The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  They were supposed to be acting naturally, but none of this felt natural. Since when did he, his wife, and their infant son spend leisurely afternoons at the palace? Never.

  He would have been wiser to go about his typical business, but that also sounded like an impossible undertaking.

  Arlow needed to be here, because this was where his friends would come to report, win or lose. And he wanted to know the outcome as soon as possible. He should have gone along with them…

  Why had he stayed behind?

  Arlow stood, jerked his robes straight, and took a turn around the room. He clenched and unclenched his fists, his blood pounding.

  This day could mark the end of the war. Unlike all of Bray’s previous harebrained plans, this might actually work.

  He wished he was there.

  Were they still waiting? Were they fighting now? Was Quade dead? Was Ko-Jin?

  Linton whimpered—a sound that generally preceded a full-throated wail. Arlow darted to the cradle and lifted his son into his arms. He glanced at his wife, sitting in a chair beside the bassinet and fast asleep, head resting on her fist. He was glad she was getting some rest—Spirits knew she could use it—but he marveled at her ability to sleep at such a moment. Arlow felt like he had lightning in his veins.

  Linton mewled. His eyes were wide open, his lips quivering. About to cry, plainly, and wake his poor, weary ma.

  Arlow held the little lad close and began to dance, humming softly off-key. He probably looked a real sight, but Linton’s mouth stopped pouting and his eyes brightened, so Arlow only grinned and spun faster.

  “That’s checkmate, darling,” Veldon said. The man had the kind of masculine, gravelly voice that Arlow always envied. Not that he would admit so.

  “I think you’ll find it isn’t, darling,” Chae-Na said sweetly, moving a piece.

  He hummed deep in his throat. “Not yet. But soon.”

  Arlow couldn’t help equate their game to Quade in Greystone, a king cornered and without support. How would he meet his end? With composure? Arlow doubted it.

  He swayed with his son in his arms, envisioning the scene that might, even now, be transpiring in Greystone. He tried to visualize who would deal the killing blow. Ko-Jin might be the obvious choice—or perhaps Peer, with his newfound obsession with firearms—but Arlow preferred to imagine Bray doing the deed, stabbing the bastard in his black and merciless heart. She’d say something darkly pithy as he died, like, “Tell the Spiritblighter I said hello.”

  A blast reverberated in the near distance. Arlow froze, mid-shimmy. His heart slammed into motion, and Chae-Na shot to her feet.

  A second boom followed, like the sound of Arlow’s nightmares. Cannonfire. Unmistakably, it was cannonfire. Mae startled awake, and Linton began to cry.

  “But…” Chae-Na said. “Yarrow. He didn’t say…”

  Yarrow.

  Arlow handed over their wailing child to Mae. “I’m going to see what he’s saying and then collect Clea. Chae-Na, you’ll want to meet with Ko-Jin’s second-in-command. Mae, alert Foy.” He couldn’t think of a task for Veldon; perhaps Arlow shouldn’t be ordering them around at all. But he was frightened, and Ko-Jin was not here.

  He darted a kiss on Mae’s cheek, turned on his heel, and ran. The hallway floors flitted by under his feet. He nearly knocked over an antique vase as he rounded a corner at full sprint. The long, winding stairwell up to the Fifth’s tower nearly bested him. He arrived clutching his side and huffing for breath.

  Yarrow’s rooms were, as ever, packed with people: guards, scribes, caretakers. All of them in an uproar. Yarrow himself leaned like a corpse in his chair. Words streamed from his mouth, a jumbled flow of places, times, and numbers.

  “We swear,” one scribe said—a serious-looking, bespectacled woman—foisting her notes at Arlow, “he didn’t predict this until a minute ago.”

  Arlow took the offered notebook. “By all the Spirits…” he murmured, his eyes glazing over.

  Cannon fire targeting two discrete sections of the wall; a second effort to lob poison over the ramparts in the Narrows; a naval push in the gulf—all happening now, and with no forewarning.

  How?

  How had Yarrow failed? How had Quade known to attack now, when their general was away?

  “Go!” the scribe yelled. Arlow jumped at the sound of her voice, and then again at the sharp blast of cannon fire.

  Go!

  He sprinted from the room, his braid flying out behind him. Arlow didn’t know how they would face this assault, but he knew that Clea was their best hope. He had to find her, and fast.

  “Alright, Fernie,” Clea said with a winning smile. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Fernie and Clea, along with a dozen other Elevated and a jug of vodka, had ensconced themselves in a vault beneath the university library—a dark and dusty space used for storage.

  He took the stool across from her and set his elbow on the table, mirroring her posture. They clasped hands. Her cheeks were already rosy, and he felt his own warm in kind.

  Fernie met her gaze and nearly tumbled head-first into those blue eyes of hers. Clea really might be the prettiest girl in Trinitas, the queen included. She looked like the Woman in the Moon, with her silver hair and ivory skin.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  He decided to go easy on her. She’d been having a difficult time since the incident on the ramparts. Not that he would let her win, that would impugn his manhood, but he’d let her think she’d stood a chance. He wouldn’t instantly slam her hand to the table.

  “Three,” everyone counted, “two, one, go!”

  Fernie was still feeling magnanimous when Clea’s hand slid up, so that she gripped the tops of his fingers, forcing his wrist into an awkward position. He caught himself just before the back of his hand hit the surface, called upon all his strength, and tried to regain ground. But at this strange angle she’d created, he had no leverage. Clea shifted her shoulder so it aligned with her arm, and Fernie’s hand smacked into rough wood.

  Everyone cheered, and Clea offered a gloating smile. “See? It’s more about technique than strength.” His face no doubt reflected his bruised pride. She patted his hand. “Aw, don’t be put out, Fern. Have another drink.”

  She poured him a finger of vodka, and he concealed a grimace. There’d been an incident six months ago involving too much wine and purple-hued vomit on his shirt-front; since then he’d been practicing temperance.

  Besides, alcohol made his head ache.

  But this was Clea offering him a cup. Pretty, sad-eyed Clea. So, he took a small sip.

  “You drink like you fight,” Kelarre slurred. The teleporter was sopping drunk, and they’d only been down in the vault for half an hour. Kelarre probably believed this an impressive feat. Fernie thought otherwise.

  “So do you,” he replied with a false smile. “You’re sloppy at both.”

  Clea laughed—a snorting, slightly mean laugh that, given its impetus and target, Fernie found delightful. He grinned and swept the bangs from his eyes, a mannerism he’d practiced in the mirror. He thought it made him look decidedly blighter-may-care.

  He was happy for several whole seconds. And then his good-feeling burst like a balloon met with a pin. He leapt to his feet.

  “What’s your problem?” Mick asked.

  Fernie cocked his head to listen. “Didn’t you hear that?”

  They fell silent, and the sound came again: a dull and distant boom.

  “S’thunder,” Kelarre said.

  “It’s a clear day,” Clea said.

  “But…there’s no attack today. It’s gotta be thunder, right?” Mick said. “Or…I don’t know, target practice?”

  “He’s right,” Clea said, sounding as if she were trying to convince herself. Still, she set down her cup with an air of finality. “Yarrow didn’t predict anything would happen today.”

  Fernie raised his brows. “Yarrow didn’t predict Jorren would try to shoot you, ei
ther.”

  Clea paled.

  Before they could argue further, a startling pop split the air. It was a sound that never failed to send Fernie’s heart raging against his breastbone. They, all of them, leapt to the ready.

  But it was not Quade who materialized in the shadows—only Mearra, arriving hand-in-hand with Arlow Bowlerham.

  Arlow’s wild-eyed expression confirmed Fernie’s fears: they were under attack, and no one had seen it coming.

  “There you are,” Arlow said, speaking to Clea as if no one else were present. “We need to get to the walls. Now.” He scanned the room, frowning briefly at the jug of liquor, before his gaze settled on Kelarre. “Good. You can take Clea south. He’s launching Vendra’s vaporized poison again.”

  Kelarre stumbled, too inebriated to walk in a straight line.

  Arlow pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you are not so intoxicated that you cannot teleport. In the middle of the bleeding afternoon, no less.”

  “No such thing,” Kelarre said, with his usual irritating bravado.

  Clea eyed him uncertainly. “I don’t like it. You might drop us in the sea or something.”

  Kelarre settled his hands on her shoulders and his gaze turned earnest. “I can do this. I swear it.”

  Fernie didn’t at all like the sight of them in that pose, but he set aside his jealousy. “What should the rest of us do?”

  Arlow licked his lip and shrugged. “Think of something useful and do it.”

  Mearra and Kelarre teleported nearly in tandem, taking Clea and Arlow with them.

  “Let’s go to the battlements,” Mick said. He gestured that they should follow, and as a unit the group dashed up the stairs.

  Fernie found himself stalled at the rear of the charge, anxious that his peers should climb faster; until halfway up the stair, when he gasped, stumbled, and hit the stone. Pulse flaring, his senses drifted beyond his body, so that he barely felt the sting of his skinned palms. His attention flew to a point in the near distance.

  Quade.

  Whenever he came into the city, Fernie felt it—like he was a fish caught on a line, and someone had just given that line a solid tug.

  I’m coming, he called down that connection, a threat that Quade would not heed.

  Fernie broke away from his peers, sprinting in the opposite direction. He let Quade’s magnetic pull guide his feet, and tried not to think of what came next, of what it would be like to fight his bevolder. Better not to reflect on his complete lack of readiness.

  Quade was on the university grounds, Fernie realized, as he raced across the green. There were Chisanta and Elevated everywhere, dashing about in response to this unexpected assault. It would be easy for Quade to blend into such a crowd.

  Fernie lurched to a standstill. He had been pulled along like a magnet drawn by the northern pole, but his interior compass suddenly disappeared.

  Fernie screwed his eyes closed and focused, searching with his senses. But such focus was unnecessary; Quade’s pull returned all at once, in a different location. Must have teleported…

  Fernie sprinted again, swatting his hair from his eyes. He was running back the way he’d just come—which was annoying, he’d have been wiser to stay put—but his steps slowed as the library came into view. Quade was close. The knowledge of this nearness was like a hand closing around Fernie’s heart.

  He weaved through the small crowd that loitered outside the nearest dormitory.

  “Wynn?” Malc called. “Wynn, love, where’d you go?”

  Fernie shouldered by the giant Chiona, his path now clear. There was a narrow gap between the library and the dormitory, so narrow that it was shadowed even in broad daylight. And Quade was there.

  Fernie, pulse stammering, pressed his back against the side of the library, then craned his head so he could peek around the corner. The shape of a man was clear. Fernie slipped into the tight passageway, treading on silent feet.

  “Hush. Hush.” Quade’s caramel voice kissed against Fernie’s ear. He had someone shoved against the wall, a hand clapped over a mouth. A girl. She struggled, trying to wrench free from Quade’s grasp, trying to scream.

  Fernie crept closer. Peer believed that he could shut off Quade’s gifts. It was time to find out.

  “Hush, my sweet. It’s me. It’s only me,” Quade said. “Oh, how I’ve missed you. Above all the rest, I came for you. Does that not make you proud?”

  The girl’s curls, which had been swinging as she fought, swayed to a halt.

  Fernie watched Quade’s venom swirl in the air like an aggressive smog. It reached its fingers towards the girl, seeping into her skin and settling upon her mind. Some of that poison came for Fernie too, slithering like weightless serpents. He batted them aside before they could touch him.

  Wynn blinked at Quade, clearing the tears from her lashes. She sagged in his grasp.

  “There,” he said. “Better? If I release you, will you promise not to cry out?”

  She nodded, and Quade shifted the hand that had blocked her screams, using it to push her hair back from her face. He smiled down at her, and though that smile was not directed at Fernie, he felt it in his chest like a sob.

  He had to stop, once again, to shake off Quade’s influence. It was sticky stuff, insidious. He would have to remain vigilant, or even he might become infected.

  “Now,” Quade purred, holding out his hands. “I think you know what I want.”

  No, Fernie thought—he needed a few more seconds, he was still battling Quade’s compulsion. No!

  Wynn placed her hands atop Quade’s.

  When Wynn used her gift for amplification on Malc, he could lift a boulder over his head and balance it on two fingers; he could take a cannonball to the chest and remain unbruised. When she used it on Clea, the girl could wrench an entire forest from its floor with a flick of her wrist.

  And when she used her gift on Quade Asher—

  Fernie fell to his knees. Adoration, so bright and strong it pained him, bent his spine. He could not look Quade full in the face. No, a face that beautiful was like the sun. One should only bask in its warmth, not gaze directly upon it.

  There had never been a spirit so good, so worthy as Quade Asher. In his presence, Fernie’s insignificance seemed a crushing thing.

  Quade, holding the hand of a curly-haired girl, walked up the alley. Fernie pressed his forehead into his fist, as petitioners did for the queen.

  Quade’s incomparable feet paused at Fernie’s side. The man’s fingers grazed the back of Fernie’s head—a touch that sent a surge of pleasure rushing through him. He quivered.

  “Rise,” Quade said.

  And Fernie did as he was told, though he was unworthy to stand before such a man. Quade walked past, and Fernie fell into step behind.

  They strode out onto the green.

  “My people,” Quade sang out in a voice so musical it hurt.

  Everyone in the vicinity froze. And then, just as Fernie had, they crashed to their knees. Quade gifted them with his smile—it shone with a radiance that made every one of them lean in.

  “My people,” Quade said again. “You need not kneel before me. I am one of you. And I am returned.”

  No one dared rise.

  Fernie feared that he was breathing too loudly, and that the sound might be unpleasant to Quade’s spiritly ears. So he held his breath.

  “Rise, my brothers and sisters,” Quade said. He approached the hunched form of a Cosanta woman and placed his hand on her back. She groaned in an indecent way, but Fernie couldn’t fault her.

  “Rise.”

  They did, all at once.

  “Follow me,” Quade said. “It is time.”

  Fernie’s lungs burned with the need to exhale. The others walked in Quade’s wake, forming a procession. But Fernie loved Quade more than all the rest of them combined. His love was so pure, so whole, that he would not so much as draw breath.

  His vision darkened, and in the moment before uncons
ciousness took him, he saw something else—

  There was a beast of black hovering over the green, its inky tentacles each connected to a Chisanta. They were like marionettes, speared through the heart and mind by a foe they could not perceive.

  Fernie looked down at his own chest. Black, he mused, swatting at this intrusion. His lungs heaved, gasping for sweet breath.

  Off, he thought, repulsed, batting at the inky threads all around him. Get off.

  The other Chisanta were led away, a host of shadows marching towards the palace. Fernie knelt in the grass, alone, fighting a battle that only he could see.

  Chapter Eleven

  Chae-Na stood with arms raised, and Leaya clapped the new custom breastplate around her torso. The maid’s fingers struggled with the leather buckles, more accustomed to laces than clasps.

  Cannonfire still sounded in the distance, but the blasts were spaced farther apart. Each time the silence stretched long, Chae-Na thought perhaps the attack had ended. And then she’d flinch at the next, unexpected boom.

  She glanced in the mirror, and found in her reflection more truth of self than usual. This was the queen she wanted to be.

  No disguise, today. She wore skirts split for riding, her simple steel crown nestled atop braided hair.

  Leaya handed over her quiver, and Chae-Na buckled it around her hips, along with a short sword. Her bow, unstrung, she carried like a staff.

  I’m ready.

  “Leaya, I need you to run an urgent message for me, without delay.”

  Her maid curtsied. “I will see to it at once.”

  “Find my trainer, Zarra Elver. You know her?”

  “The blind one?”

  “Yes. Ask that her Adourran swordsmen form street patrols, in the event the walls are compromised. And that they carry ear plugs.” If Quade’s soldiers made it into the city, she wanted her most skilled fighters on the ground protecting her people.

  “At once, your majesty,” Leaya said.

  Chae-Na hastened from her chambers. The assault had begun half an hour ago. She wondered—feared—what damage might be wrought in such a span of time.