Page 102 of Marked By the Enemy
I recalled Oxford and the long hike west, the aching hope that there would be something at the end of it—some place where the broken might meet and become more than what the vow had made of them. A place where magic might mean belonging.
Instead, the bond was tight and stretched, cracked around the edges like old pottery.
Darian hadn’t come to breakfast. I reasoned that the strain kept him distant. The guilt, the shame. But the longer the morning dragged, the more that absence gnawed at something soft and stupid in me. What if he didn’t shun the camp? What if he shunned me?
I perceived him leave in the night—quiet, respectful. The tether between us had dulled. Numbness filled it, as if Darian held me at arm’s length.
His guilt sat heavy. Enough to dull my appetite. The shame he carried for being the Bone Seat’s offspring travelled through that numb thread to me as a hypersensitivity to noise, crowds, and activity. Those were his feelings, but they were permeating to me.
Maybe he preferred men. Maybe he preferred the fae. Maybe he felt nothing for me at all. But I still ached like someone waiting to be chosen. And right now, I pitied him more than anything. I understood his reason for departing the hall. He thought his presence only made things worse.
But understanding this didn’t stop the hollowness behind my ribs.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” Willow’s voice broke through the quiet. She was sitting on the edge of the stone basin, her hands clasped around her knees. Branwen stood beside her, slicing an apple with a small, wickedly curved knife.
I didn’t answer right away.
“They hate us all, don’t they?” Willow whispered. “They don’t just hate the prince. They hate all of us.”
Branwen’s knife didn’t pause.
“That’s because hate is easier than confusion.”
Willow looked up. Her eyes were too big for her face in the morning light.
Branwen met her gaze. “They remember pain. But they don’t remember what caused it. That’s the Bone Seats’ work. They hollowed it out of them, left only the wound.”
“It seemed to me they knew all about the Bone Seat. But they choose to be unforgiving of any gullible prince boys who were tricked into signing.” I sat down beside them and stared at the miserable sky.
It was pale and empty. For a moment, I wished a storm would come to shake things up. Something loud. Something honest. Because this quiet—the one wrapped around the Keep like a shroud—was too close to breaking.
The hall was too small for the weight we had brought. Stone walls. Timber beams. A hearth without a fire. The table in the center had once been a training map, carved with old river routes and alliance lines. Now it was only scraped wood between us. Only a few of the marked had come in, my closest friends–the first ones who had stayed with me before we journeyed to Oxford to collect more.
Jinth stood like she belonged there, even though my marked friends had been the ones to clean and furnish the place for comfort. Her staff was planted at her side, her good eye sharp, the other blank and unreadable. She remained standing. None of the Boundless sat.
I wondered why Prince Darian had set her free when he had told me she’d died under the hands of her interrogator, but I didn’t ask. They had probably sent spies after her to see where she ended up with her freedom and to take them to the Boundless.
Branwen stood with her arms folded, one foot braced against the edge of the table like she might kick it into kindling if the wrong words came next. Her turquoise eyes burned fanatically as she stared at the priestess.
Astrid sat beside her, quiet, teeth worrying at her bottom lip. Jack leaned against a post in the back.
Jinth didn’t wait for an opening. “The fae prince has to leave.”
No softening, no courtesy.
“If he stays,” she said, sweeping the room with her voice, “we walk. All of us. And we’ll take those who remember what your prince did when his name was still written in court ink and children’s blood.”
My head boiled with fury. “He’s not—“
“He is,” she snapped.
Darian didn’t flinch—but I did, for him.
I wanted to throw myself between her words and his name. I wanted him to see I still would.
“You think the vow forgives you because you wear a different shirt?” she continued. “Because you look tired and talk in half-truths? He signed the pact. His blood runs through the Bone Seat. He’s tied to it by every strand of magic you’re pretending you understand.”
Branwen didn’t flinch. “We understand enough to know he’s our friend.”
