Page 67 of Marked By the Enemy
Jack stood beside the forge, his pale face streaked with ash. “You were gone a full night. It’s early in the morning now.”
“It felt like an hour,” I said, leading them all into the main hall. I lit a fire in the hearth beneath the grand chimney. “Why didn’t you sleep?”
“We wanted to make sure you were safe,” Lina, the Baker, said.
“You can see for yourself we are well,” Astrid said from behind me.
“That’s how the deep corridors work,” said the Ulric. “Time knots itself.”
Ruen, older than all of us, looked up from where he sat by the stone table. “I saw a vision of my brother. He was singing in the old tongue. A song we never finished.” His voice cracked. “He remembered the end.”
No one asked what he meant. We didn’t need to.
Willow stepped closer. “She was in there, right? The red-haired one.”
“She told me her name,” I said. “Abigail.”
At that, even the bond turned over, as if it remembered her, too.
“She cried when I told her I lost the coin,” I added. “She said she would be trapped now. Forever. In the Fissured Realm.”
Willow tugged at the thread round her wrist, jaw tight. “So we have to remember her until she’s free.”
All the marked ones had stepped into the corridor, each carrying pieces of their own and others.
“We made us a Memory Circle in the big fighting pit,” Nessa Tidehook said.
“Is that what the stones are?” Astrid asked.
Nessa nodded, tossed her head back, and let out a rough laugh. “Me and Lina thought it up.”
“Are we sleeping out there tonight or in the Keep?” Lina asked.
Willow’s eyes lifted. “Stars are out,” she said. “We sleep under ’em.”
I glanced at Darian. As much of a victim as he was, I couldn’t help but wonder what monster lurked inside of him. If it was true that the Bone Seat was part fae and part something else entirely, then what part of his father was Darian?
We only slept for a few hours. Something woke all of us up. The mist rolled in early, curling through the trees and blanketing the valley with a stillness that was older than the Keep itself.
Darian and I stood on the eastern wall, watching the marked ones gather inside their Memory Circle, in the centre of the largest fighting ring. Theywere quiet and focused. The vow-magic had begun to teach us in ways words couldn’t—through pulse and memory, through the steady rhythm of shared thought.
We all knew the Bone Seat would come. We had all been woken with the same words of warning from that creature who I had met in the forest–the same creature who had spoken through Willow’s mouth when she had carried the vow-magic and saved countless lives. Unfortunately, we failed to save the ten who had perished.
Darian’s arms were crossed tightly over his chest as usual, his gaze fixed on the hills. He hadn’t spoken much since we had entered the corridor during our walk the day before. He was a man of few words, though that didn’t mean the revelations of his true father weren’t pressing against the edges of him like armor that hadn’t fully set.
“He’ll come soon,” I said. “He wants to erase the Fifth.”
“But you are the Fifth now.”
The link between us stirred.
Below us, Willow lit a torch. Its flame didn’t flicker. It stood still against the windless air, as if even the elements had paused to observe what would happen next. Astrid stepped forward and kneeled at the edge of the inner circle. Slowly, with care, she drew five rings, interlocked. Complete.
Darian watched the motion. “The Bone Seat doesn’t fear you. He fears what remembering will do.”
I turned toward him. “Then we show him.”
The tie warmed. Beneath us, memory flowed up from the earth like roots seeking light. The corridor stirred inside the stones. A breath held.
