Page 91 of Marked By the Enemy
“No.”
“Is it a demon from the Fissured Realm?”
“I don’t know.”
We walked back through the orchard, our boots cracking frost along the path. The air was sharp with cold, but the sky had softened to pale gray, snow sifting down in loose flakes. Smoke curled low near the old forge.
Bramlin sat inside the circle of memory stones, his ginger hair dulled by ash. The ring stood at the far edge of the largest fighting arena. A group of men had stretched a wide awning above the stones, staking it between tall posts; the melted snow had darkened its canvas. Someone had laid down woolen blankets and thick mats from Lord Fen’s carriages, layered with straw beneath to keep the damp from seeping through.
The fire at the circle’s center burned low, its warmth rising in slow curls of smoke. Bramlin had pulled a faded wool cloak tight around his shoulders, the hem dusted with ash. His blind nephew slept against him, head resting on Bramlin’s thigh, wrapped in a sheepskin sent with the food and shelter crates. They looked like they’d been sitting that way for hours—guarding something, or waiting to remember.
Colleen was there, too. She had draped sheepskin rugs across two stones and used a flat skillet to toast rounds of flatbread over the coals. A sleeping wolf lay beside her. The runes along its side flickered between black and white, which still confused me.
It rained that night persistently. It was the kind that sinks through stone and skin. The marked ones did not scatter. They stood around the largest fighting ring, in the open, outside of the awnings which covered the memory stones. Their eyes tilted to the clouds, arms relaxed at their sides. Some spoke names.Some said nothing. Willow stepped into the mud barefoot, like the earth still held names.
I stood by the western window. Darian stood beside me, shirt half-buttoned, rain sliding down the line of his neck. A glimpse of bare skin showed through the open fold—smooth, defined. He appeared oblivious to the cold and damp, though droplets clung to his lashes and darkened the fabric clinging to his chest.
My fingers ached with the need to touch him.
“We were never supposed to last this long,” he said.
I glanced away for a brief time, feigning interest in something through the window. “Says who?”
He shook his head. “The way things used to be. A mark like this—“ He tapped his own chest, over his collarbone. ”—it was meant to bind. Not root.”
“Maybe that’s still true,” I said. “Maybe we just forgot what roots are for.”
He looked back out across the courtyard. The copper bowl still sat near the firepit, water collecting in it now.
“Do you think the Bone Seat is watching?” he asked.
“He’s always watching.”
“Then why hasn’t he moved from the forest?”
“Because he’s hoping we will.”
He nodded, quiet again.
Outside, Lina stepped into the downpour in the largest fighting ring. She raised one hand to the sky and let the drops run down her arm as she called out to the marked taking shelter, “This is the first rain I’ve trusted in years!”
No one clapped. No one spoke. But a vibration spread, and it said, ‘Home.’
“What if this doesn’t end in fire or blood?” Darian said.
I turned my head toward him. “Then we’re already winning.”
“And if it does?”
“Then it ends with someone still remembering.”
I thought about the man with horns, and the bond curled tightly in my spine, fearfully.
The dream came before dawn. The bond shimmered with it—soft, insistent. Like it had passed through both of us at once. I opened my eyes in the quiet chamber. The fire had burned low.
Darian lay beside me, eyes already open, staring at the ceiling as if trying to follow the last threads of it. His breath was slow. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. We’d seen the same thing. The bond had pulled us under together.
Willow stood at the edge of the corridor. The red thread still circled her wrist, trailing like a living tether between her and the vow. Beside her stood a boy. One I had never seen: white-blonde hair, bare feet, confident and smiling. The bond caught on him like it recognized something. Like it had already tried to mark him, but hadn’t finished. Or couldn’t.
