Page 64 of Marked By the Enemy
“And I will again. There are still villages in this valley. Beds full of humans. I could empty them before dusk.”
His voice was quiet yet filled the space like rot. “You carry my mark deeper than any of them.”
“I would kill Talia. I would kill myself. If it would end your rule.”
The words dropped like iron. No one moved.
The Bone Seat turned to Astrid. “You knew. And still you let them gather.”
“They deserve to remember,” she said.
“And you deserve to lose them.”
He turned. Began walking.
“You’re afraid,” I called after him.
He paused at the edge of the circle. “I am. Because the bond remembers what I buried.” The next thing we knew, he vanished into the trees.
My palm burned. The first ring was filling in with patterns like the petals of a rose. I wasn’t the only one.
Willow stared at her arm as a third circle formed like a leafy climber rising from the second inside of her wrist. Fen stared as a third circle grew on his right arm. Lymseia gasped aloud. Ruen laughed once, hoarse. Darian didn’t move.
Intricate coiling lines now linked each circle. The tether hadn’t broken. It had changed.
The sun had softened by the time we left the courtyard. The older ones stayed behind—Nessa and Lina claiming their knees had earned rest, not exercise. Ruen and Jack settled near the forge. Ulric muttered something about his bones.
So we went without them.
Seven of us. We took the narrow deer path behind the barracks and followed it east, where the meadow lifted and bent toward a line of crumbling stones and the ridge that overlooked the far valley. The ground rose gently under our boots. The grass had turned crisp in places. Patches of thyme released their scent underfoot, sharp and green, and bees moved lazily over late-blooming stalks.
Astrid led with her staff, the hem of her long skirts brushing nettle and seed heads. Rainer kept Willow close, though the girl darted ahead whenever a bird called or a scatter of sun broke through the trees. Branwen walked beside Lymseia in silence. They hadn’t spoken since the Bone Seat’s revelation, but I Branwen kept pace with her all the same.
Darian and I walked last. For a long while, I didn’t try to fill the silence. A breeze stirred the curls at the base of my neck. I saw the line of Darian’s profile, sharp as ever. But his posture had changed. Less proud. More haunted.
“You didn’t know?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I wasn’t told. Even the treaty was hidden from me. I remember ink on my hands. I remember how the men looked at me when they made me sign. I remember someone saying the king had fled. I thought...” He stopped. His mouth pressed shut. “I thought he died.”
“And your mother?”
His throat moved. “I think she sang. I think she was trying to keep me calm when the Bone Seat came.”
Down the slope, the sky was clear and pale. We had climbed high enough to see the patchwork of low villages in the far distance. So many houses. So many people who had no idea what stirred in the bond.
Astrid slowed near the ridge. “Everything you are remembering is true, poor dear Prince Darian. I am sad the memories coming back to you are so tragic,” she said without turning. “But the truth wears masks.”
Darian’s jaw twitched. “So it’s true. He killed my mother?”
Astrid didn’t speak.
We stopped near a half-fallen arch of old stone. The view stretched open—valley, river, sky. The air moved differently here. It carried age.
Darian turned toward me. “I would kill you and myself if it meant ending this. I would kill you and myself if that’s what it took.” His voice cracked. “But I’d die not knowing if it was me… or him still pulling the strings.”
I nodded slowly. “I believe you’d try.”
“I don’t know what I’m becoming.”
