Page 62 of Marked By the Enemy
I held out the bone comb. “It was left on my pillow the night before I fled the Moon Court. It was in a plain wooden box. I don’t know who sent it. I still don’t.”
Astrid took it carefully. Her thumb traced the carved lines. I watched her eyes widen—only slightly. But it was there. Recognition, too quick to be surprised. She handed it back. “I am unfamiliar with these symbols.”
But her hand trembled, and she kept her gaze on the ground.
I set the comb in my lap. “It’s fae-carved. That much I know. But the runes—they’re northern. Human. I found records in the Moon Courtarchive. Old ones.”
Branwen touched my arm softly with hers. I liked her warmth and friendliness. As a trained assassin, I’d never had that before, and it made my heart bubble.
“What else, Talia?” Branwen asked. “What else?”
I studied the comb again. “In the margin of the page, someone had written my name. Talia of Tarnwick.”
Astrid pulled her staff closer. “Perhaps it remembered you.”
“But the runes. You said you didn’t know them.”
“I don’t,” she said, yet her hand still trembled.
Chapter seventeen
What Remains Awake
By morning, only ghost-embers remained in the courtyard ring. There was enough light to outline the shapes of bodies curled close. Some were on bedrolls, others on cloaks, and a few with no cover at all. Willow muttered in her sleep, and Astrid snored. I was nearly under again when a shift in the air pulled me back.
Darian was awake. He lay beside me, close enough that I could feel the pull of him. But his pale eyes were open, looking at me.
I peered through the slit of one lid, enough to see him watching through lashes, eyes bright in the dying firelight. I wondered if he realized I was looking. If he cared. If he meant to be that close.
A flicker of heat crawled up my neck. There was uncertainty and caution in the stillness of his face. It tugged low and sharp, like wanting him would unmake me if I wasn’t careful. I didn’t trust him.
Darian’s vision from Astrid’s song still sat behind my ribs. It had come the second time she sang, and I hadn’t told a soul: a boy signing a treaty, eyes hollow, hand shaking. A man fleeing through a gate. And Darian, five or six years old.
What if he was considering ending it? The bond. Me. Us. What if he couldn’t? He blinked once, finally. Rolled to his back. Exhaled. I kept still. Whatever passed between us in that silence wasn’t spoken. But the binding vow monitored.
We rose slowly. The silence didn’t want to be broken yet. Astrid stretched and cracked her shoulders. Willow whispered something to her mother, who nodded without looking up. Fen crouched near the hearth pit, sharpening his knife. Branwen handed me a shallow bowl of water.
The river still hadn’t resumed flowing, but none of us spoke about it. We gathered on the edge of the ring again, where the stone felt warmer than the rest of the yard. Lina’s strawberry blonde curls tumbled around her pink and freckled face as she tore bread into even pieces with thick fingers. She’d already boiled roots and a lump of salted meat Fen had brought back the day before.
I sat on the edge of a low stone wall, noting bread being torn into chunks and passed from hand to hand. Willow chewed slowly beside her mother. Astrid rested against her staff, eyes half-closed. Darian hadn’t spoken since sunrise.
The tether pulled, and we all turned at once.
We saw him before he stepped close. The Bone Seat from the Moon Court in his gray, ragged robe moving through the trees at the edge of the meadow. This time it was only him and his envoy with her black braid wrapped around her neck, long-limbed, tanned, and silent.
He crossed the meadow like it wasn’t there, eyes already fixed on us. When he arrived at the ring, he stepped inside as if it had been built for him. The envoy’s face looked even more hollow than the day before, while the Bone Seat’s eyes were the same unholy ultraviolet.
All twelve of us marked were present. Branwen anchored her feet wide apart, eyes on the ground. Ruen gripped his walking stick. Lymseia stood with her arms crossed, jaw tight beneath the blunt line of her black bob. Ulric rolled his shoulders once, quiet. Fen didn’t blink. Willow held onto her mother’s sleeve.
The Bone Seat looked at me first. Then Darian. Then the others, one by one. “You’re still here.”
The words sounded like disappointment. Or disbelief. Like he’d expected the bond to devour us before he arrived.
Darian stepped forward. “Say what you came to say.”
The Bone Seat smiled faintly. “I only came to remind you all that tethering yourselves to memory has a price. And to remind you, dear boy, what you signed.”
I swallowed my curiosity down.
