Page 2 of Fortress of Ambrose
I ease out a shaky breath.I am broken.
Dueling magics, proper and dark, have lived inside me, constantly at war with one another. The warm thrum of my own magic is gone. I can’t feel it at all. When I reach for magic, the Sphere’s magic answers, weighty, like wearing shoes filled with lead.
After the fight at the Sphere, as the dregs of the Sphere’s magic finished siphoning into me, I lay there, unable to move. When I reopened my eyes, I was somewhere else, all alone and in excruciating pain. I thought I was dead. But by the fourth day of waking up with life in my limbs,I dragged myself up, determined to form some sort of plan. Quell and Abby were supposed to meet me at the Tavern near Chateau Soleil. But I couldn’t be near them in this condition, this unsure about what the Sphere’s magic inside me was doing. I refuse to accidentally hurt anyone, but especially them. Especially Quell. My eavesdropping from one northeastern Tavern to the next led me here.
Someone crosses the street up ahead before disappearing between the buildings. Fear seizes my chest. I touch the cured paint and notice it’s peeling in several places. Whoever destroyed this neighborhood did it some time ago.
I hold on to the feeling of magic inside me as I close in on a girl in slick pants, a flowy teal shirt, and a silver diadem arced over her head.
Too young to be Ruby.
She dashes down the alleyway, and I catch up to her, grabbing her by the wrist. Cold snakes through my bones to my fingertips, ready to strike.
“Let me go!” She tugs against my hold. The girl’s a living work of art. Her face has been painted like a canvas. Strokes of every color coil and twist around one another across her olive skin. Icy rouge on her cheeks, earthy tones slope beneath her eyes. Sharp, bright pink paints her lips. Gems adorn her thick brows, trailing around her face and neck, disappearing into her clothes.
“An Emoter.” Prodigiously skilled painters who use colors to reveal emotion. My grip on her slips and she rounds her wrist, freeing herself before clamping her hold on me. She cocks her head, and surveys my chest with curiosity, not malice. I’m not sure if it’s the suddenness of her touch or the way it only makes me miss Quell more, but I don’t immediately resist.
“What’s your name?” I ask as she shows me her palms, which have turned blue.
“I’ll tell you my name if you tell me what makes you so sad.”
I shift on my feet. She’s far too young but maybe…“Ruby?”
Recognition glints in her eyes as she scopes the surroundings, looking for the Trader. My instincts were right. But she knows her.
“You’re meeting her tonight,” I say.
“The temperature is dropping. Can you feel it?” As she smooths her palms against her pants, the color of her palms returns to her olive skin tone.
“I’m Harmony, Secundus, fourth of my blood, Emoter candidate, sensor type. Oralia.”
“I’m—”
“I know who you are.” She gazes around again. Shadows begin to shift. The darkness thickens. “Look, if I were you—”
Silver protrudes from her throat and the sentence finishes with a gurgle. Her body hits the ground with a thud. Her attacker lunges for me, a fresh blade slashing in my direction, when several things happen at once.
Two
Quell
Silence hangs in the air around me like a guillotine. I’m still cold from the cloak I used to travel to the Sixth Ward in DC. My heart rams in my chest as I skim the darkness, looking for Jordan. But there isn’t a person in sight. Only moonlight washing the ground in light, telling secrets the darkness was supposed to hide.
The last time I saw Jordan, he was surrounded by Draguns and I was riding away on a horse with Yagrin at the reins. He was supposed to meet back up with Abby and me at a Tavern. We needed to hatch a plan to deal with the Dragunhead and Beaulah trying to steal the Sphere’s magic—everyone’s magic,mymagic!
But he never showed.
And worse, Yagrin and Nore agreed to find the piece of the ancestral House of Ambrose Scroll that promised immortality, so if the Sphere’s magic is lost and the Headmistresses die, Jordan could use it to save my life. But there’s no word from either of them. My mother’s remains at House of Perl, Beaulah trying to use me to steal the Sphere’s magic, House of Duncan showing up to fight House of Marionne, my grandmother dying…It all still haunts my dreams.
But it’s the whispered rumors about what Jordan might have done that congeals my blood more than any memory.
I move faster down the streets, careful to skirt the streetlights. I’veheard that magic is dying out, the Order is fracturing as Marked turn on one another, that House of Marionne didn’t hold a funeral for my grandmother. I’ve also heard rumors the Dragun brotherhood has disbanded and Beaulah’s niece, Adola, is recruiting ex-brotherhood to their side. Darker rumors suggest Jordan tried to steal the magic, and itkilled…
A lump rises in my throat as I hug around myself, searching these battered city streets. When I intercepted a deal among a seedy group of Traders two days ago, I overheard that the Dragunheart would be in the Sixth Ward of DC tonight. It could be bad gossip, but I am taking my chances.
The boy who first saw in me what I couldn’t see in myselfis alive. I know it in my bones. I just have to find him.
If the Sphere’s really broken, if the Order’s really fallen apart, we will face its destruction, and whatever it means, together. Like we faced Beaulah at the Sphere, her Draguns at the inn in Aronya. Together we are unbeatable. Together we are free.
