Page 60 of Marked By the Enemy
The circle went still. One by one, they looked down at their skin, turning over palms, pushing up sleeves. Murmurs passed between them as the pattern revealed itself.
“The women,” I said, slower now, “it’s the left.”
Heads nodded.
“Where’d you come from?” Branwen asked Fen.
Fen hesitated. “East coast.”
“That’s a long way to walk.”
“I didn’t walk all of it. I was given a lift on horseback most of the way.”
The blacksmith eyed him sideways. “Skin soft on your hands and heels—proof you never worked a day. Tidy blade work. You been trained.”
Fen said nothing.
“You born noble?” Ulric pressed.
“I thought you had guessed that already.” Fen chewed slowly.
“What house?”
“I’d prefer to keep that to myself.”
Branwen tilted her head. “You running from something?”
“From someone.”
Ulric scoffed. “Well, we all are.”
Fen shrugged as he stared into the fire. “After the first mark, things changed. My family. The servants. I’d known them my whole life. But it was like… they stopped remembering how to speak unless spoken to. Like I’d walk into the room and they’d forgotten how to exist.”
No one spoke for a beat.
“It was like they were alive—but empty inside.”
“That’s what happens when the bond leaves a place,” Astrid said. She sat with her staff beside her knees, back straight as a post. “It doesn’t only take memory. It rewrites the need for it.”
I handed Fen a strip of flank. “What made you come here?”
“A dream. Of this place. Of a girl with a thread on her wrist and a woman who carried something in her chest she couldn’t name.”
Willow blinked. They ate in silence for a few minutes.
Lina leaned forward. “Do you remember what bread tasted like before the bond woke up in you?”
“Definitely tastes better now. Used to be saltier—and that ain’t just because I’m an old fishwife. Strange, ain’t it?” Nessa muttered.
“Are you a wife, Nessa?” I asked. “I mean, does your husband mind you being away?”
“I doubt he would even notice,” Nessa said. “And thank the Goddess of the rivers that we never had children. I think I remember wanting them. I expect itis something the Bone Seat let us want so we would produce his labour force. I’m blessed I need not worry about littlens in such a turbulent time.”
“But don’t you miss your husband?” Ulric asked.
She shrugged. “They’re all empty. They can survive, sure. They can work, get money, and survive. But I do think now that the Bone Seat took our souls. Took their souls. We’re getting ours back now, and that’s why everything tastes better.”
Branwen smiled. “I remember eggs. After lambing season. The smell in the thatch. My son throwing yolk at the post.”
