Page 70 of Marked By the Enemy
Slow. Curious. I took a step forward. “What’s your name?”
He dropped his hand down by his side. “I gave it away when I passed you the coin.”
“The coin?”
“You lost it. But it remembers you still.”
I swallowed. “Did Abigail send it?”
He nodded once.
I wanted to ask who Abigail was. But Darian moved beside me, studying the boy like a puzzle already missing its edge.
“Are you staying?” I asked.
“No.” The boy looked past me, toward the Memory Circle and corridor that no longer showed. “It was a mark left in metal. That’s all. But metal keeps heat.”He opened his hand again, and this time the silver coin was there. He offered it to me.
I took it. “Thank you.”
He smiled faintly. “Have you seen a pure fae woman with golden braids and skin?”
I tilted my head to the side. “No. No one is pure fae.”
“Some are. Abigail seeks them.”
“There is no one like that here.”
He nodded and pointed at the sky. “Abigail cries in the Fissured Realm.” After that, he turned and stepped through something no one else could see. He was gone.
Willow’s eyes bulged. Branwen muttered a word I didn’t catch.
Darian’s fingers brushed mine, only barely. I turned. He was already looking at my face. My breath caught in the wrong place. I kept it there. I should’ve stepped into his touch. But I didn’t. I let it pass like it meant nothing, even as my pulse recorded the moment like a memory already fading.
Ruen whispered, “He wasn’t alive.”
From the far edge of the Keep, another figure stepped into view. A woman. Real. Watching. She was a young woman—like me, but not. Her golden hair was tied in a dozen braids that swung past her shoulders. Her skin caught the sun like bronze. Her legs were bare. Long.
I glanced at Darian without meaning to. My stomach twisted tight. Pointless, I know. But it happened.
She stopped at the gate and rested one hand on the stone. She joined the circle without asking. “My name’s Sael.”
“Are you pure fae?” I asked.
She sat in the dust and hitched up her crossed legs. “Yes. Why?”
“A ghost was looking for you.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “You opened something.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Andit opened back.”
“It did.”
She nodded slowly. Her voice was hoarse from disuse. From holding words too long in the back of her throat. Everyone was here now, sitting with the newcomer in the Memory Circle, and waiting for answers to their unspoken questions.
“I have a favour to ask you, Talia of Tarnwick.”
