Page 143 of House of Marionne

Devastation.

My heart stops.

He knows.

“Quell?” he whispers.

I glance at the door. Running would never work. “Please,” I utter, vulnerability shattering every urge of reason. I chill entirely, my toushana taking over fully, drowning my will to fight. A lump rises in my throat and my heart rages as I stumble back to put more space between us. But there’s nowhere to go.

His eyes flicker with knowing. He can feel me panicking. There’s no way I could deny it even if I wanted to. A tear steals down my cheek. “Please, anything. Just say something, Jordan.” My voice is as broken and weak as I am.

He shakes his head and rakes a hand through his hair, pacing.

“You . . . lied?” He grasps for words, his throat bobs, his eyes glassy. “I . . .” He shakes his head. Then his nostrils flare. “I thought you were different. I thought . . .” But he chokes on the next words and turns his back to me.

“Jordan.” I chance reaching for him, grabbing him with my cold hand. But when he turns, his pained expression has hardened to a glare. His chest heaves, but his brows draw together, unable to hide his grief, his eyes a watery sea. He stares at my hand on his arm. I snatch it away, stepping backward.

He steps toward me.

And I can feel the distance between us closing like a crush on my throat. His edges harden, anger mangling the hurt in his expression. And the chill in my bones seizes me, not from my toushana but from bloodcurdling fear.

He steps toward me again, and fear prickles my spine. Jordan’s mask bleeds through his skin and his jaw clenches. I look for some glimpse of the boy who held my hand. Who gave me green candies and saw more in me than, at the time, I saw in myself.

But that boy is gone.

Only a Dragun stands before me now.

“Jordan, please.”

He meets my eyes for the first time since our touch, but in his gaze is a ghost of the person I knew, hiding beneath a veil. Dying an excruciating death.

He’s going to kill me.

The space between his breaths shortens.

“I only did it to protect myself. All of this was to—”

His lip quivers as he summons his magic. Black dances on his fingertips.

“Jordan, I love you. And you love me!” My voice tears and his gaze falls. “I know those are big heavy words, and it’s confusing and feels wrong in a way. But it doesn’t change that you do. You love me, Jordan Wexton, I dare you to deny it.” I fight out the words between tears. “Please don’t do this,” I breathe.

Jordan looks away once more.

Before his hand closes around my throat.

And the world disappears.

PART FIVE

FORTY-FIVE

I blink, wondering if this is the afterlife, black fog around me. But then I breathe, realizing my lungs fill. I am not dead. Jordan surrounds me in a cloud of black, the world hardly perceivable through its mist. His hand is tight around my neck, not squeezing but holding me there, and however it works, I can’t move.

There is no love in his touch. Not anymore. But because I’m stubborn and hurt and lost, so lost, his name lingers on my lips. I want him to look at me one more time with the sunrise in his eyes. To promise me after this dark night there is a morning. My entire body is stiff when the air clears and Grandmom’s double doors appear.

His grip on me makes it impossible to do more than think. I try to glimpse his features to glean what he’s doing. He didn’t take me to Beaulah.

“What is this?” Grandmom looks past us, down the hall in both directions. But there’s no one else up here. No witnesses to my impending death.

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