Page 82 of Marked By the Enemy
Behind us, the others began to stir. I stood. As Willow turned, her body shimmered, and her orange marks sparkled like fallen stars. From them, ethereal threads lifted and danced in the wind. Her eyes held a knowing gleam.
A soft, yellow light glowed at the top of the flat stone, growing in intensity until it was a bright beam that illuminated the entire circle. The stone trembled. Power hummed under every etching. Surrounding it were smaller flat stones, etched with intricate runes. Despite its age, the circle still held a sense of strength and purpose, as if it was patiently waiting for its next important task to be fulfilled.
Darian was watching me. And though the tie didn’t speak, I didn’t need it to. It was in the space between us now. Quiet and waiting for one of us to step closer.
Darian stood beside me, shoulders still tense. His hand brushed mine as he shifted his weight, just long enough that I noticed how warm he was, how close. His eyes hadn’t left the center stone, but his breath had changed. Slower now. Shallower.
I observed the straightness of his nose. The line of his jaw when he swallowed and didn’t speak. Something older than the energy of Mother Caldaen rooted inside of me, older than the binding vow. It rose with the scent of iron and something alien. It caught in my throat. He turned to me then. He looked at me like he’d already lost the answer.
I didn’t. But I didn’t move closer either. The silence stretched between us, soft-edged and full. He looked away first. A breath escaped him like he’d been holding it longer than he meant to. He stepped back, giving me space without saying why, and when the others began to move again, he looked away. His retreat landed louder than his touch.
Chapter twenty-three
Moon on Water
We stayed in the ancient ring in the sunken courtyard until the light changed again. It didn’t look like a sunset, but the air cooled and the shadows stretched long, anyhow. Darian looked thoughtful, and through the bond, I could feel him wondering about the King of the Moon Court. I never felt what he thought of me, though, not through the bond.
The first family appeared at the edge of the sunken courtyard before tiptoeing into the circle. A woman, a man, three children. Then others came—quietly at first, then all at once. Some had baskets. Some carried skins of water or ale slung over their shoulders.
One led a pair of goats. Another guided a boy with a blindfold. Willow scurried toward the woman with the baskets and touched her wrist. Two circles, one inside the other. The marks shimmered where skin met skin. I stepped forward next. Darian stayed close behind me.
“Who are you?” I asked them all.
The man leading the blindfolded boy had matted ginger hair and eyes so pale they looked white. His voice was rough and loud, with a pirate’s drawl and a bite of salt behind every word. “We dreamed of you. Of this place. Of the onewho walks the vow without being fused. We dreamed we had to wait until you crossed the river of unmoving water.”
My pulse picked up, but I didn’t speak, because I didn’t know what to say.
“We didn’t think it was true,” said the woman with the baskets. She wore a laced bodice over a plain linen shift, her skirts hitched for walking. Her skin was pale brown, freckled at the cheeks and nose, and her hair fell in a smoky cloud down her back. “But we followed anyway.”
She kneeled and laid her basket down, and some other women did the same with bundles of food and goods. Still-warm bread. Dried fruit. Salted meat. Jugs of ale and sweet-water.
One woman produced flint and kindling and motioned toward the center of the old ring. “May we?”
Darian nodded. His voice was low. “If your marks are true, you’re already kin.”
“We wish to journey with you back to your home in that crumbling old keep in the Borderlands,” she said.
Darian’s voice cut clean across the space. “If you have only one mark, you can’t come with us! Where we go, the bond will pull hard. One mark won’t be enough to keep you safe. Ten already died from the Moon Court’s Bone Seat and his remnants, made to kill.”
A girl raised her palm. Two circles. Then others did the same. Two. Three. Four. No one had one.
Darian exhaled through his nose. “I hope you have packed light. We leave at dawn.”
They made a fire. The children laughed first, throwing twigs and dried grass into the flames. A boy handed me a clay bowl filled with stew and grinned widely enough to show he was missing two teeth. I sat on the ground near the ring, my back straight, and my hands warming around the bowl.
Willow’s mother, Rainer, offered bread to the ash-man from the most ancient of times. He accepted it with both hands.
Darian stayed standing near the edge of the crowd. Three gray falcons passed overhead. The wolves came next—three padded out from between twobuildings like they belonged. Their ears stood up. Their fur was thick with burrs and dust.
My breath caught in my throat as my skin turned to gooseflesh, and Darian went still.
“Don’t touch them,” he warned.
“They won’t bite,” said a man standing beyond the light.
He stepped forward, tall and straight-backed, dressed in a long black coat with silver cuffs and buttons shaped like moons. His skin was dark and smooth, his beard close-trimmed, and his eyes lined with faint kohl. A ring of twisted iron and ivory circled his thumb. His boots were polished, though travel-worn, and he carried no weapon I could see.
“When the vow weakened,” he said, “and we dreamed of you, they came to us. Wolves, falcons, even fireflies that wouldn’t leave until we lit torches and followed them. We’ve waited for three full moontides, but the river wouldn’t open.”
