When his vision returned, slowly expanding from a center point, filling in the black, he was lying flat on his back, shaking from head to foot, his mouth full of blood from biting down on his own tongue. A whiff of urine made him shamefully aware that he had wet himself.
Chae-Na’s face appeared above him, blotting out the clear blue sky. “Ko-Jin? Ko-Jin? Are you alright?”
He groaned and rolled over—fatigued, feverish. His eyes locked onto his hand and he was surprised to find it intact, seemingly unharmed.
Yarrow lay just beside him, wheezing into the sand with eyes clenched shut and tears running down his cheeks.
“You alive?” Ko-Jin breathed.
“Seems like.”
“Let’s not do that again,” Ko-Jin said, heaving lungfuls of air.
Jo-Kwan appeared, proffering him a glass of water. “Guess you do feel pain, after all.”
Ko-Jin grunted and pushed himself into a sitting position. The glass trembled as he raised it to his lips.
He’d been idiotic to think that, merely because he was athletic, he could withstand agony.
There were some things in life one could never be strong enough to overcome, that no amount of training could prepare for. It was a fact that terrified him.
Chapter Twelve
Sobs wracked Bray’s body and Peer clutched her closer as they rocked, kneeling on the shore. She could feel his own chest shaking and the wetness of his tears on her forehead. His broad, warm hand stroked up and down her back.
She’d not allowed herself to fully feel the loss of Adearre without her brother. They two, herself and Peer, were the people who had loved him best. They were his family. Peer alone could understand.
“I’m so sorry,” Bray managed to say at last, “that I wasn’t there.”
Peer shook his head, tickling her cheek with his beard. “Ain’t your fault.”
“It’s so strange,” Bray said, hiccupping. “I keep forgetting. I keep thinking, ‘why not just ask Adearre?’ or ‘you know who’s being oddly quiet?’ and then it hits me all over again. You know? Maybe it’s because I wasn’t there, because I never saw his body…”
Peer’s chest heaved. “I was there. I saw it. But I know what you mean. I forget, myself. I think, when someone so necessary to you goes, it’s easy to confuse your own existence for theirs—the two seem so connected.”
Bray snorted back a great, stuttering sob. She felt a bit foolish—was glad Yarrow had gone to speak with Ko-Jin and gather supplies, was glad the Chaskuan girl Peer had brought with them had made herself scarce—but she feared no judgment from her best friend, her brother.
She wiped her nose and pulled back from him. She surveyed the mere, in all of its stunning color. It had long been one of her favorite places. Now, however, it made her think of something she could no longer have—a new loss, too new to fully comprehend.
“I’ve been wanting to say something for a long while,” Peer said.
Bray turned her head back to him, studied his features. He appeared to have aged several years in the past weeks. His face was thin, his blue eyes old and weary.
“It’s too late now, really.” He gazed across the lake, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “But I loved Adearre.”
“Of course you did,” Bray said, patting his hand. “We both loved—”
“No.” He turned a fierce gaze on her. “I’m meaning to say I was in love with Adearre. Always was, since we were boys. Never said so, though. A regret I’ll bear till dying.”
Bray remained silent for a moment. There had been times when she had suspected. She wasn’t wholly surprised, really, only curious why he had never shared this piece of himself before. She took his hand in her own and laced her fingers through his.
“You have to know I wouldn’t care—I don’t care—that you…”
The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Prefer men,” he whispered, finishing her sentence. A small smile crossed his lips. “I never said it out loud afore.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Afraid, I guess. It was there, on my lips, but I never could get the blighted words out. Adearre always made it look so easy—he just was what he was. I didn’t know how to be like that.” He grimaced down at the ground. “I told you ’bout that time my foster da beat the shit out of me? The time he broke the bones round my eye?” Bray nodded. “I never told you why. He’d found me with a boy. We weren’t really doing nothing, we were little. But he was furious. Said I was a perversion, that twisted spirits can’t rise—that the blighter gets ’em when they die. That if I wanted my spirit to live on, I had to get sick thoughts out of my head. Be normal.”
Bray gritted her teeth, irate on his behalf. What a horrid thing to say to a child!
He pulled her closer, wrapping a warm arm around her shoulder. Bray was growing uncomfortable with the contact, but she made herself bear it. This was her Peer, after all, and he needed the comfort.
“I knew you’d understand,” he said. “Most wouldn’t, but you know what it’s like, being twisted by a parent figure.”
Bray shied from his implication mentally—she’d long ago stopped thinking of her uncle. There was no purpose in lingering on the pains of the past.
The lake water broke rhythmically against the shore and Bray felt, suddenly, bone-weary. Like she could sleep for an eternity. She was tempted to ask Peer what he had gone through—by the look of him it had been harrowing—but she determined to wait. They’d had enough hurt for one day.
Peer released her and glanced around. “Where’d Su-Hwan go?”
Bray gestured to the west. “I think she wandered over that way.”
Peer held out a hand and hauled her to her feet. “Might as well start gatherin’ wood.”
By the time Yarrow appeared with bundles of supplies, they had a small fire piping smoke into the bleeding twilight sky. Bray leaned in and let the warmth kiss her hands, her numb fingers. She observed Yarrow covertly as he deposited their supplies on the shore. He reached into a coat pocket and extracted a long slim box, unwrapped the paper and ribbon that bound it, and produced a fine pair of gentleman’s gloves, longer than was currently the fashion.
“You bought new gloves?” she asked, by way of greeting.
He didn’t look up at her, but began sliding them onto his hands. “If I’m to wear gloves always, I needed a pair with greater flexibility, ones that tuck into a sleeve so my wrist isn’t bare.”
Bray opened her mouth to respond, but could think of nothing to say. The guilt of what he’d given for her sake felt like a stone lodged in her stomach. She wished he’d look up and meet her eye.
Peer and his young friend returned with additional wood. Bray studied the girl—she was Elevated, and given that she was here, presumably on their side. What a wealth of information she might be.
Peer sifted through the bags and set about making them supper. Bray watched him and felt herself smiling at the ordinariness of the sight. Peer had always cooked when they camped. He said that she and Adearre lacked basic culinary competency. When he rolled up his sleeves to get to work, however, she gasped.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked, leaping to her feet for a closer inspection.
Peer colored. “Nothing. Just…Quade.”
Bray grabbed him by the wrist. His forearm was crisscrossed with angry slashes. She sniffed and caught the sweet, putrid stench of infection.
Yarrow approached from behind. “I can help.”
Peer set his jaw in a way that Bray knew well—he was embarrassed—but he said nothing as Yarrow held his arm in his own gloved hands.
Bray watched in fascination as a warm yellow light filled the space between Yarrow’s palm and Peer’s arm. That spiritly glow illuminated Yarrow’s face, flickered in his gray eyes. Bray sucked in a breath. Spirits, he was beautiful.
The gashes on Peer’s arm shrunk, like water running down a grate, until nothing at all remained. The skin bore the slightest of scars, white as if long si
nce healed.
Peer whistled. “Ah, thanks…mate.”
“Was it torture?” Bray whispered.
Peer, again looking uneasy, made a noncommittal gesture. “Of a sort.”
“He would not label it as such,” Su-Hwan said, speaking for the first time in Bray’s hearing. The girl’s voice had an eerily detached quality, and her face seemed not to move as she spoke.
“What do you mean?” Yarrow asked.
“This is merely a hypothesis,” Su-Hwan said, evenly. “But I believe that Quade has a fetishistic inclination towards pain. Specifically, I think that he is sexually aroused by causing someone physical harm and forcing them to enjoy it. I believe he sees it as a sort of bonding experience.”
Bray’s nose wrinkled. “Blighter, that’s sick…”
Peer swallowed. “Makes sense. He was damn near fondling—” He took a shaky breath, his cheeks flaming. “Could we maybe not talk on it?”
Bray patted his shoulder. “Of course.” She turned to Su-Hwan. “But I’d love to hear anything else you can tell us about Quade and the inner workings of his operation.”
Over the next hour, as darkness well and truly fell, Bray quizzed Su-Hwan on all facets of life as an Elevated. It seemed that most of them were not privy to Quade’s intentions, but any intelligence could prove useful.
“Peer tells me that you can turn off a Chisanta’s gift, you and another Elevated. Do you need to be close to the person to do so?”
Su-Hwan’s dark gaze was uncommonly direct. “Yes, within eyesight. Though, Whythe and I do not have exactly the same gift. Mine is more precise; if a person has two gifts, for example, I can cancel one and not the other. However, I must know what ability a person has first. Whythe’s gift has no such restriction, but is also less exact—more of a general blotting effect, though he can choose to exclude people—Quade, for example. We were never permitted to remove his gift, for obvious reasons.”
Bray rubbed her eyes. “Interesting…” Though ‘unsettling’ might have been the better word. That this girl could take her phasing away was a disquieting fact.
Nearby, Bray heard the timbre of Yarrow’s voice as he and Peer pored over the transcription of the modern-day Fifth, Peer translating the parts of the text that Yarrow couldn’t read.
Bray, out of questions for the time being and growing cold, stood in search of blankets. She paused as she passed Yarrow and Peer—they were laughing, a friendliness between them she had not seen before. It warmed her, that these two men she loved so well were at last getting along.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
Yarrow wiped an eye. “Peer was just telling me some of the creative translations he left for Quade.”
Peer’s grin faltered. “I did translate one for him accurately. I regret it, but I was just…” he trailed off, but his hand clasped his recently injured forearm.
“What did it say?” Yarrow asked, his tone kind.
“The mad man shall be bested by the weapon of Lim-Po.”
Yarrow’s brows shot up and his mouth quirked.
Su-Hwan, whom Bray had not heard approach, moved behind Peer to read over his shoulder. “That explains why he’s exhuming Lim-Po’s body.”
Yarrow, unexpectedly, burst into mad gales of laughter, the sound loud in the quiet of the evening. Bray and Peer exchanged nonplussed expressions.
“What’s funny? Is his weapon not buried with him?” Bray asked.
Yarrow shook his head, looking around at them as if surprised they couldn’t see the joke. “Lim-Po was a philosopher, I doubt his sword meant much to him. Aren’t you familiar with his most famous quote? ‘In all of life’s battles, truth is my sword and knowledge my shield.’ Trust an archeologist to go digging for a metaphor.”
Bray frowned. “So, the key to taking Quade down is…the truth?
Peer snorted. “Couldn’t vague it up a bit more?”
Yarrow flipped through the transcripts, the crease between his brows marking his return to seriousness. “We cannot be certain the ‘mad man’ is Quade, though it is likely. The Fifth are generally more concerned with what is happening around them, and Quade has certainly gained power through lies, so truth being his weakness is a reasonable conclusion. The question is, which piece of information is the chink in his armor?”
“What is ‘the first’ do you think?” Su-Hwan asked, gazing over Yarrow’s shoulder. “Might it be the first fifty?”
Yarrow glanced up at her approvingly. “That was my thought as well, though I cannot be certain.”
Bray’s lips pursed skeptically. The first fifty? The stories of the first class of Chisanta were many and varied, and all nothing more than legend. For all of written history, the Chisanta had existed. For her money, she’d bet they always had.
Yarrow shut the book and stared into the embers of their fire. “We may have to go our separate ways for a time. I can look into this prophecy while you travel back to Cagsglow.”
Bray didn’t like that much at all. What was the point of chasing myths? She’d only just gotten Peer back, she couldn’t tolerate the thought of losing Yarrow. “I had a different idea,” she said, pulling an aged envelope from her coat pocket. “I’d like to stop by 2205 Gary Street, Leeson.”
“Quade’s mother?” Yarrow asked.
Peer quirked a sandy brow. “Spirits, I’d hate to think what kind of person could spawn a Quade.”
Bray shook her head, thinking of the Asher family photograph. They’d looked like nice, normal people. “She may or may not still be there, but it’s worth a visit.”
“What do you hope to find?” Su-Hwan asked.
Bray eyed the girl, but saw nothing other than bland curiosity on her pixie face. “A weakness. Everyone has one.”
“I’ll meet you in Leeson, then,” Yarrow said, standing and rolling his shoulders. “After I’ve searched south of Nerra for the first.”
They said their goodnights and each claimed a blanket. Bray went to a nearby copse to relieve herself. She then meandered to the lake, and though the water was icy, she splashed her cheeks. For a long moment, she stared at her reflection in the water, her hands trembling. Her visage appeared ghostly in the dark water.
“You nearly died today,” she whispered to her rippling image. Her heart thudded in her chest, as if to prove its survival. A bitter wind swept across the water, chilling her to the core. She felt the goose flesh rise on her arms and savored the sensation, terribly happy to be alive.
By the time she returned to the camp, all three of her companions were bundled in blankets and lying down. She tip-toed past, smiling as she caught the commonplace sound of Peer’s steady snores.
“Bray, what are you doing?” Yarrow whispered, as she lay down beside him and slipped within his blankets. “I don’t want to risk brushing skin. I couldn’t cause you pain like that.”
“Keep your gloves on and your coat buttoned then,” she whispered, wiggling closer. His body heat had already created a wonderful cocoon of warmth, the smell of him comfortingly familiar.
He pulled his gloves back on, then accepted her into his embrace, though his soft gray eyes still showed hesitation—hesitation, and a deeper hurt that cut her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his coat.
His gloved finger hooked her chin, raising her face to meet his eye. “Don’t think I have any regret. I don’t. I’ve never been more afraid in my life than when I thought you were…”
“It was a massive sacrifice, Yarrow. I don’t know how I could ever begin the thank you.”
His arms clutched her tighter to him. “Just keep breathing. I could bear to lose a lot of things, but never you.”
Bray found herself staring at his lips. She’d never appreciated just how perfect they were until that moment. She inched forward, thinking she could stand any amount of pain for a kiss just then. Yarrow caught her face in his hand, the leather of his gloves cool against her skin.
“You don’t know how much it would hurt,” he whis
pered.
“Neither do you,” she said, grabbing his wrist and wrenching it away. She rolled on top of him and felt his whole body tense beneath her. With hands on the ground on either side of his head she lowered her mouth to his.
She was an instant from contact, could feel the heat of his breath, when suddenly there was a resounding pop and she collapsed into empty blankets. She growled in frustration, scanning the shadows for his form.
“I do know,” his voice whispered from behind her. He stepped to the edge of their makeshift bed and went to his knees, his mien utterly solemn. “Ko-Jin and I put that theory to the test. I don’t even have words to describe that level of pain.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “And what did Ko-Jin think?”
“He wet himself.”
She let out a loud laugh before she could stop herself, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, inappropriate reaction.”
Yarrow’s eyes danced and his lip twitched. “If you can’t laugh at a grown man pissing himself, what can you laugh at?” He visibly struggled to regain his seriousness. “Probably don’t mention it to him though.”
Bray sighed and patted the blankets. “Alright, come back to bed. I won’t try it again.”
“We can never be like we were,” he said, sadness coating each syllable. “I need your word. I won’t be able to sleep by you otherwise.”
She thought of the time, not so long ago, when she had asked Yarrow for the very same thing—his word. She fought back a smirk. “I make it a general practice to defer to wisdom and experience.”
He laughed at hearing his own words thrown back at him and yielded, returning to their hollow of blankets. Bray rested her head on his chest and listened to the rhythm of his breathing. She watched the lazy progress of a firefly, but within she kept hearing his recent proclamation: We can never be like we were. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. It was so utterly unfair…
His hand traced soothing circles into her back through the fabric of her coat and dress. She consoled herself—at least they had that, contact through the veil of fabric. Then inspiration struck.
The Complete Marked Series Box Set Page 53
