Page 103 of Marked By the Enemy
Astrid spoke. Her voice was quiet, but firmer than I expected. “We have the power of memory now. And Prince Darian isn’t a child anymore. We were all made into tools for something we didn’t choose. That’s what the Bone Seats did. You need to stop blaming the princes of the Fae Courts. They were all small boys without the faintest clue.”
“And you believe Talia?” Jinth jerked her chin toward me. “You believe the trained assassin who walked away from Mountain Stone to kill the prince, but who ended up marrying him instead?”
Jack straightened. “They left the Moon Court. The vow-magic exposed the truth to both of them. We follow truth. Talia brought it back.”
There was a sound from the Boundless side. A scoff. Younger. Angrier. A young man stepped forward. Barely eighteen. He had scars across both knuckles and the kind of stance that said it didn’t matter who he hit, so long as it landed hard. “Why should we trust a woman who abandoned us for a crown?” he said. “She left us with half a plan. We were counting on her.”
I strolled toward him. “I didn’t leave to forget. I left to remember. I saw things the courts tried to bury. I walked another realm called the corridor. I remembered the rebels of the Bone Seat. I want to break the Bone Seats’ hold, like my great-grandmother did—the Water Seat of the Moon Court.”
A collectivegasp filled the air.
“My great-grandmother wasn’t pure fae. She was mixed-blood. Most of us are. Pure fae and pure humans are rare, but the demons inside the ten Bone Seats don’t want us to realize that.”
Another gasp.
“Like all the Elemental Seats used to be. My great-grandmother, the Water Seat of the Moon Court, forged her blade in blood and stone, and she wasn’t alone in her rebellion.”
They didn’t believe me. Not fully.
So I drew the blade. The sound it made wasn’t steel—it was memory. A low, ringing hum that climbed the walls and sank into the stone beneath our boots. My three runes—flickered silver along the edge.
Jinth stepped back. Her staff trembled. Behind her, the young rebel muttered something in mountain dialect, sharp and brittle as cracked bone. I knew the word:Oldblood.
The young rebel who’d spoken first snarled and grabbed the blade at his belt. He threw it. It flew fast and low, aimed straight for my chest.
Jack’s turquoise hammer and tongs sigil with ivy flared around him, and he directed it toward me. It hovered in place mid-air, a perfect circle of protective force. The blade struck it, spun, and dropped harmlessly at my feet.
Jack stroked his white beard. “Next time, aim for someone who doesn’t see you coming.”
Darian hadn’t moved much, but I’d seen the tilt of his stance, one foot sliding toward me with care. The man-boy staggered back, blinking. But the silence that followed felt like the moment before a thunderclap, when the air gets too thick to swallow.
The bond pulsed. I perceived it first in my teeth, then in the soles of my feet and chest, like a second heartbeat thudding out of rhythm with my own. All around me, the marked went still. They changed, not just in stance, but in focus. Their eyes changed. Their spines straightened. One by one, they stepped forward.
A circle formed, smooth and instinctual—Willow and Rainer to my right, Branwen to my left, Astrid two steps back, her marks already glowing faintlybeneath her cuffs. Jack didn’t move from the pillar, but his sigils spun like clockwork across his knuckles. Ruen stood beside him, mirroring him. Lina and Nessa had entered, too, while Lymseia and Ulric stared at the Boundless from the shadows.
Each one radiated something old and rooted. Not rage. Not pride. Memory. The marks glowed. Light shimmered in blues, greens, molten copper, silver, pink, white, and gold. Symbols carved themselves into the dirt beneath our boots, rising in complex shapes.
But even as the magic climbed and bloomed, my eyes found Darian. If this shifted, if anything deteriorated—I needed assurance he was nearby. That he’d be safe and understand I remained with him.
The Boundless froze. They didn’t fear the magic. They couldn’t read its shape.
The magic resembled language, each sigil a sentence, each glow a lineage of something they couldn’t name.
Jinth took another step back. She hid it well. But I saw the tremble in her hand, the tightening of her jaw, and the doubt worming its way into a certainty she’d held too long.
She pounded her staff against the ground. “What are you becoming?”
I looked her in the eye and said softly, “Something older than hate.”
Darian didn’t speak. He looked at me—long and searching—as if memorizing who I was, the moment I chose him, anyway.
Chapter thirty
The Spiral Begins
Iwalked along the lower terrace in the afternoon. High above, the golden falcon circled, too slow for hunting. It looped three times, as if it wanted to warn me about something. A faint blue aura glowed around it for a moment.
The air distorted. I paused under the archway near the watchtower, heart ticking louder in my throat. And then it reached my ears. A voice. Male. “This place wasn’t for you, young Talia. We had planned the binding between you and the Bone Seat’s son, but never, never, did we want to put you in danger.”
