Page 102 of Fortress of Ambrose
Hartsboro.
Beaulah Perl.
The Dragunhead stabbing me in the back.
The lies of Darragh Marionne.
Yaniselle’s betrayal.
Almost losing Quell.
I groan as darkness thickens, rushing out of my skin so fast every pore on my body burns.
Destroy it all, the magic whispers.Make them hurt.
The world dents black at the edges. A growl tears from my throat. I’m so cold all over I am a floating body without feeling at all.
Somewhere Quell yelps.
The world is a haze of confusion and anger, and I can’t see a thing. But I can feel the delight in my bones. The way the dark magic licks my spine. The corners of my lips tug up in a smile. Through the haze I faintly hear shouting.
Quell’s voice.
“Let up!” she screams. But before I can pinpoint where my limbs are and how to stop this flow, fire erupts in the middle of the forest. The woods glow as flames consume one tree, then lick the next.
“Jordan, you’re starting a fire.Stop!”
I hear her, but I don’t see her, my senses dull like an overused blade. I focus on the ripping feeling as toushana tears through my skin.Stop, I plead.Stop now!
The cold slows.
The cold obeys.
I rediscover feeling in my legs and stagger into a stump. The warmth of the nearby fire quenches the rest of my toushana. The dark magic slinksback inside my body, and I blink, seeing the forest—or what’s left of it—for the first time. Fire still burns in the distance.
Quell jogs toward me. “We have to get out of here.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know! Your toushana was destroying the forest so fast, and then it sparked, and there were flames.”
“We can’t let the fire reach the house.”
My mind spirals, sifting through every single thing I understand about dark magic. It’s destructive in nature. It should be able to destroy fire, right? But the heat stifles the toushana’s ability to breathe. The cold and hot don’t mix.Think!
“Jordan, turn the trees that are not on fire to ash. We can spread those ashes all over to create a barrier between the estate and the flames. If there’s nothing left to burn, the flames will go out.”
“You’re saying—”
“Destroy the forest before the fire does.”
I call on the chill again, and it answers with precision. Quell does the same. Together we make short work of decomposing every tree, plant, or piece of brush in the line of the fire. When we’re finished, a pile of ash runs in a long line through the forest, forming a barrier. When the most distant glow of fire is finally gone, I collapse on the ground beside Quell in a wasteland of destruction with a clear line of sight to Chateau Soleil.
Windows at the back of the estate glare down at us. “We should get back inside.”
By the time we make it in, Quell takes me to the third floor, where the only sound is our feet on the shiny tile. Darragh Marionne’s suite has a gaping hole through the bathroom wall. We slip inside and make our way into the Headmistress’s private suite.
Everything hurts, including the spot under my ribs. Quell inspects a small room off the bedroom.
