Page 76 of Shadows of Perl

I swallow. “What if—what if my magic is too strong?”

She smiles dotingly. “Hartsboro was the first House and original Headquarters for the Order. The Cabinet, the brotherhood, it all used to operate from here.” She runs a hand along the wall on her way to the door. “These were fortified with an ingredient used to make the Sphere’s casing. They should hold up.” She opens the door. “Trust your instincts. They’ll know.”

The door clanks shut. My chest is still a pressure chamber, clawing for release. I count myself down and ease out a long exhale.

But air shoots out of my lungs. And my magic explodes. It feels like a hundred daggers are being pushed through my skin at once. The room swells with shadows, blackness pooling out of me. Toushana tugs at my heart. Like an ice pick lives in my chest. My lungs beg for breath, but it feels like filling my lungs again will snap me in half. The world rumbles, unloosing debris as more darkness, thicker shadows, and biting cold magic seep out of me.

Toushana licks the walls, and cracks rip through the stone from floor to ceiling. Blackness gathers around the metal bracelets holding me up, like hungry leeches. My hand is swallowed in shadow. Then the hold on my wrist buckles. And I fall, slamming my knees to the ground. I wait for the pain to ripple up my side, but it’s like my toushana devours that, too. The thick bolts that held me dislodge from the wall, rotted and rusted, and clang on the ground, missing me by an inch.

I gulp down a desperate breath. The room is an abyss of an impenetrable fog. I try to stand, but my bones ache.

“Help!”

But there is no one here to hear me scream. A cough scratches my dry throat, the dusty air choking me. Toushana scrapes itself along the ceiling, where cracks are starting to appear. No! I hug my knees and close my eyes. This place is going to come down on top of me.

Trust your instincts.

Think. My heart slows. The magic in the air stills.

I released it. I control it. I drag myself up to my feet, remembering how I’ve drawn my magic into myself before, and fill my lungs. At first, very little happens, but I inhale deeply again.

“Back inside,” I command it.

The mist in the air shifts, like a storm cloud parted by sun. My heart leaps. I open my palms and breathe deeply, in and out. Release-release-rest, but in reverse. The shadows stir, but then, slowly, darkness ribbons through the air, siphoning back into me. Gradually the haze in the air clears. The room is a charred mess but I can plainly see the door. I heave my limbs toward it, banging on it until Beaulah opens it.

I collapse at her feet.

It takes a while, but with Beaulah’s Retentor ring and odd-looking brush, she cleans up most of the damage. She returns the room to its unaffected state, repairing the shelves and reattaching the manacles to the wall. I help, as much as I can, by sweeping up the ash on the floor.

“How did it feel?”

“Impossible. I’ve never felt so much magic in my body before. It felt like I was going to bring this whole place down on top of me.”

“It may have, had you held it long enough.”

I hug around myself, shaking a bit from the soreness I feel all over. My hands are covered in bruises; my arms and body, too. But deep in my chest a flicker of warmth like I’ve never felt burns. As deep and as special as magic. Pride bows my lips in a timid smile before I burst into a gleeful laugh.

“Did you prove anything to yourself?”

I can still hear the rumbling walls. “I am a force.”

She pushes the restored shelf back in place. “You know, you remind me of myself when I was younger. You do what’s necessary to get things done. I had an appetite only an upbringing like yours could breed. It is a powerful weapon. You are wise to use it.”

I furrow my brow and stare at her quizzically. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find it hard to believe you could possibly know about my life growing up.”

She takes the broom from me and sets it aside. Then exhales. “The first time I scavenged for food, I had to drag over a log to be tall enough to reach into a dumpster.” Beaulah angles her face away. “My older siblings were so malnourished their magic wasn’t answering. Six of us, and only two still use magic. I wasn’t willing to risk that. So I gorged myself on whatever I could find. Richard was the only one who ate the scraps I found.” She turns her back to me. “I remember being most worried that people would smell the trash on me. We didn’t have running water. This grand house, and we didn’t even have that. So I’d bathe in the water from the water gardens. Just grateful I could scrub myself until my skin was red.” She gazes off in the distance. “No one could know our secret. That the first House in the Order had lost all its wealth, thanks to my squandering mother. We always had an excuse to miss out on parties. And we never hosted any. Débutants were kept to very small classes in one wing of the House. They were given the little food we did have to keep up appearances. We had no staff and only two maezres, citing the excuse that we had very selective standards.”

She breathes a laugh. “I grew to not mind the smell because it meant I would sleep on a full stomach. My siblings only whined and complained. When one of my sisters starved to death, my father died of a heart attack. The shock killed him, I think. I told my mother I would tell the papers she murdered both of them. Unless she made me heir. I never saw her again. I found a whole closet of frozen meals in my mother’s suite. She’d been eating just fine all those years.”

I gasp.

“I learned very young that there are those who have power because it is given to them, and others because they take it.”

“What happened to the rest of your family?”

“I raised my siblings like they were my own. With everything in my hands, I set out to make this House be what it should again. All they had to do was toughen up, play their part, do their duty. And stop crying about it. Some didn’t agree with my methods and left. One tried to usurp me. Adola’s mother. Stupid girl. But her daughter will be better than she ever was.” She unstraps the manacles, eyeing the time. “I rebuilt our name. Now, forgive me. I’ve gone on for too long.”

I haven’t moved. Beaulah pulls nervously at her sleeves, and I don’t know what to say. She meets my eyes, and beneath their sternness is a glimmer of uncertainty, worried she’s shared too much. I realize now that when I showed up at Chateau Soleil, all I really wanted was someone to look at me and see me and for that to be okay. I step closer to her. “You must have lived those years terrified. I’m so sorry.”

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