Page 57 of Marked By the Enemy
Maybe he was right. Maybe he hadn’t been looking down on us at all. I’d been shaken too—learning that Half-Bloods and mixed-bloods weren’t just real, but once held more power than the courts ever admitted. Still, I couldn’t shake what the Bone Seat had said about Darian signing a treaty.
Gooseflesh rose along my arms. What was he hiding from me?
The others gathered slowly. The fisherwoman, Nessa Tidehook, came first, rubbing her hands against her skirt. Branwen walked beside her. They eachheld a sloshing clay jug of water, lifted from the cistern tucked between the old barracks and the eastern wall.
Willow came last. She stepped barefoot through the mist.
“You stopped them,” Ulric said to the little girl with a smile.
Willow nodded.
“Thank you,” he said.
She looked at her mother, who nodded back. Willow turned to all of us. “I saw them gathering fire in their fists. But it wasn’t real fire. It looked like fire. But it moved like a scream. It was going to eat more people.”
“And the bond spoke through you,” I said.
“It wasn’t the bond. He used the corridor to reach me.”
“He?” Ulric asked.
“The monster. The monster spoke through me. He looked like a monster, but acted like a nice one.”
An involuntary shiver ran through me. “A nice one? I think I met him in the forest when I first came to the Keep.”
“He asked me a question first,” she whispered. “If I was willing to carry him.”
“Did he have silver eyes? Marks carved into its face? Skin like wax?” I asked.
Willow nodded. “Four circles on his head, I think. One filled. He looked sad… but kind. Like he didn’t want to scare me.”
The baker woman spoke. She had creases around her eyes and flour still under one nail. “And you said you would carry the beast?”
Willow nodded.
Ruen leaned on his carved walking stick. “The creature chose right.”
“How many circles do you have, girl?” Ulric asked.
Willow glanced at her wrist and lifted her sleeve to show us the second, faint and fused.
Branwen said, “That might be why you’re still here. Some only had one.”
Nessa looked down at her palm. “I have two. One fresh. It burned last night, but it didn’t hurt.”
“It fused,” Darian said, finally walking closer. “The tether did that to you.”
Fen nodded. “So it’s better that the others left. Most of them had one. A few had none.”
“I wonder who the creature was and why he wanted to help us.”
I shrugged. That was something the bond hadn’t told me.
Lymseia let out a sob, and Willow’s mother pulled her into a tight hug. I hadn’t seen them speak once before, but she held her anyway.
“They weren’t safe,” Ruen agreed, tucking a dreadlock behind a slightly pointed ear. “They thought the bond was just... light and dreaming. But it asks. And it answers. Some aren’t ready for what it says.”
Astrid nodded, and the bone beads in her gray braids rattled. “We aren’t safe either. But we stayed. That means something. We need wardstones.”
