Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (20 page)

Arlow crossed his legs at the ankle and turned a page in his newspaper. The wine in his glass sloshed with the rumbling of the train.
 

“I swear, I seen someone atop the front car,” Mae said, her nose pasted to the window.
 

“Perhaps it is some new, mad training regimen of Quade’s,” Arlow said, taking a sip of his beverage. It might as well be piss, he thought, as he opened and closed his mouth a few times. Sure, he had persuaded them to let him aboard the train for free, but did that truly warrant subpar libations?
 

“All these Chisanta abouts gives me the creeps,” Mae said.

Arlow put a hand to his chest. “You find us creepy? That certainly explains the pistol.”

She put a hand to the weapon at her hip. “Sure do.” She tore her gaze from the window. “Not you, cause I know you and I know what your gift is now. But these ones? Heck they could be readin’ my mind or seeing through my dress.”

Arlow quirked a brow at her, lips pursed thoughtfully. She laughed at him. “Plus, you’re easier to read than a book. But, for all I know, all these little buggers have five gifts a pop. That’s how many you can get, right? Five?”

Arlow folded his newspaper and placed it on the seat beside him. “Yes, but you would know if they had five. They’d be mad.”
 

She frowned. “What do you mean?”
 

“Are you not familiar with the sacrifices?”

She shook her head, and her eyes held a bright interest that he found appealing.
 

“The first gift is free. The next four come at a cost.” He held up his hand to count, lifting his index finger. “The first is the ability to have children—”

“What, you lose your bits?”

Arlow choked back a laugh. “No, the bits are all there. Just less…potent.” He lifted the next finger. “The next sacrifice is physical touch, skin-to-skin contact. After that is your memories, and finally your mind.”
 

She whistled. “Sounds lousy, if you ask me.”

“Hence why most of us have just the one.”

She snatched his wine and took a gulp, seeming not to notice its atrocious quality. He folded his arms and shook his head at her, still unsure if he found her total lack of decorum charming or off-putting. The wine left her lips wet and red.

She jumped. “Did you hear that?”

He had—a raised voice, just outside their compartment. “I’ll see what it is.”

Arlow stood, slid open the compartment door, and stepped into the hall. Almost instantly, the sharp blade of a knife pressed against his throat. He found himself staring into the blazing green eyes of Bray Marron—the very last person he expected to see.

“Arlow?” Yarrow asked.
 

Arlow smirked. “It seems every time we see each other it comes to this.” He
tsked.
“Terribly bad manners.”

Bray did not smile, her face resolved into hard, hate-filled lines. She pushed him back against the door to the compartment across from his. “You will tell me where my friend is, or I swear by all the Spirits above, I will bleed you like a pig.”
 

Arlow lifted up his hands, hoping to calm the situation, perhaps explain that he had switched sides.
 

“Bray?” a male voice called from the far side of the carriage.

Bray’s head snapped to the sound, and Arlow saw the relief wash over her features. “Peer!”

Arlow cleared his throat. “Excellent, now that we are all reunited, I—”

“Shut it,” Bray said, turning the knife to draw blood, making Arlow hiss. “I ought to kill you anyway, if you’re going to keep turning up like this.”

Arlow’s reply was stolen by the deafening sound of a gunshot. The knife fell from his neck in an instant and Bray’s eyes widened in shock. She collapsed. He frowned down at her, watched a small red hole between her shoulder blades expand into a wide blotch of blood. His heart stopped.

Yarrow bellowed her name, his voice breaking, and Peer, trailed by a petite Chaskuan girl, charged up the car. All of this seemed to happen distantly—Arlow’s ears rang.

He pulled his gaze up from Bray’s body, to the place where the shot had come from. To his own compartment, where Mae stood, pistol still in hand, smoking slightly, her face deathly serious.
 

Arlow felt as though all the air had left his body; he could not draw breath. The blood. There was so much blood.

Unbidden, he thought of Bray as she had been when he’d first met her, so many years ago. A precocious girl who had called him a prat, but who’d always had his back at the Temple.
 

“We have to get her out of here,” Yarrow said, his voice strangled, desperate. “Grab ahold of me,” Yarrow said to Peer.
 

Yarrow scooped Bray’s inert form to his chest and her head hung lifelessly. Peer grabbed Yarrow’s bare arm and the Chaskuan girl took hold of the other.
 

Yarrow seemed not to even notice. He closed his eyes and with a
pop
, he was gone—they were all gone.
 

Arlow stared at the bare floor for a time, too stunned and horrified to speak, until he heard the clatter of Mae’s pistol hitting the floor.
 

She trembled from head to foot. “I never killed no one before.” She gazed up at him with gleaming eyes. “Did I do wrong? She said…”

Arlow pulled her to his chest and stroked the back of her head. “You didn’t know any better,” he said. “It isn’t your fault.”

She trembled beneath him. His own hands shook.

“Who was she?” Mae asked into the fabric of his coat.
 

“A girl I knew once,” he heard himself answer, his gaze trained on the bloody stain on the carpet.
 

Bray’s blood.
 

Spirits
,
help us.

11

Yarrow rested Bray upon a pebbly shore. Her head lolled.

The sound of water lapping, birds trilling in a nearby wood, caused him to glance around, half in a daze and blinded by tears. The Painted Mere, thousands of multicolored stones beneath glass-clear water, stretched out before him. He had brought them there, clearly, though he couldn’t recall making that decision.
 

Bray remained still, her lips gray. Yarrow pressed tremulous fingers to her neck and searched for a pulse. He forced his eyes closed and bowed his head. Her heart beat, but softly, sluggishly, like a parting whisper.

Yarrow balled his fists, fingernails digging into palms, and punched the ground. He threw his head back, desperation, hot and wild, clawing like a living thing trapped within him.

Peer bent over her, weeping. “Bray,” he howled, “you can’t be leaving me, too.” He shook her, as if to rouse her from sleep. Her arm fell from her chest to the ground, fingers curled lifelessly towards the sky.

Yarrow wanted to scream, to tear his hair out, to set the world on fire.
 

She was dying.

His Bray was dying.

He gazed out across the lake and could not help but recollect the last time they had been there. A sob broke painfully from his chest.
 

His mind thrust a slew of other memories to the fore of his thoughts, like a slideshow: Bray in that green ball dress, stunningly annoyed at her footwear; Bray, at fourteen, whispering secrets as they lay in the grass at night; Bray’s lips against his own.

No.
He stood.
I will
not
allow her to die.

He had barely formed the opening stance,
Warm Hands over Fire
, when he found himself thrown into the
Aeght a Seve
, as if sheer willpower had propelled him there.

The Place of Five looked as ever: sunny, breezy, deceptively peaceful. Only, Yarrow did not appear in the grassy center, as he had for so many years. Rather, he materialized on the first stony ledge, the location of his last sacrifice.
 

He gazed up at the next tier—it seemed impossibly high, but he knew now that did not matter.

He inhaled and forced his shaking hands into fists.
Think: touch.

This was easy. There were a thousand kinds of touch: friendly handshakes, motherly kisses, lustful grasps. But he needn’t think of anything other than that afternoon in Cagsglow. That was the epitome of physical touch—the best it could ever possibly be.
 

He made himself relive it for a moment: the smooth feel of her skin beneath his fingers, her lips grazing his own, that explosion of tender pleasure.

It would be a torture, to never feel her flesh against his own again. But there was no hesitation. What would be the point of living without her? The ability to touch was nothing at all, a trifle, when weighed against her life.

He lowered himself and, with all the drive and focus his Spirit possessed, he leapt. He landed on the next ledge with surprising ease. The moment his back hit the stone he felt it: the loss, the gain.

He ripped himself back into the present. Peer was still draped over her form, his hands pressed to the wound in a vain effort to stem the bleeding.
 

Yarrow shoved him aside to kneel beside Bray’s limp form. He suspended his hands above her, palms flat. A peculiar warmth rushed through him, a heat that pooled somewhere in his core and raced to his fingertips. A light shone from his palms—golden, brilliant.
 

The gaping hole in her chest shrank, sealing itself back together before Yarrow’s very eyes, until the skin was once again intact. Her lungs sucked in a great, wheezing breath. Relief suffused him, so sweet it hurt.

 
She blinked, looking around in wonder. “Yarrow?”

“Bray!” Peer breathed. He barged past Yarrow and hauled Bray into a fierce hug. Yarrow feared he’d hurt her, but she grinned and thumped his back, pressing her face to his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut.
 

“But,” she marveled at her newly whole body, “I was shot.”

“Yarrow healed you,” Peer said, and he looked up at Yarrow with an expression of unspeakable gratitude.

Bray laughed. “Even my cold is gone.” She reached a hand up to caress Yarrow’s face and he jerked back from her fingers.
 

Her russet brows drew down in confusion, and then he watched as understanding crossed her countenance, followed by a deep pain. The animation drained from her.

“Oh, Yarrow,” she whispered, pulling her hand back to her chest, tears in her eyes.
 

Yarrow turned away and blinked. He blocked out her feelings from his mind. It was a grief they would both bear, to love each other and yet never touch again.

“I’m just happy you’re alive,” he whispered, the force of truth behind his words.
 

Arlow considered the familiar cityscape through the window as the train approached Accord. He’d not been gone from the capital long, and yet it felt an age.

Across from him, Mae stared into her lap, pale and quiet. As she seemed disinclined to speak, he would, at least, respect her desire for silence. He understood too well the weight of fresh blood on one’s hands.
 

The image of the throne room as he had come to consciousness after the assassination came to his mind. All those young men—maimed, dying, dead. His doing, all of it.

The compartment door glided open and Arlow jerked from his reverie. A tentative Adourran lad poked his head into the compartment. “Mr. Asher would like to see you.”
 

The boy looked downright terrified at the prospect. His gaze flitted between Arlow and the hallway.

“I take it he is displeased to have lost his prisoner.”

The boy’s eyes bulged. “I think so, but he is mostly upset about the Fifth.” His voice softened confidentially. “
Real
upset.”

Arlow could not imagine an upset Quade. The man wore his mask of benign pleasantness so faultlessly, one might be foolish enough to believe there was nothing beneath.
 

Arlow stood and Mae rose as well. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “You should stay here.”

Mae’s brow dimpled. “Not likely.”

Arlow glanced to the lad, then leaned in to whisper in Mae’s ear, “If Quade knows you are here, he may use you as leverage against your brother.”

She sucked in her bottom lip and surveyed his face critically before agreeing. She then plopped back down on the seat, resuming her look of numb disinterest.

He frowned down at her for a moment, uneasy. “I won’t be long.”

Arlow followed the youth—though from behind he didn’t look so young; he must be nearly as tall as Yarrow. They half-jogged down the hallway and into the next carriage.

The atmosphere in each car was just the same: charged with tension. It did little to calm Arlow’s rattled nerves. The Elevated all shared a wide-eyed apprehension, as if waiting for an unpleasant eventuality. Arlow wondered what sort of punishment Quade would mete out.
Poor bastards
.

They halted before Quade’s compartment and the Adourran gestured for him to enter.

“Not joining me?” Arlow asked with a smirk.

The lad shook his head, eyes bulging at the mere idea. “Good luck,” he whispered.