Page 55 of Fortress of Ambrose
When I leave Willam and Knox, I find Dexler and ask her to ensure we have a private space to talk. Then I knock on the door of Jordan’s old room in the Gents Wing, but no one answers. I wander the halls of House of Marionne, scorched and barely recognizable, until I find Jordan, who is warming his hands over a fire in a sitting room near what used to be the grand ballroom.
He invites me to sit in a nearby chair, but that distance feels like anocean. Heat from the fire billows up my legs, and it gives me the confidence to slide onto the settee beside him, desperate for his comfort, even if we can’t touch.
The toushana in my body is silent as I move closer to the fire.
“Are you feeling better?” he asks.
“Knox gave me a much-needed pep talk.”
“Good.”
That’s when I notice a folded-up copy of the morning’sDebs Dailyin his hands. On the front is a picture of Audubon’s mansion, burned to the ground. There is a smaller picture beside it: a bird’s-eye view of the singed rubble arranged into the shape of a sun with a filled center. The mark of a Darkbearer.
I snatch it from him and find two huge photographs inside of the Dragunhead’s face and Jordan’s side by side.Answers Demanded, the title reads.Neither could be reached for comment. “He was always a troubled boy but grew worse under his aunt’s mentorship,” says Richard Wexton, father to Dragunheart Jordan Wexton.The interview goes on about how Jordan is a puppet for Beaulah Perl, blaming him for the world falling apart. It wraps up with vivid images of Unmarked bodies turning up across cities ransacked in the last few days.
I throw the paper into the fire. “You can’t believe any of that. It is not your fault.”
“If anyone should have been there to defend the innocent in the Sixth Ward, it should have been me. I took an oath.”
“Yes, to protect and honor magic! Which is what you’re doing.”
“Still doesn’t feel good to hear.”
It’s like they want him to crack.
We’re no closer to healing him than we were when I intercepted him in the Sixth Ward. Now the Marked world is publicly pinning every vile crime on him.
“Jordan, I’m going to make Willam reach out to his Healer.”
“Sure.”
Encouraging him falls flat. I move even closer to the fire, recalling how warmth chases away toushana, and I reach to run my fingers through his hair. But he tips his head away.
“Warmth helps keep toushana calm and under control.”
“We shouldn’t take chances.” He eyes the few inches of space between us on the seat and stands, moving to the mantel. “Have Dimara and the others ever used magic? Or has it all faded? They could be useful around here to get this place in better shape if you were thinking of—”
“I’m not.”I join him at the fire. “Jordan, I’ve lived with toushana in my body my entire life. I survived this place with it. I can help you understand it more.”
“I don’t want to understand it. I want it out of me.”
“You need to understand it to control it.
“You haven’t hadthismuch toushana in you.”
“Fire helps. Please.”
He faces me. “Fine. I’m listening.”
“Magic, as you once told me, hates indecision. Toushana is the same way. It wants to be used.”
“Magic strengthens with use. If I use any magic by choice, it won’t be that one.”
“When dark magic is inside you, using it is how you control it. That’s how you bend it to your will. As a dragun you summoned toushana from outside your body and expelled it, to keep it from attaching to you. Now, Jordan, you still have to use it to gain more control over how it behaves inside you.”
He is silent. So I remind him about the forest behind Chateau Soleil, where I saw him push away toushana for the first time, and how I found solace there, satiating my toushana’s need to be fed. “I can show you.”
“No. It’s already stronger somehow, without me even trying. I can feel it.”
