Page 140 of Fortress of Ambrose
The dead ancestor writhed as if fighting off an invisible foe.
It slammed into a nearby tree with a force that was not human.
Then it swayedhard.
“Hurry.” Adola emptied her arms onto the ground. “We don’t have long before morning.”
The tortured shadow ricocheted from one tree into another, scraping at bark, fighting harder. Leaves poured like rain as the forest shook. Flames erupted on the pile Adola dropped. The dead fell to the ground, morphing into a groveling dark mist before slowly blowing away. The stench of rot grew, but Nore couldn’t look away. When the bones were a pile of ash, Adola put out the fire.
Only one shadow remained.
The other dead was gone.
They killed its spirit…
Nore backed away and tripped. Ellery gazed in her direction, but she stuck to the darkest shade in the forest until she reached Daring. The ancestors were not her friends, but they were the only defense between her and her brother. The closest thing she had to an ally.
And her brother waskillingthem.
Fifty-Five
Jordan
My brother is sitting at a bar in a tavern sipping from a stemmed glass when I find him. Yagrin’s ability to disassociate is envious.
“How’d he like the gift?” I ask, sliding into the seat beside him. “I got here as soon as I could.”
Yagrin looks as if he’s seen a ghost.
“What happened?”
“So much.” He rakes a hand through his hair. But doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Yagrin?”
“I would have written, but with Ellery out there, I couldn’t risk getting intercepted.” My brother speaks to the floor, and my heart tremors in my chest. This is the brother who couldn’t keep my birthday gifts secret from me each year. He takes another sip from his drink.
“I have some of my own updates,” I say to break the ice.
He pushes his seat out from the lip of the bar a few inches. His heart hammers harder. And because of the trace, I feel it in my chest.
“Go on, then,” he says, and I tell him about the Sphere’s proper magic being removed, relocating the safe house to Chateau Soleil, and planning the toushana extraction. How we are held up at House of Marionne, which is in a state of disrepair.
“Headquarters is in shambles,” I add. “The brotherhood is a joke.”
“Always was one,” he mutters, and a strangled laugh escapes me. My brother smirks, and it chips away at the ice between us.
“I found Maei’s body, deflated like a sack of skin.” A shiver finger-walks my spine. “The Dragunhead is actually after Quellandme. The Darkbearer attacks are to draw me out. Becareful, Yagrin.”
“He always rubbed me the wrong way.” Yagrin buttons and rebuttons his sleeve. “When he realized that daddy business didn’t work with me, he left me alone.”
My jaw hardens. That was a dig. A fair one. The Dragunhead played me like a viola, and I sang his praises like a song.
“What a mess,” he says. “What else?”
My side throbs, and I’m not sure if it’s my decaying rib cage or guilt. I try to find the words to tell him about my conversation with Abby. How I need the Scroll now more than ever. But the words stick in my throat as I stare at the brother who counted onmeto hold him up his entire life. I flag a bartender and order two drinks.
“Tell me how the search for the Scroll piece is going,” I say.
