Heads turn at commotion near the ballroom doors, but the crowd is so thick, and the entrance is so far across the room, I can’t make out what the trouble is about.
“Stay here,” Jordan says, eyeing the crowd in that direction.
“No.” I lasso his wrist, scanning, fearing the worst.
“If there is a raid happening, these things can get ugly.”
I tug at him, then halt when I spot a familiar head of brown hair on a set of broad shoulders. His deep-set brow is unmistakable.
The Dragun who cornered me at the gas station.
The Dragun after me.
I stagger backward and bump into a table. A few gasp. My pulse races as I watch the Dragun getting what appears to be a stern talking-to by two House of Perl men and a girl with red hair. The discussion escalates to an argument, and I am careful to keep my head down. I yank Jordan, pulling him in the opposite direction.
“Is there somewhere else we can go?”
“I know just the spot.” He takes me by the hand and leads me through the room to a back door where waitstaff go and come. The service entrance of the ballroom empties into a long hall. We traipse through the bowels of the hotel and finally arrive at a service elevator. “I hope you don’t mind taking the elevator. Cloaking here is a risk.”
“Jordan, when I’m not with you, I take the elevator and stairs everywhere.”
That gets a laugh. We exit the elevator onto a rooftop veranda where there is lounge furniture, a glittering overlook of the city, and a grand piano. A helicopter takes off in the distance. The commotion in the hotel appears to have moved to the sidewalk below. But my hold on the lip of the balcony slacks as the men disappear into a car. Jordan watches intently beside me, until it speeds off.
He tugs at his coat. “Well, whatever was going on, it’s done now.”
I exhale, feeling a bit more relaxed. I join Jordan on the piano bench. Tonight could have gone completely differently. And yet I am here, in a dress, dancing, having drinks.
“I’m glad I came tonight.”
“The Tidwell is . . .”
“It’s not the ball or any of that. It’s being out here in the . . . open.” Able to move in a world where I used to have to be a shadow. “You don’t know how much that means.”
“I’d like to.”
I pull at my earring and press a few piano keys. We laugh at how terrible it sounds. It unspools the tightness in my posture. I slide closer to him on the bench.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” he says. “So much I’ve wanted to say to you for so long.” He sighs. “I can’t figure out what tomorrow looks like and that doesn’t work for someone like me. You understand? Everything I do has to be careful, calculated. And with you it’s like . . .” He leans toward me, insistent, and I warm all over at the adoration in his eyes.
“Like what?” I play with the ends of my hair to do something with the angst buzzing through me.
“When I’m with you . . .”
I squeeze his hand. “Go on.”
“It’s like . . . there is no tomorrow or yesterday. Everything about you pins me in the present.” He smiles hesitantly. “You’re powerful but it doesn’t possess you. You fit in this world as if it was made for you. But somehow on your own terms.” His gaze moves to the city beyond us. “I . . . envy it.” He stares as if I’m a puzzle he needs a few more pieces to suss out.
Heat rushes to my face.
“You will run a quarter of the Order someday. It makes me hopeful that it could be . . .” A gust of wind steals whatever he was going to say. He shakes his head.
“Continue. Please.”
“Our world is made of glass, Quell.” Something hides in the cracks of his words, as if it could shatter the very glass he speaks of.
Our fingers find each other, crossing themselves.
“I have kept you at a distance, on purpose. I’m sorry for that. Ask me anything, I’m an open book.”
He fidgets, his hand slick in mine, with a nervousness that suggests he’s never trusted someone like this before. I could exploit this moment, dig into him to find out all the things I’ve been dying to know about toushana. No. He will know that his worth to me isn’t in any information he gives me or what he’s able to do for me. But in who he is. And no more.
“Just talk.”
“About anything?”
“Anything.”
His brow slashes in thought. “You were right the other day about my father.” He stares down at the piano. “I guess I just thought by now it wouldn’t matter so much.”
I trace the edges of his hair, and I can feel him relax against my fingers. If home could be a moment, a feeling, I’m pretty sure this is it.
“I moved a lot when I was little.” I let out a huge breath. “My mom was always afraid . . . someone would find out about my magic.” My heart ticks faster as I skirt so close to the truth.
“Well, I’m glad you’ve found your way back to us.”
I set my head on his shoulder. “Play me something.”
His fingers dance along the piano, and the strain permanently etched in his expression melts away. The melody races my pulse, low and fast at first, then high and soothing. I sway to the rhythm. The song rises to a pinnacle of notes clustered together like a starry sky before it ends with a crisp, sharp finish.
“Where did you learn to play like that?”
“I was eight, in piano lessons when Audior magic came to me for the first time. I’d—” His expression darkens for the second time tonight as he thinks of home. “Seen something earlier that day and was trying to get it out of my head. Playing so fierce and fast, my fingers stopped, but the music went on, my magic transfiguring the sounds in the air. My parents had me tested right away.”
“Tested?”
“Yes.” His shoulder tenses beneath my touch. “I was able to reach two forms of magic so young that I was moved in with Headmistress Perl that same day.” He’s never truly known a home either. He meets my eyes, his narrowed in concern. “I didn’t learn about my third strand of magic until I’d left home.”
“Toushana.”
“No, Quell. That’s something we touch when we have to, not something we nurture to grow.”
“Oh, you didn’t exactly explain it to me.” I laugh to keep the mood light, but as he turns to me, I grip the wood of my seat.
“I don’t talk about these things because I don’t want you to fear me.”
A flutter of chill raises hairs on my skin. “It doesn’t scare me.”
His thumb grazes my jaw. “It should.”
I swallow. I cross and uncross my legs, commanding the cold angst coiling in me back down. Nothing is ruining this moment.
“There’s a reason Draguns only really socialize among themselves. It’s easy to lose yourself in all of it. The power. The proximity to forbidden magic. Toushana is different because it feeds off of a person to grow stronger. Poisoning their ability to reach their real magic. Part of the reason the Order is so adamant about hunting people with toushana is that the bounds of its power are unknown. It’s not clear when it stops growing. But once it takes a person over completely, the person is no longer in control, the toushana is. Many of Dysiis’s findings were actually burned.”
I twist the end of my skirt, teetering on the edge of my seat. “Why?”
“Darkbearers.”
The diadems in the glass cases on display all over Chateau Soleil. “Toushana worshippers. Early Draguns—Sunbringers, I believe they were called back then—hunted them.” I hug around myself.
He nods. “Centuries ago, some magic students found Dysiis’s teachings and distorted them completely, saying toushana wasn’t to be feared, it was to be used. A weapon the Marked were blessed with by Sola Sfenti to use as they pleased.”
Is that what they worry I’ll do? Is that why they’d kill me?
“That’s of course not at all the point of Dysiis’s teachings. But that’s when Sunbringers were born. That’s why.”
I’ve stopped breathing.
“So yes, I can summon toushana outside of myself and use it. But it takes much intentional focus and lots of training to keep it from seeping into my bones and binding with me. To not bend to its will but keep it bent to mine. But judging by the Sphere’s crack, there are many more using toushana out there.”
Nore’s face flits through my memory.
“Killing those with toushana is also what keeps the Sphere in balance. We think.”
My breath snags on the word kill. I want to plug my ears or tell him to keep playing.
“My peers have been busy lately trying to find more with toushana.” He twists his mouth.
“Yes?”
“Brooke and Alison, the girls from my House, were killed by someone on suspicion of having it. And they didn’t, Quell. There have been so many like them over the years.”
“So many . . . ?”
“Hundreds of members, maybe more, who’ve been killed over decades with no explanation. The assumption is that it’s members who fashion themselves Sunbringers come again taking matters into their own hands against those they suspect of having toushana. Instead of letting us do our work, which has a due process of how to handle it.”
Is that what Beaulah thinks she’s doing, helping . . .
“But I’m not sure if I buy that. Brooke and Alison were innocent. There was no whiff of forbidden magic.” He screws his lips, ruminating on his words like two pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together. He laughs, and my heart stumbles over the suddenness.
“What?”
“Do you know what my brothers would do to me if they knew I was telling you all this?” He rakes a hand through his hair. “I swear I don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I’d share all I am with you if I could, Quell.” He exhales, and it’s like the weight of the world rides the wave of his breath. “You know, I finish at the end of summer. And the position I’m taking means I’ll have more freedom than most. From what I’ve heard, the Sphere will be my main focus. It has to be located so we can figure out how it’s been cracked.” He bites into his knuckle and something in his eyes takes him far away.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about any of that anymore.” I fold my hand into his.
“Part of me wishes I was already out there, you know?”
“But then, how could you be here?”
“Exactly.” His eyes drift off, and he’s gone again.
“I want cake.” I stand, willing him to come back to me, desperate to hold us in this moment.
“I’m fairly sure the kitchens are closed, but—”
“Come on.” I pull him up and take the stairs.
“Quell, we shouldn’t make a scene, really . . .” He has to hustle to keep up with me as I fly down the stairs. He reaches for me, but I twist through the stairwell door and spill into the lobby.
“Mister Wexton,” says someone behind the reception desk. “Is there something you need?”
“No—”
“Could you tell me where the kitchens are?” I blurt out.
“What are you doing?” Jordan whispers, but the concierge points and I pull Jordan in that direction, down an aisle of rooms, through another small lobby, and into a dining room with a few late patrons. The kitchen is through an open doorway behind the bar, and I hurry that way, cutting a corner too close, bumping into something.
“Oh!” A waiter dashes out of my way, tray wobbling on his hand.
“Sorry,” I yell as I stumble into an empty kitchen. “Now, cake.” I pull open fridge door after fridge door until I spot a brown round layer cake coated in creamy chocolate.
“Are you going to—”
I fold my fingers around the messy chocolate, sticky between my fingers, and bite into it. “Mmmm, oh my goodness. It’s heaven.”
Jordan’s eyes double in size.
I hold a piece at his lips.
“Qu—”
I tip the cake into his talking mouth and frosting smears on his lips. I snort, laughing as he chews.
“That’s really . . . good actually.” He tries to clean his mouth but only smears the frosting more. “I feel like I have something on my face.”
My ribs ache with laughter as he paws at his face.
“Do I have—? Is there something?”
I shove another piece into his mouth. Laughter bursts from his lips and the wall holds me up from giggling so hard. I take another bite before licking some of the icing off his finger and pressing my lips to his. His mouth melts into mine and our bodies press close. He softens in my arms.
“My father’s going to be furious when he hears about this.”
“Good.”
By the time Jordan and I return to Chateau Soleil, it’s an entire hour past curfew. Thankfully we were able to make it inside without running into Grandmom. He drops me off at my door with a long, slow kiss good night. Inside, I reach to pull back my covers, where I spot a familiar envelope on my bed. The envelope I sent Nore.
