Page 13 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter nine

Silk on Candle Wax

B y morning, we packed again. We had to keep going until the bond stopped pulling and settled down. The force drew us to its desired resting place. Darian rolled the blankets while I checked the tether’s pull. Still west.

The trail narrowed on the second day of travel, winding through low brush and thorny hedges that left welts on my arms. My boots were soaked before noon. The air was warm enough to keep sweat pinned beneath my collar, and the flies came in clouds.

Darian walked on, ignoring them and always watching the tree line. We passed a glade littered with animal bones, picked clean. We didn’t stop there. That night, we found a hollow beneath an overhang of rock.

I lay down with my back to the stone, listening to the wind move through dry leaves like breath through teeth.

Darian didn’t sleep right away. He sat near the edge, sword in hand, eyes fixed on the dark.

The bond curled around us like smoke. By the third morning, my legs moved without thought.

My shoulders ached from the weight of the pack, and every noise in the underbrush made my knife-hand twitch.

The sun climbed, but the trees grew taller, thicker, until we moved in half-shadow. The birds here didn’t sing. They rasped. I didn’t trust the quiet anymore. Not after the Keepers’ words.

What if they followed the Bone Seat and had tricked me? What if the Bone Seat had ordered them to warn me—so I would run straight into another trap? It would be clever. Hide truth inside prophecy. Send a girl fleeing with the one weapon you want to control.

Darian hadn’t questioned me about the Keepers. That made me nervous. Either he believed too easily or was pretending. And if he was pretending, that meant his every look, every word, every half-smile was part of a plan I hadn’t seen yet.

Rain thundered down halfway into the third night. Cold, sharp, windblown. We pressed into the side of a narrow hill, cloaks drawn tight. Water slipped down my back. Darian handed me a strip of dried fruit from his pouch. We chewed in silence, the bond quiet between us like a lull in pain.

The next day, a ridge appeared, sloped and cracked, and just beyond it, a Keep.

Our pace quickened. This seemed like the destination the bond always meant for us.

We crested the ridge as the golden sun broke through the trees, its light scattered through branches like coins tossed by someone careless.

I blinked as my breath scraped thin in my chest. We hadn’t spoken in hours.

Darian stood ahead, boots braced on stone, his cloak dark against the slope.

He turned and met my gaze for a beat too long.

No words. No smirk. Just that unreadable quiet he wore like armor .

I looked away first. I remembered the way he’d looked when I burst into his room—shirt half-unbuttoned, hair wet from washing. He hadn’t moved to cover himself but said, “Pack fast.”

I hated that I remembered. That I’d looked.

That I wanted to again. The bond felt satisfied and enjoyed being away from the court.

That scared me. Because contentment didn’t mean satisfaction.

It meant independence, as if the bond was no longer waiting for orders and starting to choose what it liked.

What if the binding vow was becoming something else—something sentient? What if it didn’t need us anymore?

Right now, the bond, a silent, unseen presence, calmly registered the gulf that stretched between us.

It always did. I wiped my palms on my thighs, then adjusted the strap of my pack.

My muscles burned. My feet hurt. Even so, some part of me—the part shaped by too many years of running, hiding, surviving—observed the line of his jaw.

He showed no cruelty, contrary to the Boundless’s warning. He stayed still. Like he was always listening for something deeper than sound. I hated that I’d started to notice. He offered me a hand without speaking, steadying me over a patch of loose shale.

That’s how it would start, wasn’t it? Allowing him in slowly, bit by bit, until I couldn’t distinguish between what belonged to me and what belonged to him.

I told myself I was using him. Letting him think we were on the same side. But when his hand closed over mine, the bond shimmered. And I didn’t pull away. I didn’t need it. But I took it anyway.

His fingers wrapped around mine, and for a fleeting moment, my anger slipped away.

It was enough time for me to ponder the possibilities if I released my grip on the past. The warnings from the Boundless echoing in my mind, clashing with the pull of our bond.

I dropped his hand. Let it fall. I wasn’t ready.

But the bond remembered that I’d touched him.

It held the shape of my touch all the way down the ridge.

We found shelter in the ruins of an old training keep before nightfall. My footsteps echoed in the abandoned halls, accompanied by the occasional scurrying of small creatures seeking refuge like us.

The crumbling stones shifted and creaked under our weight.

I kept checking behind us. Each echo of our boots sounded like a second set.

Darian didn’t react, but I caught him glancing sideways once like he’d heard it too.

The roof had long since collapsed. Ivy knotted through the broken stones of the barracks, threading in and out of the shattered windows.

The forge lay crumbled, a hollow shell blackened by time. As we made our way through the dark and musty corridors, my hand brushed against sharp edges and jagged corners.

The practice rings, though battered and broken, remained distinguishable from the surrounding ground. Years of use had trampled the grasses, making them sparse. It was as if the rings had been branded into the earth, leaving permanent marks like scars that refused to fade away.

The ring we chose was the largest. It was an open circle carved deep into the earth, bordered by stones once white, now weather-stained and moss-cloaked.

The shape held, even after time and rain and ruin.

Grass refused to grow inside it. The compacted dirt was glassy in places, with the faint shimmer of old enchantment long faded.

In the past, I disregarded enchantments, but this bond transformed me.

Despite that, I disliked it because I always saw myself as a practical, straightforward woman.

Footprints from a bygone time remained imprinted on the earth, forming faded loops and scattered traces, echoing the cadence of battles lost long ago.

The soil appeared to keep the memory of each sword and every breath, unable to let go of the past. I built the fire from dry moss and deadfall pulled from under the eaves of the old forge.

Darian walked around the perimeter, twin blades sheathed but ready. “No one’s come yet,” Darian said, his voice low as he returned from the edge of the ring.

“They will,” I murmured .

The wind skimmed across the top of the ring, rustling through the scrub-grass and snagging in the ruined barracks behind us. I spread my bedroll by the firepit, the ground still warm underneath.

Cross-legged, I sat, knees pointed at the fire, my blade at my side. The sky above was wide, veiled with cloud-thin strands, and the first stars bled through. The bond hovered gently, like it knew we’d need more than flame to keep watch tonight.

I didn’t trust the way it had gone so still. Not after what the Keepers told me. What if they weren’t what they seemed? What if the bond wasn’t being generous, but was waiting for something? It had led us here. But to what?

Something in my chest started to close, like a fist around my heart. Too many hours without rest. Too much silence between us. I didn’t trust the quiet here in the woods. Someone had been spying on us earlier. I hadn’t seen them, yet I sensed their presence.

Only once, at the ridge top, did the bond tighten; afterwards, it was still. It alerted me to a tail. And that was the part that made my skin crawl—waiting for someone who was already waiting for me.

The ring held the heat well. Darian had caught a rabbit earlier that day, and now it sizzled over the fire, skewered on a stripped branch and turning slowly in his hands. I sorted through the packs, pulling free a wrapped bundle of flatbread and the last of the cheese. We didn’t speak.

The only sound was flame and soft wind brushing the ruins, a rhythm worn into the bones of this place. Again, I thought about how he looked that night I barged into his chambers.

His shirt had been half-unbuttoned. The firelight had caught on his throat, his collarbone. He didn’t know I was looking. I didn’t want to—but I did. When the meat was done, we ate with fingers and knives. I chewed slowly, trying not to think about how long it had been since we’d eaten warm food.

The bond didn’t hum or press. It lay still, as if it too was resting, recovering, observing the dark from behind my ribs.

After, we rinsed our hands with water from the flask and let the silence settle around the edges of the fire.

The warmth softened the hard lines of exhaustion in Darian’s face.

His lashes lowered briefly. Then he met my gaze.

“Let’s test it,” I said.

He shifted closer, crossed his legs opposite me. The way he sat so open and alert made the firelight gather on his skin like it trusted him. I raised my arm. The third circle, highest up my inner arm, shimmered beneath my skin. The tether between us rose. It was as if it was waiting for this.

“Split,” I said.

The thread obeyed. One became two. Then four. Then eight. Each strand shimmered cleanly across the space between us. They glided gently across the fire like strands of light pulled from water.

“Shape.”

They turned inward. Folded once. Curved twice. A symbol formed. Then structure. Lines. Edges. Steel. A sword.

Darian leaned forward. “That isn’t a projection.”