Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (12 page)

Her heart ached for him, but couldn’t really dampen her own pleasure. For her, a child was too abstract—the idea of one inspired more fear than joy. What they had, for her, was enough. She pulled his hand up and kissed his knuckles.

When they reentered the cottage, they were greeted with the crackle of hearthfire and the smell of charring meat. The place had obviously been cleaned since they left—there was no sign of dust, the furniture had been rearranged. Purple curtains hung in the window. She felt a slight twinge of guilt at this, but could not with any honesty regret her own afternoon.
 

She choked down a laugh as she entered the kitchen. Chae-Na was bent over the counter, meticulously plating their dinner. She’d set the table—plates, napkins, glasses—with great care, though all of the dishes were terribly mismatched and chipped. Bray, who usually dined at inns or ate food cooked over a fire with only her fingers, couldn’t help but chuckle at the endeavored formality.

“Oh, excellent timing,” Chae-Na said. “I was concerned you would miss dinner. It is rather scandalously late, I am afraid.”
 

She carried a platter of meat, charred black, to the table, her back ramrod straight.
 

“We bought berries for dessert, but—and this is most strange—there do not appear to be any dessert forks. I’ve searched high and low. What do you think we should do?”

Bray pretended to contemplate this for a moment, to spare the girl’s feelings. “Hm…perhaps we might just use the same forks?”

Chae-Na shook her head at this small tragedy. “Yes, that was all I could think of as well. I am glad you agree.”

Jo-Kwan stepped through the entrance. He greeted them shortly, not making eye contact, and slumped down into a seat at the table.
 

“Jo-Kwan,” Chae-Na said, crossing her arms. “What are you doing? You sit at the head.”

The king rolled his eyes. “It does not matter where I sit, Chae-Na. Can we not just eat?”

“It
does
matter. You are the king, and the king sits at the head.”

Yarrow and Ko-Jin appeared in the kitchen doorway—they, like Bray, seemed suddenly unsure where to sit.
 

“I am
not
the king,” Jo-Kwan said between clenched teeth. He gestured to the rough interior of the cottage. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”

Bray assiduously averted her gaze, feigning interest in the ceiling, window, anything.
 

Chae-Na slammed her fist on the table, rattling the glasses. “Don’t you dare, Jo-Kwan.” She brushed a single angry tear from her cheek. “Don’t you dare give up. They killed father, they killed mother—if you do nothing, if you just let them win,” she gestured wildly. “I swear, I will never forgive you. You are
my
king, and for the time being this sad little cottage is the…the…
bloody
royal palace.”
 

Jo-Kwan gaped, momentarily stunned, then chuckled. “I’ve never heard you curse before.” He stood, kissed his sister on the cheek, and took up the head of the table.
 

Chae-Na gave one sharp nod of approval, then handed out the rest of the plates. Bray scooted in her chair, sharing a stifled smile with Yarrow. They were all quiet for a time, save for the sound of forks and knives clanking against plates.

The meat was burnt and dry. It was accompanied by a lump of soggy, beige mush that Bray could not begin to identify. It was, all in all, an atrocious meal.

The silence was broken by Jo-Kwan sniggering behind a hand.

“What is so funny?” Chae-Na asked, her chin angled up defensively.
 

As laughter is a contagious thing, and in this case the cause sat unappealingly on the plate before her, Bray felt bubbles of mirth begin to surge up from her own gut. She attempted to cover her smile with a cough.
 

Yarrow shook with silent laughter beside her.

Chae-Na glared at the lot of them, her lovely face scrunched in offense. “I should like to share in the joke. Please, do tell.”
 

Jo-Kwan snorted mightily, his mouth spread in a wide, perfect smile.
 

Ko-Jin, with glittering eyes and a twitching lip, said, “We make exemplary cooks, you and I, Highness. This eggplant is…remarkable.”
 

Eggplant?
This proclamation was too much—they all, save for Chae-Na, howled in their seats. Bray felt tears in her eyes, her face flushed.
 

“Oh, what a critical group you are! It is perfectly fine.” To prove her point, the princess took a great forkful of the congealed vegetable and slid it into her mouth. Disgust stamped across her face as she attempted to swallow, only prompting further hysterics from her companions. “Very well,” she said, beginning to smile herself. “It is Spirits-awful. I cannot cook.”

Ko-Jin cleared his throat and lifted his glass—or rather mug with broken handle—for a toast. “To many other culinary successes in the bloody royal cottage of Cagsglow.”
 

They clinked their mismatched glasses and finished their meals as best they could, the mood pleasant.
 

Yarrow placed a hand on Bray’s knee beneath the table. She grinned down at her plate, her stomach fluttering. She thought that, if only Peer were there, she might be completely happy.
 

Soon, brother. I will see you soon.
 

7

“How much have you had to drink?” Su-Hwan asked in a cool, condemnatory tone.

Peer took a gulp from his tumbler and glared at her blearily. “More’n a little. Less ’n enough.”
 

He’d been shocked the attendant had given him alcohol—it would seem Quade hadn’t given any stipulations to the train attendants. With the absence of his drug, he needed something, anything, to dull his senses.
Spirits, grant me anything but a sharp mind
. He snorted at the double meaning.

“It is common for those suffering from depression to develop substance abuse problems.”

Peer scowled—
shooting me up for weeks and concerned ’bout drug abuse—
and turned back to the window.

He had grown so accustomed to the rumbling of the train that he had ceased to notice it; so when they slowed to a halt the sudden quiet was deafening.

In the newfound hush, the mumbling of the Fifth grew louder. “The number is prime. The number is prime. Two, two, two, eleven, three, twenty-nine.
Allemia san shirenia aparetto.
Meetings shake twenty-seven bones. Brother in truth stops the bleeding. White is all together. The nine sleep in Hungdo—”

Peer was tempted to jam his fingers in his ears. Her strange, dead voice made his skin crawl. What’s more, she said the same things over and over; it was more than enough to drive a man mad.

He downed the last of his whisky and glared at the bottom of the glass. “Ring the bell,” he slurred.

Su-Hwan crossed her arms. “Is it your aim to drink yourself to death?”

“Aye.”

“Were you always pathetic, or is this a recent development?”

Peer smiled—or, rather, bared his teeth. “Oh, was always pathetic. Withou’ doubt. Ring the bell.”
 

Her face remained smooth and indifferent as she jerked the cord, yet the movement managed to be fraught with disapproval.
 

Moments later an attendant arrived: a middle-aged man in a neat suit with black hair parted precisely down the right side of his head.

“Master Gelson,” Su-Hwan said, “requires further potation.”

Peer chuckled.
Potation. Good word.

The attendant poured another two fingers and Peer toasted the man in gratitude.
 

He glanced up at his guardian’s disapproving face. “See, this,” he said, pointing at her, “this is why I prefer Whythe.”

“I imagine you do.” The statement seemed to hold a deeper meaning. As her implication seeped into his brain, his stomach clenched and burned with an abrupt, searing anger. He wanted to strangle her, to inflict on her even a sliver of the torment he felt. “I have been told that ice sculptures make better company than I do.”
 

She turned to the window, lips thinned. Peer’s fury evaporated as quickly as it had arisen. She hadn’t been making a jab at him, but rather at herself.
 

The horn blared and the train began to inch forward. Peer gazed out the window and realized they were once again approaching Accord. He’d traveled clear across the Dalish continent and was on his way back. As far as he could tell, Quade intended for him to remain on the train indefinitely. To lessen the chances of Bray coming for him, he supposed.

It didn’t trouble him. She’d come, train or no. He pitied these poor fools when she did; the girl didn’t favor subtlety.
 

He was, all at once, overwhelmed with homesickness—not for a place, but for a person. A tightness took up in his lungs and his eyes watered.
Spirits be blighted
. He glowered at his tumbler.
The liquor’s turned on me.

Su-Hwan stared at him, so he determined not to turn blubbery.
 

“What was he like?” she asked.

“What was who like?”
 

“The man you are always talking to. Listening to just half of your, ah,
conversations
, I find myself,” she paused, as if unsure of the word, “curious.”

Had she asked an hour earlier, he’d likely have snapped back, but the sentimentality of intoxication loosened his tongue. He itched at his beard. “What was he like?” He smiled into his lap. “A real judgmental bastard most o’ the time. So sure he was right about every blighted thing. Worse, he
was
right about every blighted thing. Saw at the truth, saw people for what they were, but always so blightingly optimistic. Expected everyone to be as good as him, didn’t hate them when they weren’t.”

She remained silent but appeared to be listening intently. He thought he should stop speaking, but it was like a purge of the venom within him. Tears darted down his cheeks, but the ever-present pain—the gaping hole that Adearre had left behind—felt, as he reflected, a more manageable thing.
 

“He was funny, too. Terrible at hiding his feelings.” Peer chuckled and turned to the window, discerned Accord in the distance, in all of its gray somberness. “This one time, we were investigating these missin’ kids in one of them tiny, backwards towns in the Verdant Peaks. Well, you know how they are there, real old-fashioned. And they got all scandalized when the innkeeper says we’re all sleepin’ in the same room.”

He laughed, a real genuine laugh, the sound foreign even to his own ears. “And so Adearre tells the mayor that I’m Bray’s brother and that he and she are married, only they don’t have rings yet seeing as they’re newlyweds. Well, in this town—Spirits, what was the name of that place?—it’s a custom that—you know at weddings when people clink the glasses and the bride and groom kiss?”

Su-Hwan nodded.

“Well, that town kept it up for the whole first month of marriage, and not just glass clinking, but table thumping and clapping. So the whole blighted time we’re there, the locals are clapping and banging to get Bray and Adearre to smooch.” Peer wiped the tears from his flaming face. “Spirits, you never saw an awkwarder kiss. I nearly died every time. And then Bray starts chewing on garlic and onions, just to make it worse for him. Grew into this whole sick game of chicken.”

“What is chicken?”

Peer squinted at her, uncertain of her sincerity. “You know, like when two people on bikes are riding right at each other to see who’ll swerve first. Didn’t you have any siblings? Everyone knows chicken.”

She shook her head. “No, just the other children at the orphanage.”
 

This statement traveled slowly through Peer’s liquor-logged mind.
Orphanage?
“What?”

“I was raised in Anask Asylum for Orphans.” She shrugged, as if unconcerned—a gesture that resonated strongly with Peer, who had affected nonchalance on the same matter a thousand times over.
 

“You weren’t ever taken in?” he asked.

The lantern light reflected in her dark eyes and cast shadows across her small, solemn face. “A few times, but I was always sent back. People do not tend to warm to me.”

A surge of sympathy flooded through Peer. He too had been taken in and returned more than once, like a pair of shoes that, upon wearing, proved to blister. But unlike this girl, he had eventually found his family: Adearre and Bray.
 

“Don’t you have any friends here?” he asked, suspecting he knew the answer.
 

“Like I said,” she replied evenly. “People do not tend to warm to me.”
 

Peer rubbed his beard. “You might try emoting a bit more. You know, smile, make a joke now and again.”

“Such things do not come easily to me.”

“Well, you oughta practice, then. Go on, say something funny.”

Her lips thinned. “You act as though humor were self-evident. To me, it is not. I do not understand what makes a person laugh, nine times out of ten.”

“What about sarcasm? You just say the opposite of what is true with an inflection. Like, it sure is a
beautiful
day,” he said, pointing to the gray clouds and bleak landscape.

The door to their compartment slid open and, to Peer’s astonishment, Quade himself entered. Peer’s mind went blank. The man’s presence sent an instant wave of pleasure through the space.

Quade smiled his charming, flawless smile. “I see you have taken advantage of the drink cart. Excellent.”

Blight. Blight. Blight.

“I trust your time has passed enjoyably enough,” he said, looking to Su-Hwan to include her.

She glanced to Peer. “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s been a
pleasure
.” She hit the inflection far too hard and her face indicated no sarcasm, but there was a certain glimmer of hope in her eyes. Peer could not help himself—he burst out laughing.
 

Quade took a seat beside Peer and placed two objects neatly on his lap: the familiar black case that contained the drug—instantly Peer itched for it, needed it—and a miniature notebook.