“Headmistress, Quell.” He bows and I can’t move. He wears a tux with a coat more ornately trimmed with red embroidery along the rim of the sleeves, nicer than the one he wore to the Tidwell. Gold pins line his lapel, a white bow tie cinches at his neck, and his House riband is slung across his chest. Heat licks the back of my neck and my insides twist, burning through my anger. I hate him.
I’m surprised he went along with all this. I’m surprised he’ll have anything to do with me at all. His tall frame eclipses the doorway, and I feel small again. Weak. Reminded of how I took refuge in that shadow of his. How I craved it.
“You’re breathtaking.”
I want to tell him to shut up, but that crack in my composure can’t show. I have to be resolute and focused. I refuse to feel anything for him after what he’s done. He takes my wrist and affixes the flowers he brought to it. I want to cringe at his touch.
“Now, I believe it’s your turn.” He grabs my boutonniere from the table and hands it to me. Forever two steps ahead of me. He looks at me, and I’d forgotten what this felt like. To stare into the sun on the horizon and not blink. I bite my lip and pin the flower on his chest, making short work of it. I’m pretty sure it’s crooked, but I don’t care.
“Are we ready for pictures?” I ask. Let’s get on with this mess.
Grandmom smiles, doting on my hair, my dress. She reaches to adjust Jordan’s boutonniere, but he jerks away ever so slightly. He isn’t as on board with Grandmom’s plan as I thought. Even if I could talk some sense into him, opening the floodgates with Jordan is too risky. I can’t dig through the quicksand of emotions I’ve buried, or I risk drowning with him. The best thing I can do is keep him in the dark like Grandmom and get this Rite over with.
“Shall we?” Jordan offers his arm, and I loop mine through his to keep her from asking questions. We move through the estate in silence and descend the stairs. The photographer is set up in the foyer and low music plays somewhere. We pose and smile, and every time Jordan looks at me, I make it a point to avoid looking his way. It takes an hour or more, but once we finish, my chest is tight. My toushana burns colder, urging me with encouragement. I blow out a breath. I can do this.
Grandmom waves goodbye at us and disappears into the ballroom, which is swarming with guests hurrying to their seats. A line of ball gowns and masks in tuxedos snakes up to the door.
“Congrats,” one of them says. His date curtsies to me, and because Jordan is on my arm and I don’t want him to suspect my true plan, I go through the motions.
“You both look lovely,” I say to them. “Good luck with First Dance.”
She blushes, and the couple in front of her turn, realizing the Headmistress’s heir is in line with them. They offer Jordan and me congratulations.
“And to you,” Jordan answers, before I get a chance to.
“I can respond for myself, thanks.”
“You’re wound in a knot. I can feel it,” he says. The tracer. Oh, how that complicates things. Confidence is my shield. This only works if I keep him in the dark.
“I couldn’t reach you the last few days.”
I fiddle with the beading on my gown.
“I hoped I was wrong. Or there was an explanation. Or . . .” He moves closer, not with his body, but with the warmth of concern in his words. Too close. He shakes his head and the lines of frustration deepen. I shift on my feet as the first couple’s names are announced and our short line moves forward. They go right into First Dance and my stomach twists with dread. I’m not looking forward to this. Silence hangs between us, and it pulls at me with an urge to fill it. I meet his eyes and glimpse the boy I knew. The boy I love. Loved. I can’t entertain his sympathy, be seduced by his hopes. A fissure has opened between us, wider than a lifetime. But it’s better this way.
After the next two couples’ names are called, there is one more before us. I consciously tell my shoulders to relax. This is almost over.
Jordan tires of waiting for a response. “But it appears I was right,” he says. “I should have known something was off when Headmistress Perl asked me about you.”
I try to bite my tongue but can’t.
“What would Headmistress Perl say if she knew your loyalties have shifted to Darragh Marionne?”
“Introducing!” The announcer motions for us to step forward. “Quell Janae Marionne, sixth of her blood, Cultivator candidate, and heiress to House of Marionne.” The ballroom stands, welcoming us with applause. “Escorted by Jordan Richard Wexton, thirteenth of his blood, Dragun candidate, Ward of House of Marionne, House of Perl, and as of yesterday, understudy to the Dragunhead himself.” I look at him, speechless.
The Grand Ballroom is layered in fine fabrics, beautifully folded napkins, satin-wrapped chairs, and luscious flower arrangements in every direction with glittering tiered lights overhead. There’s more of everything than at Abby’s ceremony: chairs, cakes, tables, people. Servers work their way through the crowd, passing out champagne. Wine bottles with the House name monogrammed on them sit at every place setting. A live band plays adjacent a stage, which is wreathed in dahlia blooms and fresh roses from Grandmom’s garden.
I spot my dagger onstage beside four others. I blow out a big breath as the music beckons us, and our feet answer its call effortlessly. Jordan pulls me to him, our hands fit together. He dances and my body echoes his movements, gives in to the requests of his hands as he spins me out, back to him, hugs around me, then replaces his hand at my hip. The melody shifts to the slower part and I press hard against him, our chests, our hearts, beating to the same rhythm. His cheek caresses mine.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Quell,” he whispers. I long for the slow cadence of the music to pick up so I can put some distance between us. “I understand what finishing Third Rite must mean to you.” His words twist in my stomach. “And yes, this plan of Headmistress’s is wrong. But I get why you’re doing it.”
I meet his eyes.
“This is a home, safety. Tell me I’m wrong.”
The melody shifts into a faster rhythm and our bodies break apart, to my great relief. I take the lead, pushing my hips, moving with the next motion before he gets a chance to. Confusion staccatos his steps, and it takes him a minute to adjust to my flow. He falls in line with me and we’re in sync again, but we move to my dance. My song. His brows dent in confusion as I spin him out. The crowd’s faces crease in curiosity as well. I pull him back.
“Quell, what are you up to?”
“Shut up and just dance with me.”
His lips part in realization and he misses the next step, our hand-holding breaks, and he spins out far away from me. The ballroom stills. His eyes narrow, and my breath quickens. He knows. I smile, curtsying as the music comes to an awkward finish. Jordan bows where he is. And we exit the dance floor.
Backstage, he sticks to my heels.
“Quell.”
I walk faster toward the powder room before I have to go out there again for binding.
“Quell!” He re-forms in front of me. “You think you’re the only one who can see through people? What are you planning?” A raging war brews in his eyes. He doesn’t want to believe that I would do something so terrible—bind with my toushana. And if I am, he doesn’t know what to do. “Say I am wrong. Say . . . you’re going to do what Headmistress expects and put this behind you.”
I say nothing, but my heart rams in my chest, telling on me.
He sucks in a breath and stumbles back, and the boy behind the mask finally stares at me. I turn to get back to the ceremony before my name is called to do my binding.
“Quell, please.” Desperation crackles his words, and for some foolish reason, I stop and turn to look at him. “If you do this, it would fall to me. I’d have to—find you and . . .” A single tear streams down his cheek. I close the distance between us and smooth away the answer to any questions I had about what I mean to him.
“Quell, I—I love you.” The words break from his lips like a cracked bit of concrete. Brittle, hard, heavy. And true.
I relish hearing him admit it. I reach for him.
“I need you.” His thumb grazes my jaw, and his chest heaves with a patter as if the admission alone may shatter him into pieces.
“To your seats, everyone. If our débutants will make their way to their seats, we’ll start the ceremony and finish with our group dance, followed by a reception and guest performance by Audior extraordinaire from the class of ’15, the lovely Lomena.” The crowd applauds, calling to me, but I am frozen face-to-face with a boy who loves me. And just found the courage to say it.
His finger traces my face, and I turn into his palm, savoring its gentleness.
“I could find a way to amend the rules, I bet. We could be together, Quell. We can have everything we couldn’t before.”
I could have it all. In one swipe of a blade, I could do away with my past, erase my history. Forget who I am and become who they want me to be.
But that is not freedom.
Another tear forms on Jordan’s face, and for a moment I consider trying to get him to come with me. But his heart doesn’t want to be free of this prison, he wants me stuck in it with him.
I gaze back down the corridor at the audience decked out in jewels, expressions glazed with awe. They all deserve to know the truth. Binding with my toushana isn’t enough. I must tell them about the tracing tether.
If this world is made of glass, I will dance with a hammer in my hand.
Jordan’s fingers try to lace between mine, but I pull them away and press my lips to his, savoring his love, imagining I could fit it in my hand, take it with me in my pocket. His arms tighten around me, and I wish that I could hold on to this feeling forever. I break the kiss.
“I can’t live in a cage, Jordan.” I leave him there.
His composure breaks. And it’s the wall that holds him upright on his feet. “Where will you go? What will you do?” His voice cracks.
“I will dare to claim the sky.” I hurry toward the stage as my name is called.
Grandmom is there when I spill out of the corridor, and another débutant is onstage with their hands gripped on the hilt of their blade up against their chest. Grandmom waits as they exhale and the handle disappears. Their chest glows a moment. A symptom of the tracing tether. Applause follows and Grandmom’s gesturing for me to join her onstage.
“And now for a very special débutante, our last but certainly not least, my very own granddaughter, the heir and future leader of this great House, Raquell Janae Marionne.” Applause drowns my steps as I join her onstage.
I stand at Grandmom’s side as she hands me my dagger, and I look for some indication of the invisible tether around the stage, some tear of magic or ripple that shouldn’t be there. “If you’ll refer to your program, you’ll see all of Raquell’s distinguishing accomplishments, including the enhancers she’s infused into her magic. She also received the highest marks on Second Rite this House has ever seen.” Her cheeks push up under her eyes. “Raquell will be interning here as my understudy in Cultivating.” She turns to me. “Please raise your right hand and place the other on your dagger, then recite your oath.”
“By blood and trial, I swear to keep and protect the Order’s truth. To honor and serve and never divide. Should I desert the way of Rule, my brother’s blade should make me true. For service is for life, and a broken oath is only righted by death.”
“When you’re ready, you may bind with your magic to complete Third Rite.” She hands me my dagger. I glance out at the crowd, the generations of members, parents, grandparents. Histories and lineages. I am shattering it all because of one woman’s treachery. I force down the lump in my throat.
Some things deserve to be destroyed.
Let’s do this, I whisper to my toushana. I call to my magic, the one I trust. There is magic enveloping the stage. Show it to me. I hold my side, urging my toushana awake, and she unfurls from the place where she slumbers. Black curls from my fingers. Whispers swarm as darkness coils in the air like a plume of smoke, swelling until it encircles the stage, filling an invisible barrier Grandmom has bubbled around it.
“Your Headmistress has a tracer affixed to this ceremony,” I start, and the truth rushes out of me like unclogging a drain. “So that your binding is to not only your magic, but a tether to this House!”
Grandmom reaches for me, but I dart out of the way, holding tight to my dagger.
“Now.” I tighten my core, tuck my elbows, and urge my toushana through me entirely. Cold seeps into my bones, flowing to my every extremity, into my arms and then to my hands. The darkness around me thickens. The barrier groans against the strain of my magic. Destroy it. I bite down and exhale, sinking into the lull of cold, keeping every muscle in my body relaxed to avoid fighting the expelling of my toushana in any way.
The barrier bubbled around the stage shatters into a cloud of smoke.
I’m breathless when I jump off the stage and shove my way between the barrage of people clamoring over each other. Vases shatter. Tables topple. Shouts and cries blare like a siren. But I tune it all out. I’m not finished. With my dagger tip to my chest, I call on my toushana again. She rushes through me into my hands, icy, ready, and waiting. I urge her into the blade, and it throbs with light.
Now push it in.
My hands shake.
Through the haze, I spot Jordan, stilled with shock. He holds my gaze. I can’t bear to look away from him, to let go of this last glimpse of what we were, what I hoped we could be. I hold him in my sights and push the hilt of my dagger into me, sealing our fate. It pierces my skin without even a pinch. Its hilt slams into my chest bone with a shudder.
Exhale. I try to, timidly, expecting it to hurt as my toushana rolls through me. But when the breath leaves my lungs, there is no pain. There is no feeling at all. Fog forms at my lips at my next breath as a numbing chill as cold as death settles over me like the comfiest blanket. The dagger hilt dissolves into nothingness in my hands.
The world darkens at its edges, and I stumble sideways, catching myself on a table. I swallow, blinking, patting myself down, inspecting the place the dagger disappeared. I run my finger over the jagged scar there, which has already healed. As the cold settles in my blood, suddenly the colors of the ceremony ripen. The voices in the room swell and somehow untangle. I can hear each conversation and all of them at once. And the smells, so many. I’ve never felt more alive.
I gape at my empty hands but am distracted by my dress. Its pale pink fabric has turned black, its sparkled embellishments shining like stars. The tulle on my arms has shifted into leather, and I reach for the diadem on my head, feeling a few new gems as I dash for a glimpse of myself in a polished plate.
My black diadem sits on my head.
I look at the spot where Jordan just was. But he’s gone.
Get out of there.
I grab a shawl from a chair, throw it over my head, elbow my way through the chaos, and shove the ballroom doors open. I’m two steps from the broom closet when a hand hugged in rings reaches for my throat.
