Page 104 of Marked By the Enemy
I recognized the voice; it was the same one I’d heard under the Moon Court’s throne, and the same that came from the man with the bright blue aura. He had been trying to warn me about something, but somehow he had forgotten.
I spun and hurried back through the orchard paths, checking corners I didn’t mean to check. Camp shifted in fragments. Some tended fire. Others kept their eyes anywhere but on the Boundless, who settled like a siege.
I saw them again. The ash-covered man stood near the western wall. The strangeness of his winter nudity and ashy covering was surpassed only by the unusual energy he radiated, especially considering the bond’s welcoming embrace.
Beside him, the old man in slate-gray robes muttered into his ear, the twin fish-runes glowing within his right palm. They faced away from us, toward the trees, as if listening to something the rest of us didn’t hear. And then the little things started.
Lord Fen sat near the fire pit in the east courtyard with a book open in his lap. I passed him once, twice, three times. He hadn’t turned the page. His eyes didn’t even blink. A child crouched at the kiln wall, drawing spirals into ash. Over and over. Each perfect.
I found Branwen near the edge of the old memory circle, made from all those flint stones Nessa had brought up from the forest. Alone, hands braced against her knees, her breathing was shallow, as if she’d just finished running. She flinched and tore her hand from her forearm, fingers curling like she’d touched a coal.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.
She whispered, “Someone else was inside of me for a minute or two.”
I touched the hilt of my blade, fingertips resting against the Water Seat of the Moon Court rune. The metal was too warm.
I didn’t remember walking back to the Keep. My boots carried me through the orchard paths and past the courtyard fire pit without thought or destination. The broken spirals in the ash still lingered. The hum of the bond lay submerged, as if trapped or hiding beneath a frozen lake.
I saw him, Darian, high up on the inner wall, one leg slung over the edge like a careless prince in some tale where nothing bad ever happened. The light cut across his shoulder and the wind toyed with his hair, but he looked carved there. Still. Alone.
I hated how far away he seemed. Like if I blinked, the wind might take him. He seemed to be partially absent already. I crossed the courtyard and climbed the wall stairs. His back rested against the stone, one leg drawn up, the other dangling over the battlement as if unafraid of falling. The wind tugged at his hair.
Darian didn’t move when I approached. Didn’t even glance over. “Did it get worse?” he asked.
I leaned beside him, arms folded on the cool stone. “Do you want the truth or something soft?”
A ghost of a smile. “Truth, please. We passed soft a long time ago.”
I told him about the Boundless still being angry, the marked ones still being confused, the man-boy who nearly drew blood, Branwen recoiling at the memory circle, the shimmer in the air.
He remained quiet for a moment. Finally, he said, “It’s me, isn’t it?”
I opened my mouth to deny it. To protect him from his own thoughts. But I sensed it beneath his words—that guilt, heaviness and hopelessness, as if he believed himself the poison in the well.
“No.” I turned to face him fully.
His eyes searched the horizon, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it. “I didn’t ask to be this, to carry something… woven into the thing that breaks people.”
“You didn’t choose what you were born into,” I said. “But you’re choosing what you stand for now. That’s what matters.”
His hand brushed his chest mark absently, and he cringed, like it itched. “I keep dreaming of my mother. The moment before the Bone Seat took her head. It’s worse than a memory. It lingers. It’s as if the bond is trying to show me what I became the moment I signed.”
I wanted to touch him. Not with the bond. With my hands. Before I could answer, aclickechoed below the wall. Below, the ash-man stood at the keep’s entrance, the memory circle warping behind him in the largest fighting ring.
Beside him, the old man with the fish-rune kneeled slowly and placed something in the dirt. I couldn’t see what. But when he stood, the vines nearby twisted slightly, like they’d grownwrongfor half a breath before snapping back.
Darian stood beside me. “Do you feel that?”
My chest heaved to the point that it groaned with each breath.
The sound of heavy footfalls up the steps broke the silence. Lord Fen appeared. He looked terrified as he squinted down at the ash-man. “The bond appears dense. There’s something wrong with it. There’s something strange about those two.” He nodded toward the strange duo.
I stared back at the coal-black eyes of the ash-man. My heart kicked a ruckus in my chest, mingling with fear and excitement with my blood, though the bond lay placid. I touched the coin in my pouch for protection—Abigail’s, passed to me from the boy specter. It thudded like a second pulse against my fingertips, warm and restless.
The hilt of my blade was scorching hot. That was when Willow screamed. It rang through the Keep—sharp and panicked.I ran to the south edge of the wall, boots slamming against stone.
Willow stood below in the center of the lower courtyard, her hands raised as if trying to push back the sky. Her golden sigil flared across her chest and down her arms, expanding throughout the space surrounding her—a rising sun over curved hills, roots glimmering and writhing underneath.
