Page 100 of Marked By the Enemy
Korr was silent. I forced myself not to flinch. Not to show the burn behind my ribs where their words landed. Darian took one step forward. Not close enough to challenge, but enough to draw the edge of their attention.
“She’s no traitor,” he said. “And you’ve arrived at our gates, uninvited?”
Jinth didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on mine. “We came for shelter. But don’t mistake that for allegiance.”
I nodded once. “Then come in. You can sleep under our roof, so long as you don’t raise blades against the marked.” I stepped back and gave the signal for the gates to open.
The Boundless walked in, like a storm we’d thought we’d already survived.
By the time the Boundless had eaten and laid down their packs, word had already spread about a meeting. The courtyard filled slowly and quietly. First the ones who woke early—Branwen, Sael, Rainer with Willow tucked behind her sleeve—then others. Jack leaned in the archway. Lina crossed her arms near the firepit. Ulric remained in the forge, looking outwards through the opened double doors. His gaze was dark, twinkling, and threaded with the Iron magic of the Storm Court.
Even those still drowsy with sleep began to gather. Ruen and Astrid stood to the side, quiet and watchful. Ben leaned into Bramlin’s side. Jack and Lina kept near the edge, arms crossed. Ulric wiped soot from his hands but didn’t step away from the forge. The courtyard buzzed with tension—alive and alert.
The Boundless stood apart, bristling. Jinth at their center, her staff pressed upright into the ground as if it could root her where we stood.
“We’re glad you made it,” I said, voice level. “The border’s no place to travel. But before you start preaching your war, you should listen to ours.”
Jinth’s eye swept through the crowd like it was counting something. “You fused with the enemy.”
“You know that already,” I protested. “You saw what happened during the New Moon Ceremony at the Moon Court.”
A murmur rolled through the marked.
“You protect a prince who helped enslave our children,” she continued, louder now. “You hold hands with one of the ten princes who signed the pact which allowed the Bone Seats to bind memory, strip soul, and fuse light to darkness.” Her gaze landed on Darian like a knife to the ribs. “He signed that treaty.”
I didn’t flinch. I stepped forward, hands bare, voice sharp. “He was a child.”
“And children died because of him,” she said, jabbing her staff into the dirt. “Because of what he helped create. You think the Bone Seats used him? Maybe. But that doesn’t make him clean.”
The bond within Darian tightened in shame. The kind that settled deep and made itself at home.
I kept my voice steady. “The Bone Seats twisted the vow long before many of us were born. We’re trying to return it to what it once was—a choice, bound by will.”
Jinth shook her head. “Sounds like something they taught you after you let him tether you. Your mother never found that to be true.”
My heart stumbled, and the world tilted slightly sideways. “What did you say?”
“She understood her identity long before she crossed the ridge to die with fools in the Borderlands. She’d remembered. She would meet up with her grandmother, the Water Seat of the Moon Court—also the greatest seeress in Luneguard’s Valari Tribe.”
“What? No, that can’t be… How can…” I muttered, confused.
“She was gathering old truths, building a rebel order to protect the real vow. This thing you’re guarding—it’s the corruption.”
My mouth becamedry. “She never told me.”
“No,” Jinth said, with something like pity. “But she was preparing you to be one of us. That’s why we took you in after her death.”
The words hung there. Heavy. True. Unwelcome. And for a moment, the courtyard seemed as if it might fracture—between those who had trusted me because I’d come from rebellion… and those who would now question whether I’d betrayed it.
I lifted my chin. “I carry no mark of Bone Seat or Boundless. I serve the vow as it was first dreamed—open, never bound.”
We had breakfast in the largest fighting pit. The Keep was too crowded now, and the pit was the only place wide enough to keep space between bodies, eyes, and doubts.
Long tables were dragged from the hall and laid out in uneven rows. Branwen passed out bowls thick with barley mash and smoked fish. Steam curled up from tin cups of bitter root tea. Someone stoked a fire in the stone circle to keep the cold from settling in bones. It didn’t help much. The chill had sunk in overnight and hadn’t quite left.
The Boundless took their food apart from us. I sat between Darian and Willow. He turned his spoon through the mash, looking for answers. The light in his sigil had dulled to a flicker under the collar of his shirt. But he was steady and quiet.
I used to hate the silence between us. Now I was afraid of what might break if it ever left. That was the thing about him. Even now, as the ground beneath us seemed unstable, he moved as if the world would remain firm. And I hated him for it. For making me believe we might stillsurvive.
