Page 77 of Marked By the Enemy
The next image came as I peered down from the sky. A geoglyph, etched in chalk across hills and valleys, vast and curved like a spine. Seasons blurred. Faces changed. Stones rose. And still, the blue shapes stayed inside them. Each one lit with a blue being inside—body-snatched and possessed.
They laid bricks, carved runes, raised courts over the marks. Castles. Temples. Churches. Every stone placed by hands that were not alone.
The Keepers of the Vow, with their blurred faces, came next. Some crawled like animals. Some clawed the stone like birds. None could leave. The corridor stilled.
Darian exhaled. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at the blade. “Were there only humans before? What were the blue ones?”
“They looked like fae.”
“So why build courts on top of the glyphs?” he said. “Was that how they made people believe? That they were… more?”
I inhaled the dust and let the silence answer for me. “They may have been drawn to the magic.”
“Or perhaps they didn’t belong here at all. Those Keepers of the Vow, the ones from the roots of the Moon Court. They helped us, but they were anxious and sad. They didn’t want the courts. They wanted the old ways, the ways they were supposed to protect.”
I rubbed my temples. “Don’t start rewriting the world.”
“It was never meant to bind two people like this,” he said.
“Has it bound any others?”
He shook his head. “Perhaps that sorceress in the ring was the first link.”
“The one playing the drum in my vision?”
He nodded.
“Maybe she opened something,” I said. “Maybe she tied the realms together.”
He nodded once. “Or broke something that kept them apart.”
When we journeyed away from the bond-site, the wind whistled over the hills. The valley didn’t stir. And yet the change in energy was everywhere—subtle, spreading, like water moving through seams in stone. The pull in the bond had changed shape. Instead of pressing inward or reaching out, it moved with me.
Darian kept one step behind because he understood the rhythm better than anyone now. Even during his silence, I perceived his thoughts. They were all worried, sad, traumatised, guilty, and ashamed. Nothing good came through, like any good feelings he had toward me or whether he found me alluring or pretty. And that silence hurt more than I wanted to admit.
Back at the Keep, the marked had gathered in the courtyard. We told them all that had happened, and all we had seen. Different people had differentinterpretations. Branwen stood with Willow. Nessa Tidehook leaned against the archway. Jack kneeled in the dirt, drawing circles.
Astrid approached first. Her eyes held a question, but she kept her lips tightly sealed. I laid the blade across the stone ledge at the center of the courtyard. They all saw it. They didn’t cheer. They didn’t kneel. That had never been our way. Instead, they drew closer. Quiet. Steady.
“It’s not a weapon,” I said. “It’s a record.”
“What does the sword say?” Branwen asked, tightening her blue headscarf over her auburn hair.
“It remembers the first bond.” The tie hummed low in my ribs.
Willow perked up. “The real one?”
“The original.”
They didn’t flinch. The blade glimmered.
The dead boy’s mother, with her dark bobbed hair, bowed her head and turned her wrist so the glowing red mark beneath her skin caught our attention. “I always wondered why the vow didn’t silence my grief. Now I believe it never intended to do that.”
The binding vow rippled outward, like a bell struck once and still ringing. Everyone stepped forward, and, one by one, the marked touched the stone so they could be seen. And each time, the vow answered. The blade glowed softly as dusk and settled. A record kept.
