Page 25 of Marked By the Enemy
My hatred toward Darian was dissolving since his shadow was exposed–the memory of his brother’s death.
Darian came forward and touched my wrist. He breathed into my ear, “Which corridor does the voice want us to keep away from? The ones leading to the Throne Room?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“What can you see if I touch you like this?”
I drew in a breath as a tingling sensation from his touch traveled up my arm. I swallowed. His fingers brushed the inside of my wrist again, over the mark. A single contact. No magic words. No force.
But the bond dragged me under like a net I hadn’t seen, wrapping me in memory too sharp to be mine. My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall.
The chamber vanished.
I stood in the archive. Parchment lay spread across a stone table, ink slick and moving—black as oil. The five circles formed and reformed, twisting. My name rose from the margin in light—Talia of Tarnwick.
A voice whispered it.
But the voice didn’t come from me. And the lips that moved weren’t mine either. A woman sat at the table’s edge. Her lips were painted, faintly cracked. Smoke curled around her mouth. She wore a dozen rings—stone, bone, gold—and one hand turned a page while the other stretched toward mine.
The moment snapped.
I was elsewhere.
A long corridor lit with green fire. Walls carved with names. The prince’s name glowed near the top—Darian. Below it, mine. Over and over and over again.
The Bone Seat stood at the end of the hall. Watching. His eyes were ultraviolet, without any pupils. No emotion, no hesitation. He knew. He had always known.
The bond yanked me back into my body. “I gasped and jerked my arm from Darian’s grip. My wrist tingled. My forearm burned.
He stared down at our skin—three linked rings now marked the insides of our palms, inner wrists, and inner forearms, climbing his right and my left.
I pressed my fist to my mouth.
Darian swayed slightly on his feet, gaping at my face. “What did you see?”
I shook my head, still trying to breathe. “My name in that book. Your name scrawled in green light on a wall, and my name written many times in a list underneath.”
Darian’s voice dropped. “They tried to fuse it to us?”
“They planned it,” I said. “I think they planned me.”
His eyes flashed silver as he frowned at the sunset through the window.
I scrutinized the way the marks on my wrist were now interlinked. “I think the Bone Seat knew I was coming. He didn’t stop it. Maybe he arranged it. Maybe I was never an accident.”
He froze. “They fused it to us?”
“Or they planned to. To see if it would work. If it could become something else.”
His jaw tightened. “That’s why it listens to you instead of me.”
“But it shows you me.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It only lets me observe you.” His eyes met mine, slow and sure. “Even if the Bone Seat did plan this, and even if he is fooling us into believing the bond chose you–for whatever reason and plan he has up his sleeve, we’re different from the others. In all the tales I’ve heard, the bonded had a terrible time.”
“That’s only what you heard, though. How can you believe what you haven’t witnessed first hand? I don’t know why the Bone Seat would do this to us. There must be a reason.”
“It’s confusing.”
