Page 90 of Marked By the Enemy
Lina shook her head. “You can exchange your stories later. Let me tell mine first. The court I am to speak of doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed. A long time ago, that court grew from vine and bloom. The Flower Court. It was a court of memory keepers and dream-tenders, of vow-marked seers who worepetals on their skin and let old roots speak through their veins. But their court was quiet. It didn’t fight. And when the Bone Seats rose, it was the first to fall.”
The children shifted, silent.
“My ancestor was a vow-carrier,” Lina went on. “She walked the corridor alone, the day it closed for good. She left a piece of herself behind. I’m only a humble baker, but I found it. I had never heard of courts or vows. But I dreamed of gardens in the shape of stars. Of women with pollen on their fingers, speaking languages I never learned but always understood. And when I woke, this mark bloomed.”
She touched her cheek, where the flower wound along her skin like a branch in bloom.
The children leaned in closer.
“I don’t know why she gave me this. Possibly to announce its loss aloud. So here it is. The Flower Court was real. It isn’t anymore. But the corridor remembers. And so do I.”
A hush settled under the awning. One wolf rolled to its side and yawned, exposing the moving runes in the shape of snowflakes on its stomach. A child traced a finger along the pattern, wide-eyed. Willow sat with her new friends, legs crossed and back straight, as she listened. I stood silently near the west wall, Darian beside me. The corridor ran beneath the keep now, like a river under stone. It would rise when it needed to.
“Do you smell that?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. “Ash. But not fresh.”
He nodded. “Smoke from memory.”
Darian and I followed the orchard path while snow fell slowly, quieting the world around us. Something burned, bitter, and almost sweet, tangled with the usual scents of bark and damp fruit. I knew it before I admitted it. Magic. Old magic. Underfoot, the leaves were slick with melted snow, crushed over rotting apples that bled brown into the soil. Crows gathered in the upper branches, silent, which was unusual for crows.
He walked beside me, his hand close to the hilt of his blade. The trees opened ahead.
A man stood beneath the boughs—taller than Darian by several inches, with long white hair. Horns curled back from his temples, dark and smooth, like polished obsidian. A cloak of shadow rippled around his form. It moved without wind.
Red orbs floated around him, flickering faintly like coals suspended in water. His eyes matched them—deep red, almost luminous, locked on us without blinking. His pale face was unnaturally smooth and beautiful, untouched by time or weather.
His hands hung open at his sides, bare against the winter air. Snow soaked the decaying foliage and fruit around his boots, yet the cold didn’t appear to affect him. He looked like he had stepped through the wrong kind of door—one that never should have opened.
The air bent around him, the way heat bends above fire. And still, he didn’t move. He only watched.
But something in me recoiled. He was real. But he didn’t belong.
Darian shifted his stance. From the corner of my eye, I saw the flicker of fear in him. He tried to hide it, but the tether snapped once across my ribs, enough to make me know what he would never say aloud.
“Who are you?” I asked.
His voice rasped like stone over dry wood. “A leader.”
“Of what?”
“Beings you’d rather forget.”
The space behind him wavered like a godly portal. Darian’s hand brushed mine.
The man remained still. “This place has been marked three times now. Once by force. Once by choice. And once in silence.”
“You didn’t come from the Bone Seat?” Darian asked.
“No. But the demons came through the same gateway we wish to use.”
The trees held their breath.
“What do you want?” I said.
“You’ll soon find out.” He vanished.
Darian didn’t look at me. “That wasn’t from this world.”
