Page 79 of Marked By the Enemy
I sucked in a tight breath and stood. Had the weapon I now wielded caused this to happen to the girl? “Come closer.”
Crossing the room, she kneeled by the fire. I clearly saw three marks on her forearm, wrist, and palm. But through her cotton layers beneath her collar, a bright orange shimmer continued forming at her heart center.
I took her hand gently. “What else do you hear?”
“Names,” she whispered. “Some still unsaid. Some don’t belong to us.”
Darian stiffened. “Don’t belong to us?”
She nodded. “From beyond the corridor. From other realms.”
I looked at him. Then back at her. And I understood. “The vow is listening to others as well.”
“The spiral is cracked,” she said. “And that makes the corridor insecure.”
The marked stood at the edge of the largest fighting ring, eyes on the ridge where a lone man had appeared, naked and covered in ash. He had a completely bald head. He stopped at the old trail’s end. And waited.
Darian came beside me. “He’s marked.”
“Look closer.”
No circles. No lines. But when he stepped into the light, we saw them—white threads beneath his skin, faint as cracks in stone. They ran across his chest and arms, a broken lattice. The kind of mark made by surviving what should have erased him.
He raised one hand as he walked up the path and stopped at the gate. The bond leaned toward him. Up close, I saw grey at his temples. His eyes didn’t crave power, only friendship and permission to join us. I didn’t believe him to be from this world, though, and although the bond agreed, it felt warm toward him.
“You went from memory to that which lay hidden,” I said.
He nodded. “And you brought it back.”
“Who are you?”
“A record,” he said. “One that survived the burning.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but confirmed, “You helped write the vow.”
“Yes, and you’re rewriting it now.”
“You must be ancient,” I said, unsure how someone could live for longer than a fae.
“I am very old indeed.” He looked past me, toward the Keep and the corridor.
I noticed his face didn’t look old at all, despite the ash that covered his naked skin. Perhaps he was pure fae. He certainly had fae ears. His face was smooth, and his skin was stretched thinly over bone.
“This won’t end quietly,” he said. “You need wardstones, and I know where they are.”
“In a town called Oxford?” The voice came from nowhere, out of my mouth.
He smiled once. “Yes. I’ll walk behind you. I’ve seen enough to know you lead. But first, pack up your bedrolls and belongings. We journey to the ancient city, and it will be a three-day hike.”
“My old knees can’t endure that,” Jack said, no longer crazy, since I’d returned with the blade.
“Anyone who isn’t able or doesn’t wish to come, stay here,” the ash-man said. “We will return with more Vowborn within this moontide.”
Chapter twenty-two
The Circle Buried
It had taken four days, not three. The rain started on the second and didn’t let up. Cold rain bled through cloaks. The ridges slicked. The gullies turned to sludge. Every incline became a trial. Every stop meant more blisters. By the fourth day, we barely spoke. Even the bond was quiet, as if it had fallen into a kind of sleep.
