Page 3 of Fortress of Ambrose
My feet are lead, doubt trying to outweigh my hope as I read messages painted across what’s left of the buildings in this ransacked neighborhood. There’s no sign of Jordan anywhere.
Toushana moves in my chest, and I try to focus on the chill to grow its intensity to bring some comfort to my shaky hands. It’s been weeks since I felt my magic burn intensely. I assumed it was exhausted from how I used it, harder than I ever have—consumed with rage—trying to break the Sphere. Before realizing Beaulah was using me and no amount of fury would take away the feeling of not having my mom. My physical bruises have healed at least, thanks to Abby, and I’m lucky my travel cloak got me here.
I hustle along the sidewalk, searching for some sign of life on the streets, and my shoes slide against something slick, a fleur-de-lis—my House sigil—painted on the ground in angry strokes of fresh blood.
As my grandmother died, she urged me to find Nore, to work with her. For what, I’m not sure.
But I’m done taking orders.
I haven’t given much thought to the Chateau or my old maezres. Abby and I have kept our heads down the last several weeks, glancing only at the occasional headline. I look around and feel sick. The neighborhood’s retail shops are hulls of carnage. Hollow high-rises with shattered windows loom like soulless monsters. The world is blurring at its seams, bleeding two realities together that should never touch.This isn’t my mess.I tighten my fists. I need to know that my magic, and Jordan, will be okay. I was Beaulah’s puppet, I won’t be anyone else’s, even for a good cause. That is not freedom.
I cross the street, where a critter scurries away from a body, looking for some sign of Jordan. The boy who set out to take my life, but gave everything to save it in the end. I run harder, searching, listening, nails digging into my palms, until I hear a commotion, and follow the sounds around a building.
A hooded figure holds Jordan from behind, edging a dagger to his throat.
My heart knocks in my chest. I’m flooded with memories of the last time we were together. He’d finally opened up to me about the scars of his past, about how trapped he’s felt his entire life by the Order, how in my eyes is where he finds courage to fight for freedom.
And I betrayed him.
I snatched the Dragunheart pendant right from under his nose.
And yet he chased me down and fought off the Draguns trying to kill me. When Beaulah tried to coerce me to break the Sphere, it was Jordan who reminded me of who I am. Finding him feels like finding a piece of me that’s been missing: a home.
That’s being ransacked.
Jordan wrestles the blade from him and shoves it backward into the attacker’s side. The assailant groans, keeling over. But Jordan holds his body against himself as a shield, spinning to block another strike from someone lurking in the shadows. Voices sound somewhere. The feeling of being watched sticks to my skin, and my world dizzies as another hurtles past me, my eyes too slow to translate the darkness.
Jordan howls in pain as a blade disappears into his shoulder.
One attacker shoves another. “Nohurting him!” He reaches for silver restraints, and it shakes me back to the present. I pull at the bite of chill in my veins, determined to intervene.
But then Jordan’s body begins to bleed shadows. Dark magic engulfs the alleyway. And it’s the most comforting sight I’ve seen in a long time.
Until the others bleed shadows, too.
I blink, watching the magic come frominsidethem. All.
The way only those bound to dark magic, like me, can do.
The darkness around us deepens. Shadows swallow the fight, despite the dagger stuck in his shoulder.
At the same time, my toushana finally answers my call, seeping through my hands in a thrilling chill that jolts me into the nearest attacker. I wrap my toushana-bleeding hands around his face. He howls, clawing at my grip. I shove him with all my might against the brick, and he collapses. Jordan makes short work of the others, wielding darkness, piling up bodies on the ground.
He spots me and turns pale as he holds the last attacker’s body, silver buried in their chest as he checks some kind of mark on the back of their neck.
“Quell.”
“Jordan, I—”
He throws the body down, skims their pockets, takes their weapons, and sprints away.
Three
Nore
The tattoo shop doors were coated in yew leaf stickers and neon paint. Nore had always pictured her first trip to an Ambrose tattoo parlor under very different circumstances. Before stepping inside, she gazed around for the dead, her grip tight on her bag strap.
The Pact her House had with their ancestors haunted her day and night. It gave Ambrose the ability to push the bounds of magic. In exchange the House Headmistress gave the dead her heart. They channeled its magic to cling to life. But Nore didn’t have magic. Her heart in their glass box would be the death of her.
