Page 67 of Fortress of Ambrose
“With?”
“We’re going to dig up this garden.”
Twenty-Seven
Quell
It takes my toushana nearly an hour to decay a way through the thicket of vines hiding the garden gate. Jordan and I waited to start working until the lights were out for the night so that we won’t get any questions. I have too much on my mind already. Like how to keep magicandJordan safe. What to do about Willam pressuring for support of a new House. Or how to get Dimara to stop making snide, unhelpful comments to Knox and Willam behind my back. Where in the world is Abby? And what in the world is taking Nore and Yagrin so long to send an update on the state of the Scroll?
Inside the garden gate, a worn path runs between the rows of roses. This is going to take alongwhile evenwithmagic.
The toushana ripping out of my hands dissolves the garden’s sprawling branches into dust. The powerfeelslike an answer to a question I’ve run from asking my entire life—Who is she, that girl in the mirror?
She is free.
She is no one’s pawn.
But loving her is destructive, choking the life out of everything, like the garden’s weeds. A burden.I rip out another root, savoring the way wafts of darkness rake the gnarly roots into nothingness.
Jordan wrestles vines beside me with his bare hands, hesitant to use the toushana inside him. Every few branches that he chops, one sproutsinto a thicker one. As black bleeds from me, I shove down thoughts of my mother, the agony she faced in her final moments in that wolf lair at Hartsboro the last time I saw her things. I swallow the lump in my throat and tug harder at the thread of ice worming its way through me. And I remember my grandmother’s body lying near the breaking Sphere. I make short work of a bush. Then another, until my fingers ache and they start to purple. I shift my focus away from my hands full of bruises that pale in comparison to what she suffered. Destruction. That’s my goal.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Jordan asks. For once he is in casual pants and a dark shirt that hugs his chiseled body, outlining his side where the wound is healed. The bruise has improved even just in the last few hours.
“My grandmother is intentional, even dead. There’s a reason these roses know me. And I’m going to find out.”
I claw and rip, and wrangle, and destroy branch after branch as my grandmother’s groan of pain when she died plays on repeat in my head. My fingers bleed, but I don’t care.
“Quell.”Jordan offers me water. “Are you alright? What are you really looking for out here?”
Confirmation that I meant more to my grandmother than it seemed.
I start on the next bush, and Jordan grabs a spade. My grandmother spent time with me as if I mattered to her. As if she saw something in me. She plotted to save me when she learned about my dark magic, but she ignored me as I grew up. She was a complicated woman. But she was also careful.
She loved me.
For as much as it cost her, and as bad as she was at it—she loved me in her own twisted way. She would not leave me without her help now. I know it like I know the magic humming in my bones.
We work in silence until I clear the whole row. And the next two.
The world sways as I realize there are dozens more rows to go.
“Both of us using toushana would be faster,” I tell him.
He lifts another pile of broken branches, walks it to the corner of the garden, and adds it to the mountainous stack. “My hands are just fine.” They’re covered in cuts and scrapes. We continue until my arms ache. My entire body throbs by the time we finish the next row. Dirt is caked under my bloodied nails. He tosses back water, hands it to me, but I’m too busy roving through the empty rows, moving around the soil to feel for anything buried beneath it. But there is nothing.There has to be something here.
“Quell?”
On my hands and knees I shove the dirt around, moving larger piles of it, searching, hoping, wishing. But there’s nothing but rocks and sticks underneath. I beat the ground with my fists.
“Quell,breathe.”
A knot rises in my throat, frustration and grief trying to choke me. I rock back on my heels and try to inhale. Jordan moves right next to me, and the nearness of him helps some. But when I exhale, the disappointment welling up in my chest bursts out in a shaking sob. Grief’s an unwieldy guest that arrives without notice and overstays its welcome. I’m not sure I can lasso it into submission anymore. I cry, then I scream, punching the dirt again and again until I can’t see my mother’s face in my mind anymore. Until the memory of her voice fades and the longing ache for her touch dissipates.
“You need a break. We can finish tomorrow.” He holds his side where he has healed. But the fatigue shadowing his gaze makes me look at the time. He’s been awake for over a day. He was told to get lots of rest. How quickly I can become so selfish. How easily I harm the one person alive who still dares to love me.
“You’re right. Sleep is important.”
He offers me a hand up, and it surprises me. Though he rips it away so quickly the touch is gone before I can savor it. He sets aside his shovel.
