Page 68 of Marked By the Enemy
A figure appeared near the base of the hill on one skiff. But behind it, dozens or more followed. Skiffs lined the ridge like teeth in a half-bared jaw. No war horns. No shouted order. Just the silence of something already decided. The Bone Seat had not come for conversation. He had come for control.
Still, we stepped forward, taller and aligned. The link between us held firm beneath our feet and above our skin, threading through every memory we had shared. It had grown into something beyond the old language of command.
At the edge of the field, he stopped. Purple lightning flickered faintly in the air around him. He realized what we were becoming. Not soldiers. Not rebels. Not a cult. A weave. A collective memory.
As a trained assassin, I knew how to stay still. Bury the reaction. Anchor it deep like the cold earth. But when I sensed his frustration, my breath rushed too loudly in my ears. He had killed ten of us. Three were children. One six. Two seventeen.
I glanced at Lymseia Waestuma. My chin pulled tight. I hated the Bone Seat and what he had done to her boy and the rest.
Across from us, something fluctuated in the air and in him. The Bone Seat’s feelings bent. His aura changed. It wasn’t just frustration. It read like defeat. Because, for the first time, he stepped back.
The bond throbbed under my ribs. It moved through every soul present. It answered the unspoken threat with one truth: The bond belongs to everyone as it was intended for.
The two elderly Half-Blood men, Jack and Ruen, raised their hands. The vow-magic activated, glowing turquoise from their palms, wrists, and forearms. Their eyes flickered turquoise, too, and the Bone Seat frowned.
I closed my eyes and reached inward toward the link between us, as well as the corridor. They extended to the roots beneath us, to the network of memory that had stitched us together over days and dreams and truths too old to name. “Remember together,” I whispered.
And the corridor opened. The air behind the Keep shimmered, parting like a curtain. The marked stepped in first. Darian and I followed, and he held my hand. His was warm. Mine stilled in his grip. Too fast, too easy.
It should have meant nothing. But something in me leaned toward him, and I didn’t pull away. We walked on like that—his hand around mine, and my steps quieter than before.
I turned, worried the Bone Seat would follow and destroy something else. The Bone Seat raised his hand. Purple lines glinted in his palm. Maybe a signal. Maybe worse. But the corridor opened first—wider, brighter, reaching past him, away from him. He stopped. He saw it too. And again, he stepped back.
The pull tugged one final time and spoke in silence through every thread of memory and every mark that bore its shape: Not yours to command.
Symbols emerged from the walls. They were living and growing. Some I recognized from my ten years of training at Mountain Stone. Others from my childhood in the river lands of Riverell. A few I couldn’t name, but I felt them in my chest–in that new white rose which bloomed in my heart center–like truths I hadn’t yet remembered.
Willow stopped at a junction where the corridor branched. She turned down the left passage. The others followed. I didn’t call them back. The bond didn’t protest. It wasn’t about one path anymore.
I continued forward. Darian let go of my hand, but stayed close. Ahead, a chamber waited. Round. Windowless. Familiar. The pool. I stepped to the edge and kneeled.
I extended my hand and touched the surface. A memory rose. The Bone Seat was young. He sat cross-legged in a circle with nine other young men. His voice shook as he recited something about unity, will, and sacrifice. They were not the only people there, though. There were overseers, too.
The pool stilled. I stood, breath shallow.
Darian said, “He cut something from himself to rise.”
“And now he can’t find it again.”
Another layer slid open beneath the pool. Ten men were below in the same circle, older now, their grotesque bodies kneeling. Their skin stretched with something alien inside. Something demonic. Ultraviolet light burned under their skin, pulsing in confused, nonsensical marks. The same glow coiled around their mouths. One by one, they opened them to let something through.
The light tore upward.
I stumbled back, the pool still bright behind my eyes. Darian was frozen to the spot, and his gaze locked on the last one in the circle—the one who had once been a boy with shaking hands.
The Bone Seat’s mouth opened last. And the thing that entered him stayed.
Outside the chamber, footsteps approached. Before Nessa entered, the pool was clear again.
“The others found their mirrors,” she said. “They’re seeing the echoes now. Some asking what comes next.”
“Tell them to wait. The bond isn’t finished.”
She nodded and left.
Willow entered and kneeled at the edge of the chamber. “I haven’t seen what the rest did. There weren’t any mirrors in mine.” She ran her thumb over her knee, slow. “I saw a door. Big thing. Locked fast. Had a word scraped into it. Real sharp. I didn’t see what the others saw. I never saw a mirror. I saw a door. Locked. With a word scratched into it.”
“What word?”
