toushana in my body shift.
By the time I finish, Abby is collapsed on her bed in a pile of plum velvet, snoring again. My hands are stiff from all the tying, and I barely have any energy to clear off my bed so I can sleep. I tug Abby’s covers over her and switch off her lamp. The quivering chill beneath my skin reminds me it’s still there. Reminding me I will need to return to the forest. And soon. Just the thought of using my toushana on purpose makes my insides swim. Memories of Jordan in the forest feeding his toushana loom over me as I drag myself to my covers and pull open my checklist, flipping to the first page.
My plan to use my toushana in order to control it better work.
Dexler’s session begins with a bang, and I press my hands, still throbbing in frigid warning, between my knees. With as much as they hurt, I was tempted to stay in my room all day until it’s dark enough to visit the forest. But I desperately needed to talk to Dexler and Plume about the heir event at the end of the week.
Invitations went out as soon as Grandmom and I figured out a catchy name and description: Summer Blooms Tea, an afternoon of roses and refreshment. And the heirs have each already RSVP’d. Hiding the truth from Grandmom is one thing. She sees what she wants to see. But these heirs are the crème de la crème of the Order, the future Darragh Marionnes and Beaulah Perls. I ball my hands into fists.
I have days to prepare to put on the best performance of my life.
Dexler’s is sparsely filled, with people working at their tables independently.
“All magic, as we know from our studies of Sola Sfenti, comes from . . .” she prods.
“Sun Dust.”
“Anciently it was ingested, injected, grafted, and even sewn into the skin. But now—” She gestures for me to finish.
“Magic is in the blood.”
Shelby glances my way. I smile, but she goes back to her book.
“Precisely. And discovered when—”
“During the Forty Days of Darkness.”
“As a Cultivator, you can sense Sun Dust in people or things and draw it out. But first you’ll need to reach your inner kor.”
I shake my head, and Dexler presses her glasses firmer to her nose before sitting beside me. “Picture the Dust moving through you.”
I close my eyes and imagine my magic burning in me properly. The achiness lurking under my skin shudders. Please, not now.
“Draw it to your center. Really feel it. Yours should be strong enough now.” She taps my diaphragm where my warm magic hums, and I try to forget about my toushana poking me in warning. Dexler quiets a few noisy students when the dull ache in my bones twinges. I eye the clock. I ignore it, tightening from my center, and warmth pools through me, grain by grain, before it zips through my chest in a sharp, searing gust.
My fingertips glow, magic throbbing beneath my skin.
“There you go. You don’t need the sun or a candle or any of those things once you can reach your inner kor. You only need to know how to find it. Now pull it out of you.”
My brows dent in confusion but instincts tell me to pinch my finger. My skin feels as if it’s being peeled away from the muscle piece by excruciating piece, and a red flame ignites on my fingertip. I jump but realize it doesn’t hurt. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s not fire. It’s your kor. You’ve pulled your own magical energy from inside and deposited it onto your finger.” She turns my wrist, admiring the flicker when the flame on my hand grows. I grip the desk, but the world blurs. I tip sideways, and the chilly panic in my veins throbs harder, the dusted warmth I felt earlier diminishing. What’s happening? I try to say, but my tongue is thick. The flame on my finger has doubled in size.
“Quell! The elixir, now,” she barks, and someone holds a cold vial to my lips. It goes down, and the world sharpens.
“What happened?”
Dexler clutches her chest. “Are you all right, dear?”
“I think so.”
“It’s my fault. You can’t let your kor burn outside of your body too long or it will drain you.”
“Of magic?”
“Of life.”
I blow out a breath and clench my near freezing hands. Thankfully, Dexler lets me spend the rest of class with my head down, and I use it to slow my breathing and the thump hammering my chest, hoping to settle the chilliness trying to take root in my bones.
As the room empties, Plume appears at the door.
“Are we still meeting?” he asks, and Dexler looks to me. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”
“Yes.”
Once the class has all filtered out, I explain the Summer Bloom Tea idea. How perfect everything must be. They nod affectionately without interrupting, and by the time I’m done I realize I’m gripping the arms of my chair.
“Relax,” Plume says.
“We work for Headmistress.” Dexler smiles. “We understand.”
“Great,” I manage, mildly relieved they think impressing Grandmom is why I need to do well.
“I can come up with some fun games,” Dexler says. “And Plume can probably help make it all look just right.”
I inhale, exhale, and recline in my seat.
“Oh, most definitely,” he says. “I’m thinking crustless sandwiches and light confections on the lawn, perhaps.”
They go on about lace tablecloths, place setting styles, and centerpieces, and all I can picture is me sitting there trying to explain myself, where I’ve been all these years. Why I’m just now meeting them. Whatever I come up with will need to be airtight. I also have to look and speak the part. But most of all, my toushana must stay quiet.
As if it’s been summoned, my heart stutters in panic, blood pools in my ears, and a cold unfurls in my bones. I stand, my heart racing, and stumble into a chair, the cold bite growing stronger.
“This poor child,” Plume says, glancing at Dexler.
“She’s stressed herself so sick, she’s gone pale. I think we’re going to have to . . .” She looks at Plume.
“Yes, I think so, too,” he responds. “We’ll put the Tea together and make sure your grandmom thinks all the handiwork is your idea.” He grins and she winks. “Just give us a copy of the invitation and it’ll be done to the nines.”
“Oh my goodness, thank you so much!” I say my goodbyes and hurry out the door. Outside, bile burns its way up my throat. That was close. I hate having to do this again and so soon. But I don’t see another way. My toushana needs to be fed.
I have to get to the forest.
On my first trip back to the Secret Wood of the forest to satisfy my toushana, the bark feels brittle and unfamiliar as it deadens against my skin. I find a patch of thin branches, let my toushana rip through me, and hurry back inside. But I toss and turn all night wondering, if I could destroy more at a time, would the effect last longer?
On my third trip to the Secret Wood, I search for bigger trunks with deep roots and burn them all until I am breathless. Until they lie black and withered like a pile of singed leaves. It takes so long, my fingers are numb, chafed, and stinging. But I leave feeling . . . untethered in a way I’ve never been. And after it, my toushana lies quiet for three whole days.
But today, on my seventh trip into the forest, I could hardly get through the door because of my toushana burning with an itch, begging to be scratched. I run, tearing through the trees, trying to put as much distance between me and the estate as I can. Trying to bury my secrets far, far away. But the urge to press my skin to something, anything, and feel the soft, dead granules sift between my fingers sticks in my throat like a thirst. I have to drink. So I touch the first thing I see, and the next, and the next, leaving a trail of destruction like dead footprints.
Wind whistles, rustling the clawed branches, as I finally make it to the Secret Wood. As far as I can see are blackened branches, dead trees, some in heaps of ash, others withering as if they’ve been razed. It’s desolate and charred as if it barely survived being set on fire.
I glare at my hands, my knees pressed hard in the dirt. My toushana hums in me with a cadence of delight, a bloated contentment. It is satisfied.
I pull myself up as my labored breath bleeds through the fog of silence. I force my lips shut despite my raging heart. I’m always most nervous when I finish. What if my senses dull and I miss a crunch of leaves, or hushed breathing?
Ash sticks to my hands. I dust them off and start shifting the blackened trail, transfiguring it into piles of trodden leaves. Covering my tracks. Burying my secrets. Secrets that won’t matter in three weeks.
Grandmom’s domineering glare hovers in my memory as I work faster to cover the area. She’s been on my back so much about this event with the heirs tomorrow that between trips to the forest, the majority of my time has been spent being lectured by her. I’m running out of excuses for where to tell her I’ve been.
Magic streams from my fingers, controlled and immediate, my proper magic answering on command. My toushana hasn’t crept up in surprise all week. As sickening as it is, this is working.
The forest begins to resemble its former state and I make my way back to the door buried in the bushes. My knees are damp with earth. I try to clean them and smooth my hair, sure it’s a mess. It feels as if I’ve been out here for hours. My nose is chilled by the time I pull open the hidden door. Inside the passageway I pause to listen for footsteps before hurrying to my room.
I round the corner of my Wing and look for a familiar face lurking in the corridor, but the hall is sparsely dotted with a few Primus. Jordan hasn’t returned from his trip to help with the search for the Perl girls. Nor has there been so much as a whisper about them. I twist my doorknob and find Abby fast asleep inside. In what world do people go missing and life just goes on . . .
A chill skitters up my arm. That could have been me. I scrub down in a quick shower and tuck into bed with a social etiquette book from my stack. Tomorrow needs to go right. I roll in my covers, reading and rereading Emily’s chapter on conversation.
I have to be perfect.
