Page 35 of Shadows of Perl

“Jordan?” I spit. “I cannot stand your cousin.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Adola pulls and the bookcase swings forward. A sassy retort bites at my lips. I’ve given Jordan Wexton enough of my time. He won’t dominate my thoughts, too.

We step into a secret corridor and pull the fake shelf closed. Jordan. This is where he lived. He walked these halls. He navigated its secret corridors. Nausea rises in my throat. This place made him into an Order-obsessed, backstabbing betrayer. I hate him. But I think I hate myself more for hoping that he would be different than everyone else in the Order. That he actually cared about me. That the girl he shared green candy with was worthy of love.

Dusty air prickles my nose, and I smooth my leaking eyes to focus on the light from tiny peepholes that cuts through the darkness in every direction.

“Each bookcase in the House leads to a different part of the estate. No one uses these but family and…” She tugs at the skirt of her dress. “Please don’t say anything.”

I nod and urge her forward. The hidden interior hallways of Beaulah’s house are a maze of corridors. Adola halts suddenly and I slam into her back. She presses a finger to her lips and points to a tiny hole in the wall. Peeping through it, I see a grand study room sparsely furnished with a fireplace, bookshelves, a desk strewn with papers, and a few pieces of leather furniture. The narrow hole makes it impossible to see the full room.

“She’s in there?”

“Should be.”

I grip Adola’s wrist as she tries to leave, and lean against the trick wall to open it. It swings forward, opening into Beaulah’s office. Everything is glossed wood and dark colors. And suns, so many engraved suns, on every surface, carved into the shutters, on the windows, on ornamented fixtures, on the lamp, and etched into the hard floor. But Beaulah isn’t here.

“You said she’d be here.”

“This was my best guess.”

I circle Beaulah’s desk, checking beneath documents, going through her drawers—looking for what, I’m not sure. “Take me to her bedroom.”

She pales. “I can’t do that.”

“You knew she wasn’t in here.” Toushana thrashes in my chest. “You’re wasting my time.” No one is trustworthy. Everyone is in it for themselves. “What game are you playing?”

“I did what you asked! You agreed you wouldn’t tell if I took you to find her, which I did. It’s not my fault she’s not here.” Adola fidgets.

I march up to her, letting the cold brimming beneath my skin bleed through. Adola’s eyes widen. “You’re lying. Take me to her.”

Adola’s mouth hardens.

“There’s a party or something going on tonight. I saw people dressed up. Is she there?”

Adola blinks one too many times. I pace, considering my options. Then I inhale deeply, awakening my toushana. Maybe I don’t need her. Magic flows through me, and I tighten my center. Blood rushes to my head. My ears are cold, flooded with a symphony of sounds. The faint chatter and clinking of glasses, along with a low melody of music, urge me into motion. I’m back behind the bookcase, tracking a heartbeat until it’s louder, clearer. Until there are many hearts beating at once in a concentrated area. A crowd of people.

“Quell! Please, you can’t—” But Adola’s words are hardly audible as she hustles to keep up with me. Following the sounds of people takes me to a different section of the estate, past rooms full of desks, more than one sprawling ballroom, a honing lab, endless halls of dormitories, and a strange wing of the house with scorched walls and windowless session rooms, empty of tables or chairs. I finally hear the clink of champagne glasses; soft cheers and low music roll around in my head with a chorus of dozens of heartbeats. When I stop, the thudding is a thousand hammers in my head. I peer through a peephole and find a finely dressed crowd. I glare at Adola.

“Please don’t go in there, I’m begging you! Mother will kill me.” Tears well in her eyes at the sight of my arm wedged against the door, ready to shove it open.

“Everyone knows Perls are liars. Should have known you’d be no different.” I push the bookcase forward. We spill out of the corridor into a swanky reception in a dimly lit, windowless room. A chill washes over me, and it takes me a minute to realize it’s not my toushana. It’s a cold hovering in the air like a cloud of death. The music stops. The conversations quiet as every head in the room swivels in our direction. My palms sweat, biting iciness clawing at them. Beaulah moves among the frozen crowd, clutching a fluted glass, her red, shimmery gown dangling over her feet. At first she watches me in confusion, before her narrowed gaze widens in understanding.

“Quell Marionne.”

Low whispers swarm the crowd. My heart knocks into my ribs. Everyone waits for her reaction. I let toushana seep through my skin but hold my hands in tight fists to conceal my secret. Fear got the best of me with Adola, but I don’t need all these people to know. Beaulah strides toward me and the cold slithers around my bones.

“Headmistress Perl, I need to speak with you,” I shout.

But the room suddenly grows colder as familiar dark ripples move through the air. And it startles me. Toushana. I check my own hands to be sure I’m not hallucinating. But the toushana moving through the air isn’t coming toward me at all. It’s disappearing among the crowd. Draguns. I skim for coins at throats, and many are wearing ones with cracked columns. Several do not have coins at all.

I blink, watching dark whiffs of magic coil around wrists of people who have no business drawing on toushana. Several curious gazes move to me as if they can sense my nervousness. I keep staring, waiting for the scene to change. Waiting for any of this to make some bit of sense. When Beaulah Perl reaches me, I am barely breathing. The amber stones in her diadem gleam, a complement to the fur wrapped around her shoulders, pinned with a glittering brooch in the shape of a cracked column. I take all of her in—the dark gems on her knuckles, the pearls pressed to her ears—reading every line in her stoic expression, noticing the way she is the only person in this entire room completely at ease. And though she tries to hide it, there is the slightest glint of satisfaction in her eyes. She studies me up and down, drinking me in, and then reaches for my hand.

“What is this?” I nearly choke on the words. The magic that’s been a death sentence over my head since I was a child is here, in this room. “I—I mean, I asked if there’s somewhere we can speak?”

Her mouth bows into a smile. Then she fans a hand in the air. “Please, guests, join me in welcoming the heiress to House of Marionne.” She faces the crowd and the cautious stares morph to curious ones. Several raise their glasses and return to their conversations, the music jumping back in motion. But one pair of eyes doesn’t leave me: Charles’s. Reclined on a slick piano, he sips his drink, watching me.

Beaulah notices. “Charlie is a good boy. That girl on his arm, Penelope, was never my choice for him. But you have to loosen the leash on some things or they’ll tug hard all the time. Now the mood’s a bit lighter—shall we?” She holds out her elbow.

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