Page 29 of Marked By the Enemy
He led us through the back halls only the staff used. Quiet paths with no patrols, no eyes. He scampered like he’d memorized every turn before I arrived. I moved when the bond tugged. He moved when the stairwells widened or narrowed, always ahead of the silence. Silence reigned in the palace. Even the guards at the thresholds had disappeared.
We descended. The servant tunnels opened into a drainage culvert behind the northern wall. Darian ducked out first. I followed close, slipping out into the night. The culvert emptied into a walled alley, slick with moss and pungent with jasmine. Darian led without speaking.
Silence was absent from the Moon Court’s streets. The capital never slept entirely—some windows glowed with firelight, some corners whispered with low voices and clinking bottles. But this district was merchant-clean and lantern-lit, far from the slums, with polished stone and gold filigree on the awnings of closed shops.
We passed a fountain shaped like a spine of thorns. Moonlight silvered the water. The bond twitched, interested. It was listening to the city. It knew these streets better than I did.
Darian veered left at the gatehouse. His fingers brushed mine once as we ran. Not by accident, but enough for me to notice. I didn’t pull away. I told myself it was an accident because we were in a hurry. But the warmth stayed, long after the contact broke.
Ahead, a wide court opened, flanked by shuttered inns and the dark hulls of market stalls. He only slowed when we arrived at the far side.
“Through here,” he murmured, pulling back a canvas tarp.
It was the rear of a stable. Empty, aside from a sleeping dog and the strong scent of hay. We moved through it quickly, stepping over pitchforks and broken tack. On the other side, a stairwell descended into a dry well shaft. He led us down without pausing.
Only when the final step fell away into packed dirt did we stop. He dropped the pack and lit a low taper. “We’ll rest here for an hour.”
We didn’t sleep. Only rested for an hour or two, trading off turns watching the tree line. The bond stayed alert the whole time, as if it didn’t trust the dark.
By dawn, we were moving again. The woods thickened with each mile. The farther we got from the palace, the clearer the bond became. The bond felt calmer in the forest.
By mid-afternoon, we arrived at the treeline. Darian didn’t ask if I wanted to stop, and I didn’t ask if we were lost. The bond still tugged gently westward, guiding us toward something we hadn’t seen.
The path narrowed as we entered the forest. Pines gave way to broader trees, their trunks thick with moss and bark scored by old claw-marks. The air smelled of earth and fading rain. It was colder here, but less biting than the wind off the cliffs.
Darian adjusted his pack once, twice, then handed me a bundle of wrapped cloth from his pack. “Food. And an extra flask. I brought more than we needed.”
“You planned for this.”
“I listened to your echoes. And packed when I sensed that they’d stopped.”
I unwrapped the cloth. Smoked meat, dried berries, two wedges of hard cheese. He’d taken more than was allowed from the palace kitchens and wrapped it in linen stitched with a royal seal. “You’ll be blamed for this.”
“I already was.”
My cheeks flushed, and I swallowed. I had blamed him, but I still didn’t trust him.
We kept walking. My legs had gone past aching and settled into a dull, persistent throb. Each step felt the same—flat, forgettable. I heard my own footfalls in the soft earth, steady but slow, like the rhythm of someone too tired to trip. At a fork in the trail, the bond nudged faintly. I veered left. Darian followed without asking.
“Are you sure you weren’t trained to track?” I asked, my voice low from disuse.
“No. But you were.”
It didn’t sound like flattery. A truth dropped between us like something neither of us had the strength to carry.
Branches thickened above us. The light thinned until it was a smear through the canopy. When we found the ridge—flat stone, a riverbed below, a shallowoverhang—I stopped walking without meaning to. My body had made the decision first.
Darian dropped his pack, slower than usual. He kneeled to undo the bedrolls he’d tied hours earlier, fingers fumbling slightly at the knots. I crouched beside him, knees creaking as I bent. The silence wasn’t tense anymore. Our hands brushed once over the canvas. Neither of us pulled away. Neither of us said a thing.
Then he glanced at me. “Do you think they’ll chase us?”
“No. I think they’ll pretend we were never there. Easier to erase what they can’t control.”
He peered down at the silver rings on his palm, wrist, and forearm. “And this?”
I shrugged, pulled out the dagger from my boot, and placed it on the stone beside my bedroll. Darian didn’t comment. He did the same. Neither of us reached for the other. We reached for knives instead. It was the language we trusted.
“You don’t trust me,” he said after a long time.
