Page 99 of Marked By the Enemy
The human blade had disintegrated when I’d tried to strike the Bone Seat, but I still had this sword, this special sword. My vowblade still hung at my hip, but weapons meant little against unpredictable magic.
Behind me, I could hear the courtyard stirring—crockery clinking, boots trudging on mud and echoing off cold stone, someone yawning into the quiet like it might crack open the morning. A few voices traded low greetings.
And then—
“Ridge! North approach!”
The call rang out sharp and clean. I moved before I thought, hand brushing the hilt behind my shoulder. I didn’t draw.
Darian was beside me a breath later, barefoot, shirt half-fastened, his mark flickering like moonlight against his heart. I didn’t let myself look too long. He always looked tired lately.
“What is it?” he asked.
But I didn’t answer. I already knew.
Something was moving on the other end of the bond—something older, more broken. An energy I hadn’t sensed since Mountain Stone. It pulled behind my ribs like a jagged stitch being yanked too tight. Figures crested the ridge.
At first, they were shadows in the mist. The shapes took form: cloaks, blades, rough boots crunching frostbitten soil. A woman with a half-missing eye. A man with twin knives and a wolf’s tooth scar at his throat. More behind them. Twenty, at least. Maybe more.
But it was their marks that I saw first. Faint. Fragmented. Some cracked and bleeding light like broken flint. None of them were whole. The Boundless. I took a breath. Held it.
High Priestess Jinth walked at the front, her carved memorywood staff clicking once with every third step. She looked past me, as if she foresaw what she’d find.
But he did. The man beside her. Gray hair bound in a leather knot. Deep lines bracketing his mouth. He stopped outside the gate and met my eyes like he’d never once taught me how to disappear in a crowd or kill without regret. “You didn’t kill him! You brought him here instead!”
I didn’t blink. The Boundless still believed the ten fae princes across the three continents and countless islands of Caldaen controlled the binding vow. “You crossed our threshold armed!”
He stepped forward. “And you crossed the line. You married the one you were supposed to kill.”
Behind me, Darian shuffled on his feet, like he was ready to move if I moved. The air behind my shoulders was warming. I wanted to lean into him long enough to no longer be that sell sword who failed.
Magic crackled in the spaces between bodies. The hairs along my arms and the nape of my neck stood on end. It wasn’t from the corridor this time. The magic was coming from the marked ones waking around us. The bond drew tightly in my chest like an ambush predator ready to pounce. And just like that, the war I’d run from stood breathing on my doorstep.
I approached, bravely, closing the space between me and the accusing. My people were half-woken and watching, and I couldn’t let them see me weakened. The old blood in me still remembered how to move—blade before girl.
The man with the knives who had already challenged me kept his hand at his hilt. I knew who he was. Korr. His left ear was gone—bitten off in a sparring match years ago—and he walked like he still carried a blade hidden behind his right knee. I’d trained with him once. Fought beside him on the ice flats of the eastern ridge. He’d taught me how to slit a throat without splashing blood on snow.
Prince Darian was supposed to be my first kill, and now Korr wouldn’t meet my eyes. I scanned the rest. Two more I recognized. A brunette with a jagged scar down her collarbone, Kera, who could throw a dagger between two ribs from twenty paces. And Priestess Jinth, who Darian told me had died during interrogation.
In only seven moontides, she looked several years older. Perhaps Darian’s interrogator had done her more harm than good. The white of her left eye was clouded like milk left too long in the sun. But her grip on her staff was steady. “Talia.”
My throat tightened, but I kept my stance square. “Priestess.”
She stepped closer. For a breath, I expected her to raise her staff, demand proof, strike me down for the rumors she believed.
Instead, one hand curled against my shoulder, and she leaned in, too close for the others to hear. “Your mother,” she murmured, voice brittle as frost, “would weep to see you married to your enemy.”
My spine locked. What did Mom have to do with any of this?
Behind me, Darian stood frozen to the spot, but the tether between us thrummed. I sensed his accelerated pulse, even before he’d heard the words.
I pulled back enough to meet Jinth’s gaze. “My mother died at the hands of humans.”
Her expression remained taut as she scooped her raven hair around and pulled it over a shoulder. “She had faith in blood memory. And you—you let the prince tie yours to him.”
A voice behind her muttered, loud enough for me to catch it: “Didn’t think the traitor would be wearing court leathers.”
Another snorted. “You sure that’s her? Thought she’d be taller.”
