The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  With a good deal of unnecessary shoving, she was guided onto the plank and pushed forward. She considered allowing herself to fall over the side, into the churning sea below. But what would that accomplish? Nothing at all.

  The cruiser must have been recently commissioned. Its impressive expanse of gleaming wood had a definite aura of newness. Bray was shoved into the shadow of the sail, a massive cream sheet against the sky. She did not have long to admire the grandness of the ship before she was forced below deck and into a cell.

  Vendra followed them, keeping her pistol pointed at Yarrow’s head. She handed the weapon to a young Adourran lad. “Take it in shifts. He needs to be at gunpoint at all times. If she does anything, shoot him.”

  Then she reached into a satchel strapped round her waist and extracted a black leather case, now familiar to them all. They were to be drugged again. Bray’s hope deflated. Even without the sphere, she would be irremediably trapped in fog and nightmares.

  “Come here,” she said to Ko-Jin. His mouth clenched and eyes flashed, as though he might defy her. His handsome face set in obstinate lines, but then he stood and crossed the small space. He even rolled up his sleeve for her.

  Bray watched as she stabbed Ko-Jin’s arm and pushed the horrible poison into his veins. Vendra moved to Yarrow’s cell next. She didn’t have to ask this time. He came, clutching his stomach wound, and allowed her to drug him.

  Yarrow looked right into the Adourran woman’s eyes with a hatred and a determination Bray had never seen there before. “You will pay, for what you have taken,” he said, his voice cold enough even to match her own.

  Vendra smirked, but did not rise to the taunt. She clearly found his threat too empty to concern her.

  She moved on to Bray, who summoned a look of such intense loathing that Vendra laughed. The sound made Bray sick to her stomach.

  The woman grabbed her arm through the bars with needless force and stabbed her with the needle. Bray felt the cold liquid surge into her body, and knew what its effect would be.

  Vendra did not let go of her arm. Fingers dug into her flesh, but Bray did not flinch.

  “I hope you know, as the greatest liability, you will be the first to die,” Vendra said. “Will you allow yourself to be killed to save your boyfriend?”

  She expected no answer and Bray gave her none. Her tone had been taunting, but Bray suspected she spoke the truth. They would kill her. And if she did not allow them to, they would kill Yarrow. She wondered, in that moment, what she would do.

  Vendra stalked across the cabin and proceeded up the stairs. The brig hung in shadow and the drugs seeped into her system quickly. Taken with the gentle rocking of the ship, Bray’s eyelids already began to droop.

  She sunk to the floor in an awkward heap. Here she was again, captive and drugged. And what had they gained? Surely nothing that could compensate for what they had lost.

  Her mind shied away from Adearre’s death. It was like an open wound. Like a bright light to unadjusted eyes. She knew she would have to come to terms with it in time, but just then it seemed too absurd to be true. How could he be dead—gone? He was so young and smart and kind. A good man, a far better person than herself. He had been right, entirely right, about her methods in the field. And she would never have the chance to confess that to him—to ask his forgiveness.

  She imagined him, his bright honey eyes, his wide white smile, saying to her, “I cannot pardon sins. Only you can forgive yourself. And if you are truly repentant your spirit will lighten once again.”

  He would have said something like that. Adearre had believed in such things. He had believed in the goodness of man, in his ability to change himself. About that, he had been wrong, she thought. His very absence was proof. Man was not good. Man killed.

  A popping sound wrenched Bray from her thoughts; her head shot up. Yarrow no longer crouched in his cell. Inexplicably, he was standing behind their Chaskuan guard. He rammed the boys head into the cage that had, moments before, held him. The boy crumpled to the ground, out cold.

  Bray felt a surge of pride. That move was Chiona through and through; a Cosanta didn’t act with such speedy aggression.

  Pop! Yarrow no longer stood beside the inert body of his guard. He vanished from sight then appeared again, in Ko-Jin’s cell.

  “Yarrow… how?” Ko-Jin asked.

  “I’ve received a second gift,” Yarrow said, though his tone was flat and bleak. He took hold of Ko-Jin and, with another burst of noise, they disappeared. In an instant, the two of them reappeared in Bray’s own cell.

  Ko-Jin looked around, startled. “You can teleport? How far?”

  “As far as I like,” Yarrow said. “To the Cape in an instant. Shall we?”

  Ko-Jin laughed and Bray, though her mind had gone fuzzy, pulled herself back to her feet.

  “Why did you wait?” Ko-Jin asked.

  “I didn’t want her to kill that nice couple,” Yarrow said. “It seemed the least I could do after she sewed me up.”

  “Really?” Bray asked, her voice even sounded slurred in her own ears. “You can take us that far?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take us to the Isle,” Bray said, leaning into Yarrow and taking a firm hold of his hand.

  “Why?” Ko-Jin asked. “Why not the Cape?”

  “Because of Kellar Samgrid,” Bray said around a fat tongue.

  “Who?”

  “He’s the only living Chisanta with a second gift—or was,” Bray said.

  “So?” Ko-Jin asked.

  “He can heal…” Bray yawned loudly, “…for Yarrow.”

  Yarrow held onto her tightly, and, she presumed, onto Ko-Jin as well. “Very well,” he said, “to the Chiona Isle.”

  Bray leaned into him and felt the floor of the cell vanish beneath her. For a moment, she spun into nothingness. She imagined herself shooting through the air, though this was a fancy. In reality, she had been in one place and, in another moment, she was elsewhere.

  The sunshine of the Isle glared down at them. Bray felt the dry heat against her skin, welcome and familiar. Though she clung to consciousness with mental fingertips, she knew where she was. The familiar swirling pattern of the stones beneath her, the palm trees, the spicy smells in the air. This was the main courtyard of the Chiona Temple.

  Cries of alarm erupted around her. She did not wonder at them—three people appearing out of nowhere must have been a startling sight, let alone three people in a state such as they.

  The Chiona crowded in, the wash of questions running over her like a summer rain. One voice stood out, though—Dolla.

  “Bray?” she demanded. She pushed her way through the bystanders. “Great Spirits, Bray, what has happened?”

  “We need Kellar,” Bray managed to say, though she felt as one just on the cusp of sleep.

  “Are you injured?” a voice asked. Not Dolla, but familiar. She could not place it.

  “No,” Bray said, “Yarrow…”

  “Spirits, look at that blood!”

  The din of voices made her head pound.

  A warm hand wrapped around Bray’s waist. She opened her eyes and focused. It was Dolla, her shorn white hair and sharp face the finest sight Bray could have asked for. Dolla was the closest thing to a parent Bray had.

  “What has happened, child?” Dolla asked.

  “Yarrow?” Bray said as she realized she was no longer touching him. Where was he?

  “He’s being treated. He will be well. What has happened?”

  It was Ko-Jin who answered. Bray was glad of it. She had so little energy. The fog closed in.

  “A man named Quade Asher has been kidnapping marked children these past ten years. He’s formed an army. He intends to conquer Trinitas.”

  The crowd must have grown since they had arrived, the babble now significantly louder. She heard the protests of disbelief, even several people asking, “What are Cosanta doing here?”

  It was incredible to Bray that the rest of her people
should not have progressed along with her. She had nearly forgotten that the two halves disliked each other. How could such a trivial thing matter when they now had a true enemy—a common enemy?

  “Bray?” Dolla asked, giving her a small shake.

  “Mm?”

  “This can’t be true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” Bray said with another yawn.

  “She needs sleep,” Ko-Jin’s voice said beside her. “She’s been given a strong sedative. I can explain everything; I won’t be able to rest for a long while, anyway.”

  “Very well,” Dolla said tartly. Clearly, she did not like being told what was best for Bray, certainly not by a Cosanta.

  “Tell me where to take her,” Ko-Jin said. Bray felt herself lifted off the ground and cradled in strong, familiar arms. She looked up at his weary face. “Look after Yarrow.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  He must have been guided by Dolla, because some short time later Bray found herself placed into a soft bed—gloriously soft. After so many weeks sleeping on a stone floor it felt like the clouds of the Spirits’ home.

  “Bray?” Dolla’s voice asked. Bray roused herself as best she could, opened her eyes. Spirits, but she just wanted to sleep!

  “You can tell the whole story later, but where are Peer and Adearre?”

  Bray felt a lance of pain to her chest, hot tears leaked from her eyes. Dolla’s face grew alarmed by her response. She must have thought them merely separated.

  “Very well, dear,” Dolla said. “I understand.”

  “Peer lives,” Bray managed to say. Dolla nodded and retreated. The door shut behind her with a soft click.

  Bray realized she had confessed Adearre’s death in just the same way Yarrow had. As a contrast from Peer. As if Peer had done something right and Adearre something wrong. As if he had committed the sin of dying.

  The tears continued to flow as she fell to sleep, the soft cloud of a bed not nearly heavenly enough to chase away the remorse-driven terrors that awaited her resting mind.

  She found herself in their beachside cave, preparing to undertake the ill-fated venture of stealing the sphere. She was saying her farewells. It snowed and the roar of the ocean and wind battered her ears. Adearre embraced her, a firm, friendly hand on the back, pulling her close. He smelt like…well, like him.

  He leaned in to whisper, tickled her ear with his breath. “Try not to kill, love. They are astray, not wicked.”

  How wrong you were, my friend.

  Epilogue

  Peer shrank away from the abrupt glare of sunlight as the sack was pulled from his head. He blinked, preferring the darkness. A black boot prodded his battered side, but rather than scoot back as the prodder intended, Peer glared up at the man and remained stationary.

  More boy than man.

  The lad had a set of violently blue eyes that couldn’t quite work in unison, the left seemingly having its own agenda. His face was round and boyish.

  “Where’ve you brought me?” Peer slurred around a heavy tongue.

  He scanned what he could of his surroundings through puffy, bleary eyes. They appeared to be at the entrance of a great balcony. Below he could hear the babble of a large crowd. The sun shone offensively in a clear sky.

  “You’re back at the ruin,” the round faced lad said.

  “Stop it, Mick. Don’t answer his questions,” a girl said in an unpleasantly nasal voice.

  Peer’s eyelids drooped, but he forced them open again.

  “Don’t see the harm,” the boy, Mick, said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Peer pulled himself up into a sitting position, though his stiff limbs protested every movement. He’d spent the last few weeks, since his failed escape attempt, thumping around in the back of a covered, horse-drawn cart. Those weeks had seemed like several lifetimes, each unbearable moment stretching its miserable fingers for an eternity. Dusty hardwood, thirst, darkness, and the rancor he felt towards his own heart, for ticking on despite the silencing of its brother.

  Peer searched the faces, seeking one in particular. “Isn’t Vendra here?” He spit out her name like the curse that it was.

  “What’s it matter to you?” the girl asked.

  It mattered a great deal. The thought of killing her was the only thing that motivated him to live, the only goal which parted the clouds in his mind. He’d snuff the life from her, take great pleasure in that moment when her spirit left her body.

  “And will it make you feel better, love?” Adearre’s voice asked.

  “Maybe,” Peer said, knowing it would not.

  “You know that I would not approve.”

  “Don’t see how it matters what you’d approve of. You’re dead. That’s the whole point,” his voice broke and his throat clenched.

  Mick shuffled his feet nearby. “Who’s he talking to?”

  The haughty girl gazed down at Peer with disgust etched in every line of her face. “His dead boyfriend. Tomal says he’s been doing it for weeks. He’s completely cracked.”

  The words ‘dead boyfriend’ scraped through Peer’s mind like a hoe through loose soil. He shot to his feet, wanting to break the girl’s neck, but the chains that bound him caused him to fall in a heavy heap.

  The girl snickered. The sound made Peer’s blood boil.

  “What were you going to do, love? Kill the girl? For what? Asserting, quite accurately, that I am dead?”

  Peer grunted and rolled over. He wiped drool from his chin.

  “Or was it the word ‘boyfriend’ that upset you?”

  “You weren’t that.”

  “No, I was not.”

  Peer’s lungs threatened to collapse in on themselves. He struggled to draw breath. “I loved you, though,” he whispered.

  “I know you did, love.”

  “But you…”

  Adearre sighed, his golden eyes sympathetic. “Perhaps I did not notice.”

  Peer exhaled through his nose and ran fingers through his growth of tangled hair. “Noticing things was your gift.”

  “I do not have an answer for you, love.” Adearre seemed to fade a bit. The drugs must be lessening. “I am a product of your mind, I only know what you do.”

  “Aye, but—”

  The door opened and Quade swept out onto the balcony, his clothes pristine and his dark hair slicked back gracefully from his handsome face. A young Chaskuan woman strode just behind him.

  Quade knelt before Peer with sympathetic eyes. “Peer Gelson, a pleasure to see you again.” Spirits, that voice! It penetrated the fog in his mind, suffused him with warmth. “I apologize for your living conditions of late. It was necessary, you see. If I kept you here, your friend might well have glided in here like a vapor and taken you away.”

  Peer exchanged a confused glance with Adearre. “What’s making him think she won’t still do?”

  Quade made a tent of his fingertips. “Oh, I am hoping that she does come.” He gestured for the Chaskuan girl to move closer. “Peer, I would like you to meet Su-Hwan.”

  Su-Hwan, a pretty girl of perhaps eighteen, bowed her head to Peer. Her face was a smooth, serious mask and there was something decidedly unsettling in her dark eyes.

  “Su-Hwan has recently received a most helpful gift,” Quade continued. “Show him, dear.”

  Peer felt a familiar, unpleasant stripping sensation, as if he’d just lost something essential. He tensed, his eyes darting about in search of the blue glow that still haunted his dreams. “The sphere?” he croaked.

  “No,” Quade soothed with his caramel voice. “Unfortunately the sphere has been lost. No, Su-Hwan can turn gifts off at will. Handy, wouldn’t you say?”

  A bubble of laughter traveled up from gut to throat. Peer wiped an eye and said to Adearre, “What’s he fearing? That I’ll get in some light reading?”

  “No indeed, Master Gelson.” Quade gestured to Su-Hwan and the sensation winked out. “It is, in fact, your unique ability I’d like to discuss.”

>   The crowd below, audible but not visible from Peer’s vantage, began to chant the same four syllables over and over again. Peer could not discern the word they spoke, but the fervency of the uncountable voices made his skin crawl.

  “You see, I have a singular problem.” Quade motioned for one of the marked teens to pass him a hefty tome. He flipped open a few pages and slid the volume to Peer. “I did not know it at the time, but my darling Fifth was fluent in Deltish. You are familiar with the tongue?” Peer set his jaw and answered with a glare. “And now,” Quade continued, “I have a great deal of information in a language that no one speaks. But you,” Quade unleashed the full power of his gaze, “can read it.”

  Peer gritted his teeth. Quade’s charm pooled into him, but it mixed poorly with the deep-rooted loathing that Peer felt for the man—like a cocktail of honey and strychnine.

  “I would be willing to negotiate better living conditions. What, Master Gelson, do you want?”

  What am I wanting? Peer glanced at his friend. How he loved those amber eyes. What he wanted was for Adearre to be alive. He wanted to hear his voice—his real voice. He wanted another chance to be the kind of man that could earn his love. He wanted to stop seeing, every time he fell asleep, Adearre’s body arched and suspended in that moment before he fell to his death.

  “What I’m wanting…” Peer said slowly, his eyes narrowed.

  “Yes,” Quade encouraged.

  The chanting below had grown louder so Peer drew close. Quade leaned in as well. Peer cleared his throat and continued, “Is for you to go fuck yourself.”

  Everyone in earshot, save for Quade himself, drew in a startled breath. Peer’s chest heaved, as if that mere statement had expended a great amount of energy. He waited for the repercussion, for a blow of some kind.

  The man merely smiled. “We shall discuss this further at another time. I must make my address now.”

  Quade stood and walked purposefully to the edge of the balcony. The chanting broke off and clamorous cheers assaulted Peer’s senses. Quade gestured for them to quiet and they did so with unnatural quickness.