Page 21 of Shadows of Perl
He says us, but he means him. If Knox and Willam saw my condition as freedom for themselves, Yagrin never would have lied about why we came in the first place.
“You’re so good at manipulating people, you’ve forgotten how to tell the truth.”
My mother is not dead. She may be held against her will somewhere, or running deep off the grid, but she is alive. I know it in my gut.
Someone clears their throat.
Knox.
Shit.
“Dinner’s ready.” Her glare travels from Yagrin, to me, and back to him.
I walk to the stairs, unsure how much Knox heard. Yagrin follows. At the foot of the stairs, the front door is open. Willam stands there; his gaze moves past me, to Yagrin behind me—and I realize the open door is for him.
“Your business is yours, but we can’t live with someone we don’t trust. Be on your way, sir,” Willam says to Yagrin.
“Come with me, please, Quell,” Yagrin pleads. Willam tosses his bag at him. I expect him to beg them to let him explain himself. But he picks it up quickly, suddenly in a hurry.
“Your choice, girl.” Willam indicates my bag nearby on the floor as well. Knox folds her arms. A crowd of curious eyes watch from the dining area, silent.
I can leave too, if I want. They won’t stop me. Or punish me for lying about why we were here. A clean break.
I grab the door, and Yagrin’s gaze widens in anticipation.
Six
Jordan
The entire way back to Headquarters, the fate of the Order hangs over me like a guillotine blade.
As the glass doors of Wexton MidCenter Hotel swish open, I hurry inside. If the Sphere bleeds out, magic as we know it is done. Then what was it all for? The years enduring my father, surviving Beaulah. The raids, the body counts. It’s all meaningless if our world ceases to exist. My fingers find the commissioning coin in the slip of fabric at my collar, and I hold it tight in my fist.
“Afternoon, Mr. Wexton,” says the concierge. “Can I prepare the penthouse for you?”
“No need, Joel, but thank you.” I unfurl the scarf that wound around my neck thanks to the overly chummy Chicago wind. I summon an elevator going down, but one going up arrives instead. Guests shimmy out, then more fill it back up, and I wedge myself in a corner, unable to scrub the Darkbearer descendant’s boldness from my mind. Our world is in danger.
She did this. The girl with the perfect poise and soft brown eyes. Who spent her short time near the Order defying every rule that holds it together. So much power and yet so disloyal and reckless. If she’d never bound with toushana, my brother wouldn’t have anyone to use to exact his revenge.
“Which floor?” someone asks.
“Eighty.” I turn the talon-shaped key in my pocket. The elevator climbs, and with each stop, it empties. Thinking of Quell summons memories I’d like to forget. The way she effortlessly commanded the attention of every room she entered, her crooked smile and her mouth tipped to the side, especially when she was nervous. The feel of her hair tangled around my fingers. The way I wanted that long night we spent practicing for Second Rite to last forever. We’d stayed up until morning, swapping stories and joking about how the maezres all seemed a bit too uptight.
I let the wall hold me up; my neck flushes with heat, and shame burns my chest. That sugary grin she wore the first time I let her have a green candy, all it took for me to share that seemingly small part of myself. Despite all my insistence she be perfect, the thrilling moments she allowed herself to not care about the Order, her last name, or any of it. When we danced. When we stayed out past curfew. When she’d discovered whatever crimes she believed her grandmother had done, all she wanted was to run away from everything with me.
My heart turns like a stone in my chest. Nothing seemed to matter to me either when I held her. Not the Order. Not my family. Not my magic. Not my past. The thought sickens me.
And now she’s out there with my brother. Roughing it together, relying on one another to survive, learning more about each other, trusting each other for months while trying to destroy the Sphere. My jaw clenches. They’re both going to pay for their decisions, but especially him. Hunting them down is the only thing that matters now. The Dragunhead has to reassign me.
Once the car is completely empty, I press my talon key to the button panel, and a black button with a talon sigil appears. I slip my key in and the elevator plummets.
Its doors open and the glass entrance to Headquarters gleams in front of me. I skim past the security barriers with a flash of my talon coin, my mask seeping through and hardening on my skin. The center of Dragun operations is an underground maze of offices and tunnels that run beneath the city. The sterile lobby is sparsely dotted with furniture and people. Draguns, readying for the day’s assignments, hustle in every direction, daggers at their belts, file folders in their hands, coins at their throats. I wave to a choice few. There’s a single desk in the lobby: a second security barrier of sorts that my talon key won’t get me past. I march toward it. My shoes clack against the glossed floor, but each step feels like a quake in my chest. He is going to listen to me.
Even though I’ve worked for the Dragunhead for only a few months, I’ve done what he’s asked of me exactly how he’s asked it, exceeding his expectations. My second raid I flushed out a safe house suspected to house Darkbearers in Oralia territory and found a basement full of enhancer stones and boxes of compacts full of transport powder. I confiscated it all and then I found their supplier and brought him in, too. I’ve proven myself quickly. My stomach sinks and my pace slows as I realize that doesn’t always matter…It wasn’t until I could perform certain magic flawlessly that my own father was willing to have a conversation with me one-on-one. And it took even longer before he would bring me around anyone he knew. But the Dragunhead strikes me as much more reasonable.
At the desk, Maei, the Dragunhead’s secretary, signs for a crate of fire daggers, clicking the pen on her clipboard before standing to greet me.
“Unload in the warehouse?” the shipper asks. She sends him off with a nod. The Dragunhead’s grand office doors, ornately carved with each House’s sigil, loom behind her.