Page 56 of Marked By the Enemy
Silence spread like a stain.
“You don’t have to stay,” Darian said.
“I don’t have a family to return to. I remain for the fight. I will die in my attempt to destroy him.”
“The Bone Seat?” Astrid’s voice cracked as she sat on an old bench and rubbed her weary face. “You want to kill the Bone Seat?”
“Yes, of course I want to kill him. He killed my only child. Only five years old! It was going to be his birthday next moontide. He killed those two young men as well, and more! He made his vessels kill more.” The woman stood defiantly.
“Good. You stay with us. We need help. If he can kill them, there could be more. Are you marked?” Astrid said.
The woman pulled up her sleeve to reveal three intricately patterned silver circles. Astrid and Darian looked as shocked as I felt. The circles were already knotted together, and mine still were not.
“Please tell the bond your name,” Astrid said.
“My name is Lymseia Waestumal.”
Astrid looked up, and we followed her gaze. The fog pulled apart above us, opening to a broken spiral of pale pink sky. Willow’s mother’s chin dimpled as she held in her tears for Lymseia. The broken spiral of sky faded as fog crept low over the valley and the Keep’s ruins. It clung to stone and thorn, softening the outlines of cracked walls and patchy grass. For once, the morning was cool. Chilled, even.
The blacksmith crouched by a nest of kindling. Beside him, the tall, quiet man with hair the color of straw struck flint over a bundle of dry moss. Sparks caught. Flame curled up like it remembered how.
“Flame’s a better sound than silence,” the blacksmith muttered. He had dark skin, broad shoulders, and short grizzled hair. A long scar trailed down the side of his neck.
The other man said nothing at first. Finally, he said, “Name’s Fen. Fen Arclay.”
The blacksmith grunted. “Ulric. Been mending hinges and shaping blades since before your voice cracked.”
Fen gave a nod, but his hands didn’t stop. Neat work. Precise. Too clean for someone used to ash and forge.
Ulric watched him for a moment. “You from the Borderlands?”
Fen shook his head. “East coast.”
“Fishers there?”
“No.”
“Farmers?”
A pause. “Some.”
Ulric narrowed one eye. “You handle flint like a boy trained by a tutor—never touched by a father’s calloused hands.”
Fen didn’t answer. He coaxed the flame higher, sat back as it caught.
Ulric let out a breath through his nose. “East coast, trained hands, name like a parchment signature.”
Fen looked over. “Does it matter?”
Ulric picked up a branch and fed the fire. “Just rare to see someone climb down from a hall to sit in the dirt with the rest of us.”
I sat on the rim of the ring. Darian stood at the edge of the courtyard, arms folded, eyes far.
He spoke only when it mattered. That was part of it—his ease with silence, never reaching to disturb it. How he watched more than he explained. The argument still clung to me. I hadn’t forgotten the way his voice snapped. But I hadn’t forgotten the way he stood in front of me, either.
He was tall. Pale, like something carved from a different season than the rest of us. Pale eyes, too. I used to think I only liked bronze skin and darker features, the kind I knew from home. But I’d seen him shirtless—more than once now—and he had the kind of body that made my stomach catch.
It would be easier to hate him if he had the ego for it. But he didn’t. Or he hid it well.
