Page 47 of Marked By the Enemy
“The Ten Kingdoms,” I said. “The ten cracked thrones we both dreamed of.”
He nodded. “He isn’t the only one who’s afraid of what you’re becoming.”
I swallowed. “You sound like you agree with him.”
“No. But I don’t think he was wrong to be afraid.”
I leaned back, letting Darian’s eyes burn slowly across my skin. Part of me wanted to straddle him right there—just to see if he’d stop me. I shouldn’t have let myself imagine it. Not after everything. But I had. And I still did.
The bond pressed lightly behind my ribs, like it was waiting for me to decide whether to keep going–in more ways than one—or turn back.
I didn’t train the tie the next day. I walked—through the woods, into the low village, past the inn with the cracked shutters and the smith’s post bent at the hinge. The sky hung low, and the wind carried an unusual energy.
That’s where I found them. The marked ones.
A little girl with cropped brown hair played near the well, her fingers dipping in and out of the surface as if testing the shape of silence. A fisherwoman kneeled along the riverbank, gutting the silver-scaled catch with hands that moved faster than thought. A baker kneaded dough in rhythm with a breath that wasn’t hers. An old man watched from the shade of a vine-strangled post, his eyes fixed too long on my hands.
Each one bore the circles: one, two, or three. We talked together in the village square, where they’d set up a bonfire for my arrival. Darian hadn’t come. He had issues of his own to sort through. I saw the girl with long white-blonde hair again, though.
Some had dreamed it before it appeared. Others woke to find it burned quietly into skin. None of them knew what it meant. But every one of them recognized me.
I asked each of them one question: “What do you want?”
The girl with white hair and the red thread around her wrist smiled. “To see you again.”
The fisherwoman: “To sleep without their voice in my mouth.”
The baker: “To stop feeling the dying that isn’t mine.”
The old man: “To die before it finishes changing me.”
I gave them offerings: salt, sliced meat from a wild boar I had trapped and killed, a thread from my own cloak. I asked for nothing. I didn’t speak beyond the question. But still, some packed up bedrolls and belongings and followed me between rolling hills and through the trees as I returned to the Keep.
The girl with cropped brown hair carried a length of chain-bound rods tucked into her sash and walked a few steps behind me. In the village, I’d noticed her snapping the weighted ends through the air like she’d grown up with them. She must’ve only been twelve or thirteen, older than the girl with white-blonde hair by a few years.
A twin pair from the woodcutter’s post joined her, silent as shadows. They were in their mid-twenties and had matching haircuts which sat like bowls on their heads. Three elders came last, slow but certain—two men and a woman.
They didn’t ask why I’d come. They didn’t ask what the mark meant. They followed me in silence, three miles back to the Keep. By the time we entered the courtyard, dusk had taken hold.
I lit a fire in the center ring—no roof above us, only sky—and they stood around its edges, unsure whether to sit or stay standing. A few shifted, murmuring among themselves, but most stared at the flame or at me. They barely blinked or moved. Like they’d already died once to follow me here.
Darian watched from the battlements, his figure shadowed by the rising moon. His cloak caught the breeze, silver-edged by the light. I left the fire behind and climbed the inner stair, boots scraping the stone as I rose above the courtyard.
He didn’t speak until I stood on the top. “They think you called them.”
“Maybe I did,” I said. “Without meaning to.”
The wind stirred between us. The fire below flickered orange against the ruin walls. From up here, the people looked small.
Darian’s eyes remained on them. “They’ll expect answers.”
“They’ll get the truth.”
“And if that’s not enough?”
I didn’t answer.
His throat bobbed, but he said nothing.
