Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (10 page)

They worked in silence for a time. Arlow was about to press for information again when she at last spoke, “It’s policy, you see, that if you’ve served ten years, you can leave the band. You’ve gotta train up five replacements, and then you get a sum of money. For starting a business, usually.”

“And you’ve taken a sudden interest in entrepreneurship?”

She handed him a plate, and he carefully wiped it dry and returned it to its cabinet.
 

“It’d be nice, I think—havin’ a little shop, living above. Sleeping in the same bed each night, pickin’ out curtains. That kind of thing.” She appeared, for the first time, self-conscious. “My brother ain’t too keen on me leaving, though.”
 

Arlow noticed the tension in her shoulders and determined to steer the conversation in a pleasanter direction. “What sort of shop?”

She smiled down at the suds beneath her hands. “Ain’t decided yet. I’m lookin’ out for it though.” She gave him a self-deprecating smirk. “Not a restaurant, clearly.”

“Ah,” Arlow said, returning the last of the silverware to its drawer. “What kind of curtains, then?”
 

She laughed, and her laughter made him smile—it was totally unrestrained, cheerful but not terribly pretty. “Not sure. I’m lookin’ out for them too.”

6

Yarrow’s calves ached; his breath exploded in clouds. A recent rain had reduced the path beneath him to mud. The soles of his boots adhered to the ground with each stride, then pulled free with a soft squelch.
 

A sheep bleated somewhere to his left, but the thick mist that hugged the ground concealed the beast from view. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way he and his companions had come. Somewhere below lay the small shoreside town of Cagsglow, a collection of tiny whitewashed buildings nestled between three hills. It, too, however, was obscured in fog.
 

“She said the house would be just at the top of the crag, here,” Bray said, panting slightly. She hastened her pace, but Yarrow held back. The princess appeared to be having silent difficulty managing the trail in her slippers.

“How’d you ever come to think of this place, anyway?” Ko-Jin asked.
 

“Peer, Adearre, and I stayed in the village once, ages ago. We decided it was about the most Spiritsforsaken spot in all of Daland.” She shrugged. “Little chance of being found all the way out here.”
 

They finally trudged high enough up the slope to leave the fog behind. Before them, a tumbledown, thatch-roofed cottage perched near the cliff’s edge, overlooking a vast gray sea.
 

Ko-Jin snorted at the sight. “Country house, our landlady called it. A generous descriptor.”

“We shall have to find a different place,” the princess said, staring at the sorry little cottage with wide eyes. “Shan’t we?”
 

Bray shook her head. “It’ll keep the rain off our backs just fine. Besides, it was cheap.”
 

“I should hope it was,” the king said. Bray wheeled a bland expression in his direction. “I mean, it looks charming. Really…ah, quaint.”
 

“No one would believe the king of Trinitas in residence, that’s for certain,” Yarrow said.

Bray shot him a grateful look, until Ko-Jin laughed. “Good point, Yar. I’d not believe a drifter’d live there.”

Bray rolled her eyes and set off again. “Blighted fussy lot of outlaws, you are,” she grumbled.
 

She turned the key and the door opened with a rusty groan. A damp, mildewy smell permeated the place. Within, shafts of morning sunlight shone dimly through filthy windowpanes, illuminating an assortment of moth-eaten furniture. The wooden planks that made up the floor bowed discernably in the middle, a warping that made Yarrow question the integrity of the roof.
 

He slung the pack from his back onto the couch—a collection of disguises he’d acquired earlier that morning from a pawn shop, along with some meager provisions.
 

The king grazed a finger along the kitchen table, placing a stripe in the thick layer of dust. “It appears we are the first renters in some time.”
 

“Just needs a bit of airing, is all,” Bray said.

The princess spun in a slow circle, her eyes squinted as if trying to envision the place more livable. “And perhaps some cheerful throw pillows.”

Ko-Jin, clearly fighting down a laugh, bobbed his head at this suggestion. “Yes, quite right, pillows ought to do the trick.”
 

Bray frowned at him, and his eyes glittered back at her unrepentantly. Yarrow, ever the peace-maker, cleared his throat. “Shall we get to it, then?”

Bray smirked. “As Ko-Jin and our new friends have such exacting standards, perhaps they should get to work on our hideout. I want to check the surrounding area, get a feel for the terrain. Yarrow, you’ll join me?”
 

She hooked her arm around his and steered him towards the door. He peeked back at Ko-Jin’s none-too-pleased expression, but could only shrug.
 

“Do get us some food, won’t you?” Bray called over her shoulder as the two of them jogged down the step and back out into the brisk day.
 

Yarrow tilted his face up to the sky. The sun had turned a chilly early morning into a tolerably warm afternoon. The sea glimmered with sunlight, stretched out beneath a cloudless sky. He had heard that, on a particularly clear day, one could see Adourra across the channel from the south of Daland. Either this was untrue or the day was insufficiently clear—he saw nothing but ocean.
 

They marched in companionable silence along the crag. To the north, hills of almost unfathomable greenness rolled towards the horizon.
 

“Let’s walk down to the beach,” Bray said.
 

They loped down the decline from crag to shore, as it was too steep to take at a walk. The sun gleamed off the white sand so brightly Yarrow had to shield his eyes.
 

“Wait a second,” he said, and bent down to remove his boots. She sat down and emulated him, and then they set off again, leaving a trail of footprints in their wake.
 

The sea breeze tousled Bray’s hair, the brightness of the day turning each strand a brilliant copper. She chewed on her bottom lip, face pulled towards the coast. “I want to go back to Accord. Tomorrow, if we can.”

“For Peer?”

She took a firmer grip on his arm. “Yes. Do you think Arlow was telling the truth? You know him better than I.”

Yarrow glowered down at his toes. “I can hardly be said to know him—I didn’t see any of this coming. I’m inclined to think he was being honest.” He sighed. “But that might be my own foolish loyalty talking.”

“It isn’t foolish to be loyal, Yarrow.”

He grunted. “That would depend on the object of one’s loyalty, I’d think.”
 

They strolled around a curve in the coastline and before them, half buried in sand, the remains of a foundered ship poked from the beach like a great tombstone, bowsprit pointing futilely to the sky. They paused and stared.

“Looks old,” Bray said.

Yarrow studied the old-fashioned, rounded shape of the keel. “Seventy years at the least. A wine runner, likely.”
 

Bray tugged on his hand. “Let’s go check it out.”

He grinned and sped his steps, glad for a diversion. The hull stuck at a sharp angle up from the sand, the mast broken and lying like a narrow, splintered bridge from ground to quarter deck.
 

Yarrow climbed up at the head and held out a hand to haul Bray up beside him. “Must have been quite a storm,” he said, looking at the long stretch of coast between the wreckage and the ocean itself.
 

Bray called to him from the ladder well, “It’s surprisingly intact. Come see.” Then she disappeared below deck.
 

Yarrow followed, climbing down with difficulty given the steep slant of the floor. Below, the cabins were lined with sand. The air tasted of brine, smelt of timber and ancient things. Daylight peeped through the seams in the bulkhead, lending the relic luminosity despite a general shadow. It felt, to Yarrow, somehow sacred.
 

Bray spun to face him. Her eyes held a gleaming intensity he couldn’t read. “It’s so quiet here.”

He nodded. Even the rush and pull of the tide was barely audible.
 

She continued to stare. “Solitary, really.”
 

Yarrow’s pulse, without warning, quickened. He could hear his heart thudding in his ears. They were alone—a circumstance he felt most keenly all of a sudden. He licked his lips and tried to breathe normally.
 

Her own mood swiveled, clanging in the back of his mind. He teetered on bare feet, rocking back and forth, feeling, suddenly, ill at ease—nervous as the boy he had been an eon ago, standing in the rain, miserably watching her go, too afraid to kiss her.
 

She glanced away, her expression wistful. “I suppose they’ll be waiting for us.”

“They can wait.” His words hung solidly between them, fraught with a hundred yet-unrealized desires.
 

“Yes.” A smile spread slowly across her lips. “Yes, they can.”

The space between them felt like an electric thing; it quivered, longing to be eliminated—which, in a moment, it was.

Their mouths met, hungrily. Frantic fingers tugged at buttons. Yarrow’s thoughts lost all order and form, were without words. As their clothes were shed, a process of awkward tugs and half-concealed laughs, their tempo slowed. Desperation evolved into something softer, something deeper.

There was, after all, no hurry.
 

They lowered to the sandy hull planks together. Bray’s eyes looked impossibly green, her fair skin flushed. In that moment, she was the epitome of beauty. Yarrow could hardly draw breath, for wanting her.
 

He skimmed trembling fingertips along her form, tracing her, memorizing shape and texture.
 

Her eyes were half-lidded. “You know,” she whispered, “I don’t normally like to be touched.”

His hand arrested instantly. “I can stop,” he said, though he didn’t want to.

Her eyelids snapped open. “No, please don’t.” Once his caress began anew, along each rib then down into the valley between torso and hipbone, she spoke again. “It’s just you. Most people, even people I like, their touch feels like… I don’t know—an invasion? Like they’re taking something from me. But you—” She faltered, then continued in a rush, cheeks pink, “When you touch me, when you’re near, I feel…restored.” She met his eye, and there was a look of such vulnerable earnestness in her features. His heart gave one forceful thump. “Like you’re smoothing out my scars.”

He flattened his hand and ran it up the length of her stomach. The muscles of her abdomen clenched beneath his touch. “I don’t feel any scars.”

She smiled crookedly at him. “They’re deeper down.” Then she leaned up and grazed her lips against his own. The light brush felt like a spark. He gathered her closer, body to body, and their lips set about that warm, enkindling dance that was both familiar and new.

They began to make love slowly, reverently, without speaking, each moment full of careful tenderness.
 

With bodies joined, Yarrow felt that moment—that marriage, that intersection of selves—as a revelation, a truth.

He couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wished to. She, too, remained silent save for ever-louder breaths—he knew them to be sounds of pleasure, as he could sense her euphoria, humming in harmony with his own.
 

At the last, she breached their mute communication, gasping his name—the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. He shuddered, muscles pleasantly weary.

Afterwards, they lay entwined, still—allowing their hearts to calm. Yarrow’s own heart felt, abruptly, pained.

His breath hitched and he squeezed his eyes closed.

Bray’s finger smoothed the crease between his brows. “You look so serious,” she whispered. He smiled, but the sense of something missing, something that would ever be missing, pressed upon him. “Won’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

He licked his lips and stared up at the under deck. Somewhere nearby, a gull cawed.
 

It scared him, the idea of sharing what he’d seen of the future. He worried she’d be unnerved, that it would be too much too soon. As he peeked down at her entreating eyes, however, he realized he needn’t fear.

“I used the Sphere, back at Easterly Point.”

“I thought you must have,” she said.
 

A lump in his throat made it hard for him to continue.
 

“What did you see?”

He brushed a hand up and down her sandy back, hoping perhaps to borrow some of her spine. “I saw us—and our daughter. But I didn’t just see it.” He drew a deep breath. “I lived it. And then…it’s like I killed her.”

Bray shook her head. “Don’t do that to yourself, Yarrow. You had no choice.”

“There is always a choice,” he whispered. “Now, I must find a way to live with mine.”

Bray rested her head on his shoulder and draped her arm around him. “Can you tell me about her?”

And he did. He spoke for what felt like hours, recounting every detail of the experience—purging himself. Bray listened, asked questions, helped shoulder the grief, though Spirits knew she had enough of her own already.
 

When he had said all there was to say, she wiped the salty trail of tears from his temple and stroked his hair.

“I suppose I’ve some scars myself,” Yarrow said, attempting to laugh and failing.

She squeezed his fingers. “Don’t we all?”