MARKS - Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Blair holds me, her hand smoothing my hair as I sob into her chest like a baby. When I’m done, she loops her arm in mine and we walk up the tunnel. The noise in the main room is immediately sucked into silence. Everyone stares at me, some with scowls on their faces. 

Blair escorts me to her side of the room, not bothering to notice everyone and the looks on their faces. They surely hate me. But these people are seeking out Lyrans and our power. My presence here puts them in no more danger than the papers hidden in the tunnel.

The papers.

Now that everyone knows, I should help. Ward rests against a wall, cleaning his dagger.

I tuck my skirts and sit beside him. “You said you wanted to know more about the Lyran poem. About how our powers work.”

He turns toward me. “You don’t have to do this, Gretta.”

I make myself look at him. “It helps not to have it hidden.”

He settles back against the rock wall.

“I never know how my words will come to fruition.” I clasp my hands around my knees and trace my thumbs over each other as I talk. “Today for example, I knew guards were headed toward Meggie’s house. Her husband, Sam, was my papa’s best friend. He and Meggie are like an aunt and uncle to me.” I hope they are well. “Anyway, the guards were searching for paper and taking anyone who had it. And I know Meggie has some and wouldn’t give it up.”

Ward stops cleaning his dagger. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“For me,” I tell him. “In case I ever needed it. So yesterday after I got the medicine, I saw the smoke and knew what would happen if they found paper at Meggie and Sam’s. I had paper with me, so I wrote that Meggie’s papers would remain hidden.”

I turn to him and he looks at me, his face blank.

“That’s why Breck went after me, Ward. He was supposed to go into Meggie’s but didn’t.”

“Because he came after you instead.”

I nod.

“So you’re not immune to your own words?”

Are any of us? “No. Not unless I write specifically about myself.”

I lean my head against the wall. He might as well know everything. “Remember that morning you saw me at the docks?”

He grins. “The morning you ran into me?”

I laugh. “Yes. I was hiding words there.”

Ward lifts his head off the rock. “What words?”

“Meggie was pregnant, and they have five sons. I wrote her a daughter.”

Ward blinks. “What else have you written?”

“After that day we first met, I wrote that Breck would never have me.”

Ward’s face tightens.

“I never thanked you for that day.” The words tumble out from wherever they’ve been hiding. “Or for bringing me here, or getting him off me yesterday. Or for letting me stay here with your family. Or the million other things you’ve done.”

His smile comes back, stretching across his face. “My pleasure,” he says. “What other things have you written lately?”

I’ve written more than I realized. “The woman I work with told me about the King’s festival in November, and how it was planned for the courtyard. I wrote that it would rain.”

Ward laughs. “I wondered where that storm blew in from.”

“Do you know what the King wants with the prince of Faraday?”

“No. It’s one of the things I’ve been trying to find out.”

I wonder if he’ll ask me to write that knowledge to him. But the silence lingers and he doesn’t ask.

“You said you never know how your words will come about, right?” he asks.

“That’s right.”

“So if you had written safety for Nolan, it might’ve come about by someone else on the mission dying or getting hurt worse?”

I’ve never thought of it that way. “I suppose.”

“Sometimes, Gretta, no words are needed.” He tugs my elbow until I turn and look at him. “You don’t have to save everyone.”

The breath I take is shallow and ragged. He keeps tearing down my guilt, and as it falls away my anger does, too. And all I have left is my grief.

If Ward can tell my emotions and thoughts are at war with each other, he doesn’t say anything. Instead he looks out over the room. “What other things can you tell me about Lyran powers?”

"I have to know names of people. It can’t be arbitrary. And of course I have to sign my name, and the paper’s never destroyed. Oh, and the sentences have to be seven words long.”

 

He looks up from his dagger. “There’s no mention of that in the poem.”

“No, but it’s well known among Lyrans that our words have to be in groups of seven. Legend has it that our gift was bestowed on us by God himself, and seven is the number of completion.”

“That’s why deaths are limited to seven. Why not saves?”

I rub my fingers over my marks. “I don’t know.”

Ward nods to my arm. “Who did you save?”

I freeze, my fingers stuck over my marks. Oh judgment, you cruel, cruel thing. Here I thought you had gone, but you were just waiting for me. Ward doesn’t know. I assumed he had, because he recognized the marks.

Disappointment and longing rise up inside me, but I swallow them down. “Mine are kills.”

#

The room I dye in feels like a sanctuary and not a prison tonight. I left Ward as soon as I spoke those words, acknowledging the lives I’ve taken. I have carried the truth of my marks for years, but I can’t hold the truth and Ward’s reaction to it together in one hand. So like always, I fled.

Nowhere to run to but this room. I don’t have enough supplies for a big batch of any one color. So, just like when I brought Liddy here to distract her, I dabble in several colors, filling my head with the rhythm of work.

Minutes pass and the colors bleed from one to the next. Cloth hangs in colors across the clotheslines, a rainbow of fabric against the sullen gray walls. A tiny swatch simmers in my pot of dye, a piece so small I’m not sure what to do with it. Make an apron for Liddy’s doll, maybe? I pull it from the pot and drape it across the line.

Footsteps echo down the tunnel. I cast a glance that direction just as Ward appears at the entrance.

There’s no expression on his face. His features don’t betray his emotions as easily as mine do. But there is no tightness to his features. No knitting of brows or clenched jaw. Just openness, despite all he’s learned of me.

And there are more secrets he doesn’t know.

“What are you dyeing?” he asks.

“Random stuff,” I tell him. “I needed something to do.” I blot my hands with a rag to soak up any lingering dye.

Ward steps close and stares at my hands. “You’ve collected a lot of colors.”

He says it so casual, as if commenting on the weather or something I’ve baked. I wonder if it’s his nature or his guard training that makes him able to hold back any undercurrent of anger or betrayal he may be feeling.

I wiggle my fingers. “I wanted to dye so it would hide any ink I might use. Maybe, too, so I wouldn’t always look at my hands and see the blood of those I’ve killed.” The truth tumbles out as though it’s metal and Ward’s the magnet it must get to. I turn my hands over and stare at the other side. “Sometimes all I see is red.”

“That’s not what I see.” Ward grabs my hands. “I see pink; the color Meggie’s baby’s cheeks will turn when she’s laughing.”

Something lurches inside me, and I look up at Ward.

“I see blue,” he continues, “of tears you’ve wiped from people’s eyes. Grey the color of sickness you took from Nolan. Brown the color of Liddy’s hair that you braid.”

I stare at my fingers, seeing colors on them I’ve never seen before.

“Mostly I see green,” he says.

My breath catches in my throat. “What’s the green for?”

He smiles. “The life you bring to people.”

I look up at Ward. His brown-blond hair lies in a mess across his head, the way Lucas’ hair used to. I reach up and smooth the stray pieces down.

Ward grips my wrist. Heat creeps into my cheeks. I’ve touched him as if I had his permission.

Saints, what was I thinking? His brown eyes pierce mine and I swallow. Hard. My heart drums a crazy rhythm. He’s going to push me away. Because I’m a stupid girl and he’s too sweet a boy to let me act like this. He lowers my arm to my side and releases it.

I take a step back and lick my lips. “Ward,” I begin, not knowing what to say but knowing I must say something.

He steps closer and cups my cheeks in his hands.

The pressure of his lips on mine is stunning. Then soothing. His kiss is warm. Unexpected. Gentle and solid and all things Ward.

I gasp and he pulls back and drops his hands. Now he’s the one blushing. “I’m sorry,” he says.

He steps back, but before he can move further I grab his neck and pull him toward me. I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach him, and press my lips to his before he can move or before I can tell myself this is stupid.

His arms come around me tight and he leans down, curving his face to mine. He smells like rain and paper. Like a clean slate or a new story. Like hope and second chances.

A surge of energy pulses through me. My fingers climb from his neck to his hair, and his arms press harder around me, as if he’s trying to absorb me into his body. My heart hammers inside my chest and warmth washes through my veins. A desperate urge to melt into him floods through me. His grip on me is fierce, but the touch of his lips to mine is soft like a late afternoon sun or a nighttime lullaby.

I have no idea what I’m doing. If my lips are supposed to stay still or move like this or move a different way. I open my eyes. Ward’s eyes are closed, his lips still moving against mine. I shut my eyes again, and I don’t know which part I love more, Ward kissing me or the way his arms are wrapped around me, holding me close to him.

He pulls away and rests his forehead against mine. My arms fall from his head to his side. He doesn’t speak. And Ward was right; sometimes words aren’t needed. His silence is all the words I need to hear.

His breaths are fast and urgent. Excitement pulses between us. And even though I’m so happy, all I want to do is cry. Ward lifts his head off mine and smiles, and the dimple on his face is like a cavern - a wide expanse of space that I could fall into and never be able to climb out of.

I’m not sure I’d want to.

“You don’t have to run from me, Gretta.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll just come find you, no matter where you run off to.”

I smile and kiss him again. Ward doesn’t know it, but I think he’s already found me.