Page 80 of Marked By the Enemy
Nessa had insisted on coming. I hadn’t stopped her. I should have. Her cough turned wet and sharp. She lagged behind, even with Ulric staying close.
Each night, Lymseia wrapped her in both blankets and pressed her body close, trying to share the heat. It slowed us more than I’d admit aloud. My shoulders throbbed. My hips ached. My thighs burned with every step. I craved heat. Dry wool. Sleep not stolen on stone.
The gates of Oxford stood open. No one guarded them. Darian slowed first, hand drifting toward the hilt at his side. The bond didn’t stir, though it was near the surface of my skin, waiting and watching. We stepped beneath the old arch. The stone was carved with names worn down to ridges, the words long forgotten. Dust lifted at our feet.
It should have been cold. But it wasn’t. The air was warm here, in a way that made no sense. Dry. Still. The streets were bare, the buildings silent. But there was definitely magic in the stone, air, and sky.
No rain had touched this place, though the clouds hung close above. No snow lined the edges. We had walked northwest between mountains from the Borderlands into Tarnwick, the Realm of Humans. It should have chilled our bones. Instead, we sweated beneath our cloaks, unsure what season this place had chosen to keep.
Oxford didn’t choose a world. It floated between. The ivy that crept along the walls seemed to hold on to forgotten memories, while the paths were worn with the weight of centuries of footsteps. The windows, once bright and full of life, now held a darkness that seemed to hold secrets and stories of its own.
As we plodded down the ancient paths of Oxford, the halls murmured with vanished names. I sensed Darian beside me more sharply than I should have. His steps were silent, but the air pulled toward him. He hadn’t spoken since dawn. I hadn’t asked why. But I noticed the way his breath slowed when I walked close. His hand grazed mine. Too light to be a mistake.
A child peered at us from a second-story window. One hand pressed to the pane before he vanished without a sound.
“They’re still here,” Darian said quietly.
I nodded. “But they’ve learned to go quietly.”
“I know where the wardstones are,” the ash-man said. “Please, let me go and fetch them?”
“Of course,” I said. “Anything which will protect us from the Bone Seat and his remnants.”
He turned on his foot and strolled down a narrow alleyway, under a roofed bridge which connected two old colleges on either side.
Behind us, the others fanned out. Rainer walked near the front, eyes narrowed, shoulders tense. Willow moved beside her mother, not touching but aware. Fen had fallen silent since the last crossing. Astrid was as quick as a fox with her carved stick in her hand, hurrying through the narrow alleys with an ease that surprised me. She carried her stick and didn’t lean on it.
Lymseia was quiet. She looked older here. She held Nessa’s elbow gently, but didn’t speak. Sael stayed at the rear, watching everything, her expression unreadable. And the ash-man walked barefoot despite Ulric’s protests.
He had taken one of Darian’s spare cloaks, a pair of short breeches that barely reached his knees, and nothing else. His pale skin stayed marked, the lattice faint under the dirt, visible when he moved.
We found the central square, where a fountain stood dry at its center. The statue’s face was gone. Her hands—shattered. Willow crouched near its edge. Her fingers brushed moss where an old engraving had sunk deep.
Fen came up beside me and tossed his mousy brown shoulder-length hair. “It seems as if Oxford is not abandoned. I had been led to believe it was a ghost town.”
“If it’s not abandoned, what is it then?” I asked.
He stared at the broken statue. “It’s waiting for something. It hasn’t given up.”
A door creaked open. We turned as an old woman stepped through a narrow stone threshold. Her hair was white. Her spine bent. But her eyes were bright and whole. She carried no blade. No mark. But the tie wavered as she walked forward, brushing lightly over my skin.
“You walked the corridor,” she said.
I nodded. “So did they.”
Her eyes swept our group—Darian, Ulric, Sael, Nessa, Lymseia, the ash-man, Rainer, Astrid, Willow. “I take it you’ve come for the Circle.”
“The memory,” I said.
She twisted around so her back faced us all. “Follow me.”
We did. Down a narrow passage between two buildings, the walls were so close I brushed both sides. The light dimmed. The air cooled again. The tie thickened, like breath caught deep in the chest.
When the path widened, we stood at the edge of a sunk courtyard surrounded by towering stone walls on all sides, their surfaces worn with age and etched with intricate designs. It was the place in my vision where the witchkin were dancing and drumming.
In the center, the stone ground sloped subtly downward, creating a slight depression that gave the impression of being embraced by the ancient structures. The sky above changed from that miserable beige to a brilliant blue, interrupted only by the occasional passing cloud.
Sunlight pressed through the stones. Warmth stitched itself into our bones. We all took off our sodden boots and socks, laying them along the wall where the sun blazed the strongest. A circle had been carved into the stone. Blackened. Worn. Still intact.
