“Though humans and angels were at war for centuries, they always had at least one common enemy: marques. The unclean children of traitors who lay with the enemy, their magic was neither of the mind nor the physical world but something else entirely. Were we right to hunt them down? Perhaps not. But we were right to fear them.”
—Marked: An Exploration of the Slaughtered Marque Race by Varrick Keighley, Venteran scholar
Eliana closed her eyes, weary. “Remy, please don’t start this nonsense again.”
“Do humans look like they do?” Remy insisted.
“He has these pet theories, you see,” Eliana told Navi.
“Their black eyes,” he continued. “Everyone talks about them. You can hardly see the white around them, is what I’ve heard.”
Eliana waved a dismissive hand. “Who knows what sorts of drugs the Emperor’s generals have access to?”
“Then explain the visions you and Navi had when you were near them. The angels used mind-speak. All the old stories say so.”
“And the old stories,” Eliana bit out, “are just that. Stories from a world so long past that nobody can remember it, and most intelligent people believe it never existed quite as those stories say.” She drew in a breath, more unsteadily than she would have liked. “People look anywhere for comfort during times like ours, Remy. Believe all you want in a world of angels and magic and mind-speak and travelers who can zip from one end of time to another, but please promise me you’ll remember it is simply that. A belief. It isn’t fact, it isn’t proven—”
“And the way your body can heal itself?” Remy interrupted. “Is that belief? Or is it a fact?”
Eliana glared at him but said nothing. For of course he was right. She couldn’t ignore the simple truth of her own body.
“Why won’t you believe me?” came Remy’s voice at last, softer now. “It’s the only thing that makes sense after what you’ve seen, isn’t it?”
“Because if the angels are alive and real, then we’re well and truly fucked, and there’s no point to any of this,” Eliana snapped, rising to her feet. “No point to being in this room, no point to searching for Mother.”
“No point to the people you’ve killed and betrayed,” Navi finished.
Eliana whirled around to glare at her. “And no point to the years you’ve wasted as an Empire whore.”
“El, stop it!” Remy hissed.
“Spy is the word I prefer,” said Navi mildly. “It helps me fend off the nightmares.”
Eliana stalked a few paces away with her arms crossed. She yearned, suddenly, for Simon to appear, if only so she could throw her knives at something that would fight back and show her no mercy.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, refusing to look at Navi. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Navi. “But I accept your apology.”
“They might not be angels,” Remy admitted, after a moment. “I’ve never read any stories about angels with solid black eyes. But then, those visions you saw… That can’t be nothing.”
“If they aren’t angels, what are they?” Eliana closed her eyes. “What am I?”
“Maybe,” Navi said, after a moment, “you’re a marque?”
“Part human, part angel?” Eliana turned back to her with a harsh bark of laughter. “Oh, good. That’s better. I am wholly reassured.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Remy mused, chewing on his lip. Excitement lit his eyes, grudgingly warming Eliana’s seething black heart. Soon he’d be pacing, lecturing them like a miniature temple scholar. “Marques had markings on their backs where wings might be. And most of them were killed during the Angelic Wars, before Queen Rielle was even born. I think if El was a marque, there’d be some sign of it on her.”
A sharp rap at the door made them all jump.
Navi turned at once where she sat. “Simon.”
“Not a word to him,” Eliana warned. “Or I swear to you, I’ll rend—”
“Eliana, would you stop threatening me every five minutes? I told you I won’t tell anyone, and I meant it.” Navi hesitated, then approached slowly, one hand outstretched. In her palm lay Arabeth. “Take it. Please.”
Eliana obeyed, snatching the knife away before Navi could change her mind. With Arabeth held securely in her fingers, some of the churning knots in her chest loosened their grip.
“I would like,” Navi said with a small smile, “for things not to be that way between us. I would like us to be friends. For us to trust each other.” She paused and looked to Remy. “If there really are angels in the world, as your brother thinks might be the case…we’ll need to keep close all the friends we can find. Don’t you agree?”
Another, sharper rap on the door. “Ignore me at your peril,” came Simon’s voice.
“You’re an ass!” Eliana shouted over her shoulder.
“I’ve never claimed not to be,” he replied.
Navi laughed softly. “Well? What do you think?”
Eliana shook her head. “I’m not good at having friends.”
“I’ve rather fallen out of practice too. Shall we try to remember how it goes, together?”
“No, don’t worry, I’m happy to wait out here forever,” came Simon’s irritated voice.
Remy burst out giggling, sounding more like a child than he had in long months. It melted the last of Eliana’s resolve.
“I will try,” she said at last and clasped Navi’s hand in her own. “That’s all I can promise.”
Navi smiled warmly at her. “That is a gift. I thank you for it. Now.” She raised her eyebrows at the door. “Shall I let him in?”
“Oh, please, allow me.” With that, Eliana marched over to the bathing room door and flung it wide open with a grin—which promptly dropped off her face when she took in the sight of Simon standing there. Linen trousers sat low on his hips, and he wore nothing else, save a dark-blue towel slung over his shoulder. His ash-blond hair was tousled and wild, and his ruined skin… Eliana couldn’t stop herself from looking at it. Beyond the layer of dirt coating him, thin silver lines and slender patches of skin shimmering with burn scars snaked across his chest and down his abdomen, slipping beneath the waistband of his trousers.
For a moment, Eliana found herself truly wondering what had happened to him—what had burned him, who had cut him—and what he had been like as a child, before the horrors of the world had found him.
“My, my,” he murmured, his blue eyes flashing with unbridled glee. “Never have I seen the Dread struck so speechless. You know how to make a man feel good, I must say.”
Eliana’s mouth opened and shut, her cheeks flaming. Scrambling to think of something clever to say, her flustered mind could come up with nothing better than “Come to catch a peek at me naked, did you?”
She winced.
But Simon only smiled. “Oh, Eliana,” he murmured, his voice no longer playful, “I want so much more than simply a peek.”
With one last, lingering look, he slipped past her into the bathing room, and Eliana was left standing at the door, alone and unsteady, her hand tingling from the brush of his fingers against her own.
It was a strange thing that had so unbalanced her, beyond her lonely body’s reaction to his own. A sensation that sometimes came upon her when Simon was near, and one she couldn’t explain. A sense of the familiar.
Like she had felt when standing on the terrace overlooking Celdaria during her vision of the Emperor—an irrational sense of belonging and rightness.
A sense, she thought, dazed and faintly irritated, of home.
