Page 45 of Marked By the Enemy
“I didn’t do that,” she said.
“I know. You can stay if you want.”
They did—for an hour. We answered the questions we could about him being the prince and me, his consort. We talked about the bond and the corridor I had walked down through the wall. Then they left. But the girl looked back three times.
By dusk, two more arrived. A merchant woman with sun-dark skin and a limp. A fisherwoman with a crooked shoulder and cracked nails from net-hauling. Both were older, with faint rings in their left palms. Neither was able to explain why they’d come. I said they were welcome anytime, and they told me about the village they had come from.
Darian stood with arms crossed. “The bond is spreading.”
“It’s not spreading,” I said. “It’s ringing. And they heard it first.”
That night, we followed the narrow path that wound down the river. The forest thickened. When it broke into rolling fields, it was patched with old gardens and moss-covered wells. The village sat low in the bend, its homes tucked close.
Lanterns flickered behind warped glass panes. Doors didn’t open, but none had been barred. A boy hauling water froze mid-step when he saw me. An old woman tugged her shawl closer and stared like she was trying to place me in a tale she’d forgotten, or one she hoped wasn’t true. One man bowed his head low.
The bond guided my journey back, the pace a low rhythm with the beat of my heart. By the time we returned to the Keep, the moon had climbed high. A hawk had dropped a message on the outer wall while we were gone—five words in a rushed, uneven hand, ink bleeding through the back of a leaf:
We feel what you opened.
I passed it to Darian. He folded the leaf and handed it back. “They’ll come.”
I nodded. “Then we stop waiting.”
The new mark on my chest—the fourth—warmed beneath the fabric. And the tether, silent until now, vibrated for a few beats of a heart.Not yours. Not theirs. Ours.
The Bone Seat came at dusk without any banners, procession, or horses. He with ten men and one woman, plodding along a narrow path worn by hooves and soles. One envoy walked ahead—female, tall, her long black braid looped once around her throat. The threads of vow-magic at her arm, wrist, and palm shimmered faintly beneath her skin. Three circles. Fused. A blade rested at her hip, untouched.
I flinched. Were they working for the Bone Seat now? Had he chosen the bond, or had the bond chosen her? She was fae. I waited in the clearing just beyond the Keep. Darian stayed behind, calculating. The tether was silent, low and ready, the way a fuse holds before a spark.
The envoy was silent, too, as she stepped aside. The Bone Seat appeared. You might have thought he was a poor man who lived homeless on the streets. He wore no jewels or sigil or velvet. Only bone-colored robes and silence. Hisexpression looked hollowed—as if everything that once lived behind it had been burned away and only form remained.
His gait was steady. Unhurried. He moved like someone with nothing left to fear or prove.
He looked at me like he was measuring where to cut. “Selene of the Fifth. Walk with me.”
We took the long edge of a clearing, which led to the largest training circle.
I glanced back at Darian, who was staring at us with a furrow between his brows and gray eyes turned to silver.
I mouthed: It’s all right.
The dirt still held marks from where we’d shaped the tether. He saw them. Said nothing.
“You’re late,” I said.
“You opened it,” he said.
“I didn’t seal it.”
“But you stepped through.”
I wondered how he knew and decided that his envoy might have dreamed it. Of course, fae folk had their own magic, which was unfamiliar to me.
We stopped near a tree stripped bare by lightning seasons ago. The bark peeled like old parchment.
“You walked the corridor. While awake.”
“I didn’t intend to.”
