Page 47 of Shadows of Perl

“Yagrin.”

He doesn’t respond.

“I’ve come to talk to you.”

He still doesn’t move. Everything with him is a fight, I swear.

“Have it your way.” I unsheathe the fire dagger from the pocket inside my jacket and slice the door down the middle. The flames on the blade rip through the dark mist, parting it like a curtain, and I step through. I pull my brother to his feet. Octos stands a whole head shorter than me in ratty clothes. He smooths his greasy hair behind him. What did Quell see in him? A kindred spirit?

Quell. Her stare was like a dagger to my soul. She made a mockery of me then by lying about everything. And she makes a mockery of me now by evading capture. The sooner she’s gone, the better. The safer the Order will be.

“Your real face, Yagrin.”

“You look terrible,” he says. “Not sleeping again?”

“Enough of your games. I need you to show me how to track the Sphere.”

“My answer hasn’t changed,” he says, rubbing the tattoo marks on Octos’s skin.

“I’m trying to reason with you.”

The blue in Octos’s slanted eyes darkens to brown as a glimmer of Yagrin bleeds through.

“But it was you, dear brother, who brought me here.”

“For your treason. I’m done covering for you.”

“Then what would you call this request for help?”

“A chance for you to help yourself for once. Agree to help me track the Sphere so that I can—”

“Beg the Dragunhead for my life? I can practically hear him fawning over you now. Jordan, the best Dragun to ever live. Jordan, the epitome of honor. Jordan. Jordan. Jordan!”

“After everything I’ve done for you, that’s what you think of me?”

“What are you after if not the Dragunhead’s approval?”

I can’t believe my ears. There was a time when my brother, even in his ambivalence, believed magic itself was deserving. That it was so special, and such a gift, that we should do all we could to ensure no innocent person had a reason to fear it. He’d still go through the motions when things got hard. But ever since they killed Red, he doesn’t seem to care about anything anymore.

“Deep down, you know that the Order should matter. And people like—” I drop to a whisper. “Our aunt needs to be dealt with.”

“The difference between us is you think it’s still possible.”

I shake him by the shoulders.

“You can’t eat a plum once it’s rotted from the inside.” A cocked smile splits his lips. “Quell was tickled when I told her that. She asked how I knew what a rotted plum tasted like. She did that laugh—you know the one, where she barrels over and snorts.”

I shove him.

“You feel braver in Octos’s skin. Being yourself reminds you that you’re still a scared little boy who never got Daddy’s approval?”

He shoves me and my back hits the wall hard. “No, that’s your job.”

Anger rises in me, for the years of standing in for him without recognition, or even matched effort, doing everything to keep him from his own fate. But I loosen my fists.

“You’re not going to destroy everything the Order built. I won’t allow it. You’re also not going to destroy yourself if I can help it.”

“The irony.” He sits on the hard floor, back against the wall. He traces the same marks from before into the dirt, and I dig a nail into my skin to pin me in the present. Closer now, I see it’s a letter. R. I sit beside him and his body shifts; Octos’s hunched shoulders narrow. My heart squeezes, hoping he’s come to his senses, hoping he’ll look me in the eye as himself, and gird up for what I’m asking him to do—care whether he lives.

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