The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  Perhaps this had happened long ago, and he had simply not noticed. But knowing that he no longer bled for the past mattered to him. It made him realize that he need not be so guarded in the present.

  Yarrow leaned against the curved hull of the ship. His stockinged feet were pressed to the thin mattress of his cot, and in his lap he cradled a book. Through the back of his shirt, he could feel the rough wood of the bulwark. The ship rocked lullingly.

  Above, the planking creaked as a crew member crossed the deck. Bray bent to peer through the porthole, out at the unchanging sea. She sighed, straightened, and set to pacing their minute cabin once again.

  Yarrow hid his smile and turned a page in his volume.

  “I’m going insane,” she said, not for the first time.

  “Perhaps you should vary your rotation?” he suggested, spinning his fingers in a circle, the opposite direction of her current route.

  “Pace counterclockwise?” she asked, jerking her hand through her hair. “Are you psychotic?” She quirked a smile at him. “No, but truly, I think I’m going insane.” She extended her arms laterally, a hand on each wall, to demonstrate the tightness of the space. Given her gift, he supposed it was logical that she would hate to feel boxed in.

  “Perhaps if you went up to the deck but didn’t speak to anyone?”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t speak to me. No contact, no hearing his—”

  She cut short and swung her head from side to side, as if trying to shake his name from her mind. Yarrow did likewise and endeavored to steer clear of dangerous thoughts.

  “I’ve a second book you could read,” he said, also not for the first time.

  She narrowed her eyes at his offer. “Are you trying to be unhelpful?”

  He laughed. She had warned him when they boarded—she had said that small spaces made her uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable tended to make her mean. Keeping his promise to not take offense had, thus far, been effortless. She was entertaining in this state.

  He felt more than amused, however. Seeing her so rattled was like peeling back someone’s outer guise and peeking into their secret self. He was witnessing something private, a face she did not show strangers. Personal, intimate, and—he could not help but add—rather adorable, though he would not say so aloud. She would doubtless hit him.

  Bray heaved a sigh. “I think there’s nothing for it.” She trod over to the small trunk in the corner of the room, tucked beneath the washstand. They’d checked its contents on their first afternoon aboard: a bottle of spiced rum, a dubious-looking deck of cards, a ratty blanket, a book of Adourran poetry, three candlesticks, and a tin of jerky. She had cautioned against the use of any of these items, for hygienic reasons. He’d had to agree; even the volume of poems had a certain sticky appearance that had dimmed his curiosity.

  “I thought you said they would charge us a fortune if we drank that,” he said with an arched brow. She muscled the cork from the bottle. It popped free, and a pungent, spiced tang tickled his nose.

  With slightly shaking hands, she poured the liquor into two tin mugs. “Yes, well, desperate times,” she answered, extending the second cup to him. He took an uncertain whiff.

  She raised her cup. “Happy New Year. Here’s hoping the Year of the Stag won’t be as miserable as the Year of the Swan.” She knocked her portion back at a draught, then coughed and cringed. “Spirits, that’s bad.” She poured a second helping.

  Her fair cheeks tinged pink. This was one of the small details he had noticed about her: just a sip of alcohol, and her face flushed.

  He found himself collecting her eccentricities—compiling a list, as if each quirk were uncharted territory and he a cartographer.

  He took a sip of the rum, not particularly because he wanted to drink it. It burned down his throat, spicy but also unappealingly metallic.

  “I’d not sip it if I were you,” she said, plopping down on the cot beside him and then topping off his nearly full cup. She tucked her feet beneath her. Even sitting, she gave off the energy of a body in motion. She was strung taut, humming. She began shuffling the deck of cards. They were yellow, and based on a certain stale odor this was not the result of mere age. Very desperate times, apparently.

  He noted the page in his book and set it aside. “I’ve nothing to gamble.”

  She laughed shortly through her nose. “I don’t know how to play poker anyway, just children’s games.” She began to deal, splitting the deck evenly between them. “I’ve never been one for cards, much to Peer’s disappointment.” Her green eyes flicked to his. “Drink up.”

  He toasted her and emptied his cup, doing his best not to taste it. A shiver ran across his skin. “This game’s called Warfare. We flip over the top card and the higher takes both. If they’re the same, that’s when the fun happens.”

  “Game?” he said, smiling. “Sounds like it’s all chance.”

  She did not look up as she stacked her cards, but she shook her head and clicked her tongue with mock disapproval. “Yarrow Lamhart. Ever finding fault with my amusements.”

  He did not understand this; clearly she referred to some past comment he couldn’t recall. Sometimes when she said such things it stole his good humor. It made him feel as if she were looking at him and seeing someone else. But just then, with a warm fuzziness stealing over him, he saw it differently. Perhaps he and the Yarrow of the past spoke so similarly because he and that man were, in fact, the same.

  “Ready?” Bray asked. She flipped over the eight of hearts.

  Yarrow revealed the jack of spades. “Lucky me,” he said, taking the cards.

  They played for hours—it seemed a game designed to never end. Not that he minded. The light in the cabin changed as the sun set, turning warm and honeyed, then cooling into a blue dimness. The temperature dropped.

  “Yarrow?” Bray asked. His head jerked up. He had been staring fixedly at her bare calf, which peeked out from beneath her skirts. “The cards are yours.”

  “Ah, right.” He collected his winnings and searched his mind for something—anything—to say. He couldn’t read her expression.

  “Can I ask you something?” he began, not knowing what he meant to say next.

  “Certainly,” she said. She had lost her nervous energy, and now appeared quite comfortable, languid even.

  He paused to arrange his cards, trying to think of a question. “Why do you dislike small spaces so much?”

  She looked up sharply and sucked in her bottom lip.

  “Unless it’s too personal—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s fine. You already knew…before.” She set her cards down and her shoulders hunched forward in unconscious discomfort. “After my parents died, I was sent to live with my uncle. He…well, he…” She swallowed, visibly steeling herself. “He would rape me.” She shook her head and added softly, “Spirits, what a hard sentence to say,” and then, resuming a normal volume, went on, “and afterwards he’d lock me up in his pantry, usually. Guess I started to associate the two—the cramped space and…the thing that came before.”

  It took Yarrow a long moment to realize he had frozen. She darted a glance up at him to measure his reaction, but he couldn’t react. It was stupefying to him, that such a thing could have been done to such a person. How could anyone, even a monster, not see that this woman was vital, peerless, so bright she dimmed her surroundings?

  He could just picture how she must have been as a child, before she became hard-skinned and dagger-eyed. The idea of a grown man endeavoring to put out that light—it was enraging, and wrenching, and above all else wholly incomprehensible. Why? How?

  Yarrow’s brow creased, and he cried out in surprise. His mind burst, as if it had split in half. Suddenly he had two sets of emotions resounding within his head, one his own, and the other…

  His head rose slowly to meet confused green eyes. Hers. There could be no question. He knew it as certainly as he knew her presence without physically
perceiving her—a kind of sixth sense reserved just for Bray Marron.

  “I…” He didn’t know how to explain it; he tapped his forehead with his fingers.

  Her eyes widened, and then an artless smile dawned across her face. “You know my feelings?”

  He nodded and jumped up from the cot. Suddenly it was he who longed for motion. “How?” It was an unsettling sensation, and yet part of him wanted to smile with her joy.

  “It’s your first gift. You know the feelings of the people you love.” She collapsed onto her back and stretched out on his cot, taking up the space he had vacated. “Thank the Spirits for that,” she murmured, still beaming. She rolled her head to face him, stretching her legs. She looked at him and he could sense her brightness, and beneath that a thread of desire—desire for him. It was simultaneously euphoric and torturous to know that she wanted him as he wanted her, and that he could do nothing about it without causing them both extraordinary pain.

  For the first time in his memory, he experienced a sharp stab of bitterness for what he had lost. To have sacrificed not only the ability to touch this woman, but also all memory of having done so in the past—it left him with nothing to hold onto. No possible satisfaction. He was, momentarily, consumed by the cruelty of such a fate.

  “You’d worked out a way to love everyone a while back, so you knew everyone’s feelings. But it was Adearre who helped you with that, and he’s…”

  Yarrow felt her pain, her grief, and it was a sensation both new and terrible. He wanted to be rid of it.

  “I do not think I would like that,” Yarrow said. He leaned against the hull and focused on the steady swaying of the ship, on his physical body anchoring him to a physical world.

  “Are you alright?” Bray asked, sitting up. Her concern for him echoed through his mind. “I believe you can turn it off.”

  Yarrow wondered how. He screwed his eyes closed. He imagined Bray’s feelings as a room, and then he closed the door to it. And he was alone again.

  His eyes fluttered open and he nodded to show his success. She kneeled on the cot with her head cocked to the side, studying him. “Did it bother you?”

  Yarrow ran a hand over his face, feeling guilty for some reason. “I find it hard to know myself. Sometimes it seems as if I’m in some other man’s body, some other man’s life. Having my feelings mixed up with someone else’s, it was just…well, rather confusing.”

  “I can understand that,” she said. “I always thought it sounded like a pretty awful gift, personally.”

  She was looking at him evenly, not showing her hand. But he knew, now, how she wanted him. Torture. To live the rest of his life without ever knowing a woman’s touch—this woman’s touch.

  “Bray,” he began slowly. “Could you remain very still for a moment?”

  She arched a brow at this, but he allowed himself to be prompted by rum-flavored bravery. He slowly knelt on the cot before her and moved his face towards hers, as if for a kiss. He stopped a breath away, not touching—not quite. But it was electrifying, the mere proximity. They shared breath; he was near enough to count eyelashes. His heart battered against his chest, like a drum urging him on to a thing he could not do.

  “Do you want to kiss me, Yarrow?” she whispered.

  He nodded, careful not to brush skin with the movement.

  “Wait a moment.”

  She pulled back and hopped off the cot, leaving in her wake a cold emptiness. She returned with a shopping bag—something she had bought back in Andle. He had never thought to ask what it was.

  She dumped a thin box onto the mattress and opened the lid. Within, folded neatly between tissue paper, were two pairs of silk gloves and an oversized silk handkerchief.

  “Lay back,” she instructed. Her hands trembled, and he wondered if she was nervous. He could not name the keen feeling that was squeezing his chest. He lay back on the cot, his head swimming.

  He felt the coolness of the fabric drape across his lower face, and he closed his eyes, hoping to hide his slight fear from her. He didn’t know what he was doing, and did not want to disappoint. Perhaps the Yarrow of the past had kissed a great many women, had developed a technique.

  These worries faded. Her mouth came down on his own—he could feel, clearly, the shape and pressure of her lips through the thin material. He responded instinctually. His mouth opened and his gloved hand hooked beneath her jaw and up behind her ear, pulling her closer. Then, most unexpectedly, she tugged his shirt free from his trousers and a silken hand darted up along his abdomen and came to rest against his rib cage. She wore gloves, but so thin and fine as to be barely perceptible.

  She pulled back to judge his response. He must have looked blissful, as a multitude of new and wonderful possibilities blossomed in his mind. Her hair was rumpled, her face flushed, her eyes blazing.

  She grinned. “Happy New Year, Yarrow.”

  “Spirits, yes,” he said breathlessly. “A very happy New Year. Could we perhaps try that again? I suspect I can do better.”

  Chapter Nine

  A robust, full-bodied whiskey. Velvet slippers. A set of Adourran silk bedsheets.

  Arlow sprawled flat on his back upon a narrow, malodorous cot. His feet hung well over the edge. He stared straight up at the prison ceiling—gray stone, rough. To keep madness at bay, he mentally curated a list: additions that would make his time in quarantine more endurable.

  Hot bathwater and tub. A prime rib dinner. A woman’s mouth.

  He, of course, had less cause for complaint than most. He had spent much of the past few days in the Aeght a Seve, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. However, that retreat required constant physical or mental exertion, and a man must weary eventually.

  He sighed and picked up the single book he had been provided for entertainment. He flipped it open and endeavored to occupy himself, but after skimming a few pages he tossed the novel aside. He took no pleasure in reading fiction. He could never bring himself to care a whit for the characters.

  A fresh, white shirt—well-starched. A deck of cards. Tobacco and pipe.

  As dreadful as five days of solitude in a dank prison cell might be, he had to acknowledge the brilliance of the principle. It was the only way to keep Quade’s influence from the city, to maintain clear minds. Ko-Jin’s work, no doubt. He had the kind of logistical intelligence suited to such a project. The unpleasant conditions were likely a mere necessity—where else in the city could they keep such a large number of individuals isolated?

  Arlow glanced at his watch and groaned aloud. The passage of time had never seemed so willfully, cruelly plodding. He ran a finger along the rim of the watch face, tracing it.

  Mae. Mae. Mae.

  When he heard the key turn in the lock, he sat up without enthusiasm. He had hours yet to wait before release. A young man in military grays entered bearing a lunch tray. He bobbed his head in Arlow’s direction and traded a full platter for the empty. Arlow did not bother speaking to the lad; they all stuffed their ears with wax.

  The door thumped shut again and a key turned. Arlow hauled himself from his bunk. He swallowed down the bowl of broth at once, but took the corner of bread back to his cot to chew slowly.

  Butter. Jam. Mae.

  She was nearby, his wife. Spirits. She was somewhere in this lockup. He wondered just how near. In the cell next to his own? At the other end of the hall? If he were to shout out her name, could she hear him? And if so, would she answer?

  He tried to imagine, at that moment, what thoughts might be swirling through that mind of hers—that bewitching, unknowable mind. Thinking of her made all the wounded bits inside of him begin to bleed anew. He slumped back on his cot, trying to moisten the hunk of stale bread in his mouth with saliva and willpower. When it proved as hard and unyielding as his wife, he chucked that last sorry bit of luncheon across the cell and watched it rebound and roll onto the filthy floor. With his thumb, he twirled the gold ring on his finger, realizing that it no longer felt cold against his s
kin.

  Mae had been withdrawn since their wedding. On the journey north to Accord she had spoken more often to her blighted mule than to him. She had steadfastly refused to meet his eye, to talk with him or to laugh with him. She had seemed determined to slip away from his company whenever possible.

  Arlow bit down on his lower lip and closed his eyes, consumed by black thoughts. Mae was grieving for the friends who had died in the explosion, but he suspected she was grieving for herself as well. Her words kept coming back to him, like a blow to the face: “I don’t want to live my whole life knowin’ the man at my side needed coercing to take up the post.”

  Arlow glowered at the ceiling of his cell. “What did you expect of me, Mae?” he asked the bare stone, his tone pitched in desperation. “Did I ever present myself to you as more than this?” No. Not once. And what man would not resent such a manipulation, would not react poorly? “Have some blighted mercy on me, woman,” he mumbled, voice slurred with sudden exhaustion. “…needed coercing to take up the post.”

  With thoughts of her in his mind, and his insides twisted with ill-feeling, his consciousness began to drift. His breathing slowed and evened, and his eyes fluttered shut. Arlow knew, even as he descended into sleep, that nightmares would follow, and he was soon proven correct. His rest was fitful, full of smoke and blood and disappointed eyes. Dreams continually startled him into wakefulness, but flitted from his memory with all haste upon rousing, so that he might nod off again.

  A noise roused him, and he jerked awake. It took him a moment to realize that the disturbance had been real and not in his mind. Blinking groggily, he listened. A set of keys jangled outside his cell, and Arlow flicked a glance at his watch. Finally, deliverance!

  He stood and stretched as the door swung wide. However, his happiness vanished when the man who appeared proved not to be some uniformed stranger, but rather a very familiar face indeed. His mouth went dry.