Page 41 of Marked By the Enemy
“I didn’t want to be.”
“No. But it still picked you.” He turned his back as if looking at the Keep gave him something to lean against. The silence built like pressure before he turned around again. “Why did it let you through that stairway? Why won’t it let me near the deep things?”
“I don’t know.”
“But I always feel it,” he said. “Every change in your mood. Pain, fear, hunger—I feel it all. Even when you don’t say it. Even when you try to bury it. That makes it most challenging, because these emotions overcome me unexpectedly, and the reason is unclear. I am unaware of the reasons behind them.”
I hesitated. “I saw you, too, though. In the vision. The boy hiding behind the column as the woman… the Bone Seat…”
He shook his head and bellowed, “That was a memory!”
I opened my mouth and closed it, surprised by his sudden outburst. I wanted to ask him who she was and whether he’d carried that memory before I firsttried to kill him, but got bonded instead. “And my feelings are not related to memories?”
“Some of them might be,” he snapped, nostrils quivering with anger. “I don’t think all of them are. I mean, I sense them when you’re awake,” he said. “When you’re silent beside me. I sense you even when you won’t let me in.”
I stepped back. “You’re angry.”
“I’m unsure what I am. I’m unsure I even recognize which pieces are mine anymore. I sense things I can’t name, and they belong to you. I remember things that might be make-believe stories or might belong to someone else. I’m standing here trying to build something out of pieces I don’t understand. And every time I reach forward, the bond answers you. Why does it always choose you?”
“It didn’t choose me,” I said. “It chose something else. And I walked toward it.”
Darian closed his shirt again. “It marked me, but it didn’t speak.”
I touched my collarbone. “It spoke to me through someone else’s name.”
He snorted and swung around. “I’m going to the south wing. Roof’s still solid. If the storm comes back, we’ll need shelter. I need more sleep. Didn’t get much after you vanished through the goddamn wall last night. Fuck!”
I nodded. “I’ll follow in a moment.”
I swallowed, shocked. This was the first time I had ever seen him truly angry and the first time I’d heard him swear. Perhaps his composure was finally breaking, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel angry anymore. Perhaps that wounded boy who had witnessed his mother’s execution was finally bubbling up from the shadows from where it had been buried so deeply.
After he left, I stayed in the courtyard. I glanced down at the mark again. The circle didn’t shine anymore. It observed, like the pool had observed. Like the redhead had–The Fifth. Regardless of her identity, she’d seen me.
Darian left in a strop that day. He said he was scouting the hills. I proceeded to set traps.
When he returned late in the afternoon, he looked weary and hollow. I cooked the wild boar I’d managed to snare and kill. I offered him some of theroasted meat with flatbread. He refused. Said he’d fish instead. I didn’t see him again. He was clearly working through something on his own.
I wished I could help him untangle the true memories from the false ones. I trusted the man he was now. The one who had chosen me. The one who had bled. But the memories planted in him—those remained sharp. Still gray. Still unspoken.
We hadn’t talked about what the Bone Seat had done to the unseeing. We hadn’t talked about our painful memories. We were still strangers.
That night, I lay on my back beneath the open rafters. Sleep never came. Behind my eyes, a corridor unfolded. It wasn’t a dream. I remained awake. Still, the corridor remained.
I sprang to my feet. The Keep blurred away. My feet met stone—straight, narrow, lit by low flames that flickered without warmth. Each step echoed softly, as if I walked inside someone else’s memory.
The bond didn’t pull me forward. It simply allowed the path to open. Or perhaps it was testing my steps. At the end of the corridor stood a mirror. Its black glass surface didn’t reflect me. I stretched a hand toward it. It cracked.
A voice came from behind. It was quiet, but close enough to stop me cold. “You should never have gotten this far.”
I turned. A figure waited in the shadows—tall, unmoving. His stance struck something familiar in me. A blue aura shimmered around him, bright enough to blur the edges of his form. He seemed middle-aged, but the light made it hard to tell. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet here I am,” I said.
“I am telling you this to warn you.”
I squinted at him, unable to see his face because of the electric blue aura surrounding him. “Warn me what?”
“I cannot remember. You are marked with something which you think is good, but it’s not. What do you carry?” He rubbed his temples. “You are unaware of what you are opening.”
