Page 69 of Marked By the Enemy
“Mine. The one I ain’t chosen yet.”
The tie reared up. Darian pushed off the wall, but didn’t interrupt. My mind wanted to ask what that name was, but my intuition—my soul–didn’t.
Willow’s hands curled into the fabric of her tunic. “Am I broken?”
“No,” I said.
“But I didn’t walk the path.”
“You’re building it.”
She looked up at me. “How?”
“By staying.”
She stood, and so did I. Together, we walked back toward the corridor. Darian followed, and before we stepped through, I glanced back at the pool. Back in the corridor, the marked ones were beginning to gather again.
“The corridor’s closing,” Branwen said.
I nodded. “It was never meant to stay open.”
“So what now?”
“We bring it with us.”
The marked ones turned back toward the Keep, and the Bone Seat was gone.
Chapter nineteen
Fed to the Demon
By the next day, the sun was blazing overhead. The still air pressed down on us. Many of the marked had taken shelter in the hall, where the stones still held the night’s cool.
Nessa and Lina moved through the space with rolled sleeves and smudged hands, scrubbing at benches and sweeping out corners. They’d made half a dozen trips between the village and the Keep, dragging sacks, jars, and crates. With Ulric’s quiet strength, Fen’s sure footing, and Branwen’s sharp eye, they’d hauled blankets, dried herbs, firewood, knives, bundles of rope, even a stack of fishing nets braided with old charms.
“We ain’t living in a tomb,” Nessa had said that morning, slinging a basket of apples onto the table with a grunt. “These legs still work. We’re living.”
And it was working. The place looked less like a ruin. More like it might keep us.
When I stepped outside, the light hit hard off the stone. Rainer was by the east gate, the one set between the arch and the fighting ring, where the path to the village ran down through the pines. She and Ulric worked side by side, patching the frame with scrap iron pulled from the forge. The clangs echoed off the walls.
Old man Ruen sat on an overturned bucket near the gate, eyes half-lidded but tracking every sound. Rainer paused in her work, straightened, and looked past the forge, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare.
Across the meadow, beyond the line of trees, a shape moved. A boy. Alone. He walked barefoot down the worn path that cut through grass and thistle. His skin was as pale as sanded wood. His hair was near white.
Willow ran out of the Keep as if she’d sensed him. She stood beside me. “That boy. He’s from Abigail’s memories. From the corridor.”
Ruen frowned. “He looks only twelve years old. What is he doing all by himself? From the village, perhaps.”
“He was at the riverside,” I said, the image still vivid—though it hadn’t come from my own past.
He walked without hesitation. Everyone came out from the courtyard to greet him. No threat came off him, only a familiarity I couldn’t place. His silver hair caught the sun. His eyes were too old for his face.
He stopped a few feet from me and held out a hand. But it was empty, with nothing to accept.
“I’ve come for what was lost.”
The tether turned over once in my spine.
