Page 101 of Marked By the Enemy
I watched the way his hands curled around the tin mug, the faint silver edge of the crescent moon visible along his palm. I could still feel the warmth of his bond through the tether, like a hearth someone had remembered to keep lit.
Around us, the marked ones had gone quiet. Not hostile. Not yet. But the whispers were starting.
“She never told us.”
“And what if the Boundless are right?”
A bowl clattered on stone. Somewhere to my left, Lina stood without eating. Jack’s mouth was a thin, bloodless line. Sael was staring at the pit wall, expression unreadable.
Darian shifted beside me before standing. “I was a boy.” His eyes swept the Boundless’s table first, and then the marked. “When I signed their treaty, I didn’t know what it would cost.”
Jinth met his gaze without blinking.
“I believed what they told me. That the bond was sacred. That it kept the world in balance. That it protected us.” A muscle twitched along his jawline. “They left out the part where it fed on the children of Tarnwick.”
The words hung there. Willow reached for my hand. I gave it without looking.
“Why should we believe you now?” someone growled from the Boundless line. Korr, I realized. The man who hadn’t met my eyes earlier. His fists were clenched. His voice shook with fury.
“Korr,” Jinth said, warning in her tone.
Korr lunged with his bare hands, reaching for Darian like he meant to pull the tether straight out of his spine. Everything happened at once.
Branwen rose from her seat. Her fingers carved a pattern in the air so fast it glowed green before it finished. A sigil snapped open mid-stride—sharp, perfect—and Korr struck it with the full weight of his fury. The impact knocked him backwards, hard. He landed flat on his back.
Willow gasped. A few marked scrambled to their feet. The vow answered in sound. A deep pulse that started in the soles of our boots and climbed the ribslike a second heartbeat. I felt it in my teeth and tongue. Even the air smelled different now, laced with burned cedar and old stone.
Darian peered at Korr and said quietly, “I didn’t come to ask your forgiveness. I came to fix what my family broke.”
That was the part I couldn’t bear—his quiet was never cruel, just true. Always true. And somehow, that was worse. Because no one had anything left to say.
Branwen lowered her hand, the green glow from her vine sigil already fading into the morning light. But her worried eyes were as large and turquoise as ever, under her head of thick auburn hair.
The Boundless withdrew in silence. A few tossed down their spoons. One muttered a curse in a tongue I half-recognized from the northern camps. No one apologized. But they didn’t stay in the fighting ring either. They didn’t leave the Keep, though. It looked as if they had come to stay.
Priestess Jinth was the last to move. Her staff tapped once as she turned, blind eye catching firelight. But before she left the pit, she paused. “We’ll speak again when your eyes open.”
The courtyard bled quietly again. The marked filtered back to their work. Some lingered longer, stealing glances at Darian. A few avoided me entirely. I didn’t blame them. I stayed seated until the ring was almost empty.
Willow helped collect the cups. Branwen nodded to me on her way past, but said nothing. I could feel the magic still buzzing in the air. The vow didn’t forget a flare like that.
And then I saw them—at the edge of the orchard slope, just beyond the lower terraces where frost still clung to the stone. They hadn’t been there before. I was certain of it.
The ash-man who called himself the Recorder stood naked once more, arms at his sides, skin darkened with soot and ember-dust. His eyes—black as old coals—stared forward, unblinking. Beneath his skin, a broken lattice of white light flickered like shattered vows trying to stitch themselves whole.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, but the bond stayed relaxed along my spine—stretched out like a cat in a patch of sun.
Beside the ash-man stood the one with fish etched into his palms, the marks blazing bright blue. The girl was there, too—the one with braids shadowed in coal-smoke and steel shimmer, the descendant of the Ash Court’s gentle Bone Seat who had refused to join with the demons. The fish-marked man was speaking to her urgently, pointing across the orchard. She turned and ran—away from him, and away from the Keep.
Chapter twenty-nine
When the Mark Speaks
The Keep seemed smaller by morning. Too many people. Too many whispers. Eyes that no longer trusted. I drifted through the orchard path. It was a cold, wet, and miserable day. Spring was so far away. Steel rang from the forge. But the forge didn’t laugh. The courtyard had never held so many people. Now it barely held the silence between them.
The Boundless weren’t leaving. They’d claimed the old stables and a section of the armory hall. Every time I passed by, I was aware of the heat behind their stares. The air warped near them, shaped by old loyalties and older wounds.
The marked had changed too. They moved slower. Spoke softer. A few looked over their shoulders now, as if they were wondering if they should be afraid. This wasn’t what I fought for.
