Page 146 of House of Marionne

“You are right, she’s dead. I lied about sabbatical because I was asked to. That’s the end of that topic.” She sighs, exasperated. “I wish you no ill, child, and I understand you have questions, but my patience is wearing thin. I am not your enemy. What else do you want to know?”

“So that’s what the Order does, then? Just kills whomever gets in their way?” I feel sick. “Why keep records?”

“Because . . .” Now it’s Grandmom who breaks our gaze. “I began to notice changes in the Sphere as I cleaned up things.”

I cringe at her word choice—“cleaning” as if she did a favor, picked up someone’s mess. She murdered them.

“The bookshelf being visible was an oversight. I received a delivery today that I had to follow up on immediately and neglected to disguise it.” Grandmom’s lip flinches. “And for the Perl girls. They have been snooping around safe houses for some reason, on Beaulah’s orders, I suspect, and they got a little too close to the truth of the Third Rite tracer I have in place. If that got out, it would dissolve our House on the spot. All the other Houses would turn against me. Even our own. I had to do something. And they were already rumored to have toushana, so.”

“You build a fortress around yourself to protect your toushana but condemn others for theirs. You’re a hypocrite and a liar. A monster. No wonder Mom left.”

“I’ve heard enough of this. Bind with your proper magic at Cotillion. You will go through with everything as planned. It’ll bury your toushana and we can put this nonsense behind us!”

That’s been my plan the entire time. But how can I stay here now, knowing all this?

“No, I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I won’t!”

She snatches me up by my collar, but I manage to pull myself away. I grab a letter opener from the table. It’s the sharpest thing I see. The air ripples black from her fingertip. The letter opener rots in my grip. I look for something else. A book. A vase. I kick an ottoman into her path as she pursues, but with the stroke of her hand, that turns to black dust, too.

“I have done nothing but give you more than you’ve ever had!” She reaches me and grabs me by my neck like Jordan did. Everything in me stills, her magic paralyzing me head to toe. “Jordan would have killed you if I’d ordered him to. Don’t you doubt otherwise. I saved your life tonight and you would judge me? As if I’m anything but in your corner! Our corner.” She pulls open a door and shoves me inside a small room. I hit the ground hard, pain rippling up my spine.

“You will do as I’ve said or I’ll turn you over to the Dragunhead and let his flock have its way with you. Your choice.” The door slams.

I curl up in a ball and crumple on the floor of my cage.

This has to be worse than death.

FORTY-SIX

Time is an illusion in a world without windows. Darkness has become my blanket. I’ve cried so long the ache of sorrow wrings dry as bone. At a certain point, the desire to cry was lost, buried by the desire to feel nothing at all. To be nothing at all.

Meals have come, but I’ve refused them all. I won’t take anything else from her hands.

Anger simmers through me the more I stew, exhausting and consuming. Sleep is how I quiet it. But my mind is awake now in the dark with no respite in sight. I rise from the covers I’ve tossed and turned in and switch on a lamp. The room Grandmom locked me in used to be a bedroom of some sort. It’s sparse, with tiny indentations of furniture that used to live here imprinted on the carpet like ghost footprints. Why she has a bedroom off her bedroom, I don’t understand.

I run my fingers over the carved edges of a stately dresser, lamenting the choices she has set before me. I call to my toushana, just to feel something powerful. Jordan’s face flits through my memory and my toushana groans to be quenched. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to the forest. What I wouldn’t give to go there now, even if it wasn’t in secret.

I hate Grandmom for doing this to me. For personally knowing what it’s like and still forcing me into this. And Jordan. I see his face, and I ache deeper somehow. I don’t have words for what I feel for him. The wound is too raw. The hurt is too fresh.

I pull open one of the drawers on Grandmom’s fine furniture and slam it shut. The clatter of the wood against itself satisfies. My toushana nudges me, pleading to be free, and I let it. I trace my fingers along Grandmom’s antique cabinet, leaving a trail of blackened wood in their wake. Once the wood top is seared like it’s been caught in a swarm of flames, I let my toushana loose on its legs. It buckles under the weight of itself and crashes to the floor. I have no idea what this means to her. How long it’s been here. How special it is. But I savor the broken wood at my feet.

I look for something else. Locked behind these bars of rage, my toushana’s appetite grows. The mantel on the fireplace is ornately carved. I pull it down, decaying it until it’s mangled and unrecognizable. The chair and desk are short work. The carpet, a bookshelf, a rocking chair, a porcelain statue. I even try the walls. I would burn this whole place into a heap of ash in this moment if I was outside this room. A scream rips from my throat, and I claw at the wall that should be a door.

“Let me out!” I bang and bang, but there’s no use. My chest heaves. Ash from my destructive handiwork swarms in the air, and my heart delights in it like freshly fallen snow. My toushana flutters in me with satisfaction, and an odd sensation tugs at me as I realize something.

“You’ve never let me down,” I say to my toushana, and she answers in a wave of chill.

My first memory of meeting her is when I was eight. I was about to cross the street as a car was speeding past. My toushana unfurled in my bones so sharply I had to stop from the pain. The car rushed past, just missing me. I was in such a panic I hid behind another parked vehicle, trying to catch my breath. I was so wound up, just sitting there trying to calm down, I destroyed half of that sedan. Though we said goodbye to that city, that school, in that moment my toushana kept me safe.

She’s never lashed out at me. She was calm when I emerged. Helpful when I stole the bauble for Octos to make my diadem look acceptable. She was wary of my dagger as I worked toward honing because she could sense I was intending to use it destructively. But my toushana has never hurt or lied to me. She is the only thing that’s been true to me.

She is fury and determination, insatiable at times, and intensely powerful.

She is also destruction.

---