“Because I’d ask him to.” Rory to the rescue. “And because he always keeps his promises.”
Tears spilled from Cadence’s eyes and Rory moved her chair closer, leaned a little so their shoulders were almost touching. Cadence went the rest of the way, leaning into Rory and then accepting Rory’s arm around her back as Rory said, “We’ll work it out. We’ll stick together.”
He took that as a sign the worst had passed, rumbled around in the kitchen and found herbal tea, made a mug for Cadence and put it in front of her. She was breathing more normally and had stopped crying. He had to take advantage of that. She hadn’t meant to tell them about black marks. Like as not she’d clam up once she’d fully recovered.
“Why are you worried about getting a black mark?” he said.
“I’m not.” She pushed the mug away. “It was nonsense. Doesn’t mean anything. I was raving.”
That wasn’t clamming up, it was throwing chains and a padlock around a problem, setting it in cement and sinking it in the sea.
“Is that true? You seemed really frightened,” Rory said.
Cadence looked at the table. “It was nothing.”
“You can punch me,” Zeke said.
She looked at him like he’d announced he had wings.
He shrugged. “Just a suggestion. I have it on good authority it will make you feel a lot better.”
She reached for the mug. “You think I’m crazy?”
“No more than Rosie or me.”
Cadence took a sip of the tea. It had a fragrance he couldn’t identify, but that could be because it’d been a week since he’d had a sugary, milky, coffee-flavored concoction and he had cravings.
“If you don’t do what you’re told, you get a black mark in the Origins book. If you get enough black marks, you have to leave. That means you won’t be saved. You have to go back to the decay to die. I wouldn’t make it out there. I wouldn’t.”
“That’s why you were so worried when I went to HQ,” Rory said.
“Maybe they already gave you a black mark.”
“How do I find out? How many do you have to get before they throw you out?”
“Only Orrin knows.”
Rory played her part. She stood and shifted about as if she was genuinely worried. “People really get told to leave?”
Cadence nodded. Zeke glanced at Rory. If that was true, why had they been unable to find escapees to talk to? Were there other ways people were forced to leave Abundance, never to be heard of again?
“That’s why you have to go to the dance, isn’t it? Why you can’t stay home,” he said.
“I can’t risk another black mark. I didn’t bond last year. They warned me I had to bond, and I didn’t. I didn’t do it for two years and now my time is up.”
“Bond with me,” Rory said, sliding into her seat. “If we bond then they can’t give either of us a black mark.”
“It doesn’t work like that. A bond is only between a man and a woman who have sex to have children. Everything else is just friendship. And every fertile woman has to bond every year until she’s had six children.”
“Do you want to be a mom?” Rory asked. Zeke would’ve sworn he heard the word six ricochet inside her head.
Cadence gulped the tea and coughed hard. “I don’t want to go back to the decay, so yeah, I’ll be a mom if it means I get to stay. Do you?”
“Hell, no. I’m not ready to be a mom.”
Cadence hissed. “Don’t let anyone hear you say that.”
“It’s just us though, right. We’re roommates.”