Page 6 of Fortress of Ambrose
Her chest squeezed.A life I dream of.“Surely you’ve foundsomediscoveries satisfying. The Immortality Scroll is quite impressive as far as magical accomplishments go.” Her heart hammered.
“Eh.”
She slid to the edge of her chair. “Is that indifference?”
“Ambrosers have tried to find that Scroll for generations. I looked, too. Learned all kinds of things about the places where it’s hidden. But death is what makes living life so thrilling. I don’t need an endless one.”
His satchel with the journal inside still sat on a nearby chair. “What brought you here today?”
“I just returned from Croatia. I get a new tattoo to commemorate a trip. Call it a tradition from my House that stuck, I suppose.”
He might live on his own terms, but he was Ambrose-bred.How is such a thing even possible?Their world couldn’t give him the fame he craved. So he found it elsewhere. Loyal to himself, like everyone else in the Order.
“Ready?” the tattoo artist asked when she returned.
“Oh!” Nore hadn’tactuallyplanned to get a tattoo. “Dublin, why don’t you go?”
“Ladies first. I insist.”
Nore hesitated. Dublin’s brow furrowed.
She climbed into the chair.
“Tally mark? How many?”
If she was going to get a permanent mark, it wasn’t going to be anything her House made her. She agreed with Dublin on that. Instead it would be something that meant a lot to her.
“Can you do hemlock flowers in the shape of a heart?”
The tattooist nodded, and Nore adjusted her clothes to expose her hip. She didn’t want to answer questions about what it meant. Dublin jotted something in his journal before setting it back on the chair.
“Why poison?” he asked.
Her heart pounded in its cage as a flood of frustration reddened her cheeks. “You defy possibilities. But in my experience some are finite. For me, love is an impossibility. And this is a reminder of that.”
“You only grow more intriguing,” Dublin said, as the artist started the drawing. “You’re very brilliant. A deep thinker.”
“I’m aware.”
He took more notes.
“You’ve been writing in that thing since you arrived.”
“Notwriting. Revising, tweaking, making minor adjustments.”
“Still, it’s rude.” She held out her hand and her pulse thrummed. He handed the journal to her. She looked at what he was sketching. He’d crammed a drawing of her in a tiny space between all kinds of dated notes.Severalwere about travel. Her grip on the journal tightened. Next to the sketch he’d written then erased a word. He took the journal back and thumbed through the well-worn pages before returning it to his satchel. “Not much room left these days.”
He said a few more things but something struck her.
Had he saidplaceswhen he was talking about looking for the Scroll?
As in, not one.
“I take it everywhere. There are certain first impressions I don’t want to forget. You’re a rare find,” he said, just as the tattooist finished.
She stared at the sprawling buds carving red lines through her irritated pale skin. Her heart twinged. She let the tattooist bandage it before readjusting her clothes. Dublin moved into the chair. He took off his shirt, and the artist began a drawing on his clavicle. As he stared at the ceiling, Nore moved closer to his satchel.
“Your Unmarked accolades are endless,” she said. “How well rounded are you in the Marked world?”
