Page 16 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter eleven

Prince Darian

W e agreed to separate after lunch because we wanted to test what the bond would do. Darian took the east path into the woods. I stayed at the Keep. We didn’t speak before parting, only nodded. The space between us offered only ease. The tether stretched like a thread adrift in water.

The heat thickened as the sun peaked. I sat on the scorched edge of the training ring wall, boots planted against the stone, arms braced behind me.

The dirt shimmered under the light. A few insects hovered, dazed in the heat, a low buzz of the world slowing under the sun’s weight. Five minutes. Ten.

The tether stayed quiet but tense, drawn thin like silk on the verge of snapping. I shifted on my behind and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. Sweat clung beneath my shirt. My mouth tasted of salt and dust. Tension snapped through my ribs, like something waking.

I pounced off the wall and stood. “Darian?”

No reply. But the heat pulsed around me, denser now, like the bond had inhaled. I closed my eyes and focused past the sun, past the sweat, until the edge of it found me. His breath came fast and unsteady. The crunch of dry bark and thorns. A curse—low and tight, close to the ground .

The bond lit behind my sternum, and the image followed: a clearing burned to ash, light warped around stone, tree trunks carved deep with four circles—one left unfinished.

A whisper rose behind it. “ You open doors you don’t understand.”

The tether yanked tight.

“Darian!” I called, already moving.

His voice cracked through. “I found something… No, it found me.”

“Where are you?”

“Two ridges east. Past the dead pines.”

I ran through the meadow and toward the woods.

The midday sun blazed through the canopy.

It burned against my shoulders and neck, and I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand as I pushed forward.

I didn’t slow, didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate; nothing mattered except what waited. Dust kicked up with every step.

The tether pulled me forward sharply, dragging me relentlessly past brush and overgrowth. Thorns tore at my legs, cutting small red lines into my skin as I pushed through without slowing. Darian.

When I joined him, he stood at the center of a scorched clearing. Blackened ground, dry as bone, surrounded him. His breath came in short gasps. His hands clenched at his sides. The bond shimmered along his spine.

I stepped into the clearing. Darian’s shoulders remained squared, but his eyes tracked me.

The silver shimmer wasn’t only a fae flicker.

It looked embedded, like something had drifted inside and touched the bond directly—past thought, past blood.

I stopped a few paces away, letting the heat settle between us.

His voice came quietly, like it cost him something to say. “Something reached through.”

I frowned. “The bond?”

He swallowed and nodded. “It wasn’t human.”

We both turned, drawn to the same point. The tree behind him. Scorched into the tree’s bark were four deep circles burned into the grain like brands. Below them, a fifth ring remained faint, unfinished, and waiting .

When I extended a hand toward it, the tether snapped forward like a rope, pulling both of us back to the center.

It wrapped around us fast and hard—a grip that held and remembered.

I wished it would tell us everything it remembered.

I wished it could tell us how we could help.

I wished it would let me know whether Darian had any ulterior motives.

The whisper came through the trees. “ Soon.”

Darian let out a pent-up breath. “It knows we’re trying.”

We headed back to the Keep through the dense forest in silence. The only sounds were the soft crunch of leaves underfoot and the occasional rustle of branches. No footsteps trailed behind us, no breeze stirred the air.

Electricity crackled in the air between Darian and me, an invisible current that seemed to vibrate in the space separating our bodies.

It was as if our very presence created a magnetic field, drawing us subtly yet inexorably closer.

A part of me yearned to wrap my arms around him, to bury my face into the warmth of his chest and let the tears flow freely, seeking solace in the comforting rhythm of his heart.

I wasn’t a child. My wounds should make me strong.

That’s what the Boundless always said. I felt tired from being so unyielding.

For a decade, I had endured rigorous training, molded into an assassin.

My combat instructors only ever repeated, ‘Again. Again,’ every time I practiced the techniques, my muscles as rigid as stone. I needed softness.

Darian’s physique formed a fortress of muscle and sinew, yet his mind remained a battleground of vulnerability, or so it seemed. I didn’t know what was real for him. What he remembered, what he made up, what the bond stitched together from scraps.

He could be lying. Or worse—he could believe it. The bond hadn’t shown me, and I remained uncertain about the Keeper of the Vows’ role in all of this.

It started speaking in our sleep. At first, it used my voice.

Then Darian’s. Then something else. One night, I dreamed that it was a hot afternoon in the courtyard.

I stood in the shade of the western wall, and Darian stood across from me, shirtless, bathed in sunlight which looked too pale to be natural.

“Fuse,” he said.

“No.”

His eyes wept silver. A crown melted in his hand—soft metal pooling like it had never fit him.

Panicked, I corkscrewed around and saw ten thrones. Every one of them was broken. The stone cracked, the seats split down the center like they’d failed under weight that never belonged to them.

A voice boomed, “ Choose or vanish!”

I woke up gasping. My skin was slick with sweat, and the fire had reduced to low embers. The tremors of the bond-magic hummed loud enough to rattle my ribs. I sat upright. My cloak slid off one shoulder.

That’s when I saw the mark below my collarbone—a single faint line of vow-magic written beneath the skin. I stood, wrapped the cloak around me, and stepped outside. Darian was already there, standing beneath the stars.

“You dreamed it too,” I said.

He nodded. “The courtyard. The crown.”

“The thrones?”

He finally turned and nodded. “I didn’t wake with a mark.”

I opened the cloak to let him see.

He peered at the mark, not touching, as if the contact might shatter something delicate. “It wasn’t from outside.”

I sucked in a tight breath and blew it out slowly through puffed cheeks. “No. It was the bond.”

“It was testing us.”

“Or warning.”

The mark burned once, cooled after.

He stepped back. His face without expression, which was normal for him. “We have to stop waiting for it to reveal itself.”

“Agreed.”

“So tomorrow, we force a memory.”

Above, the stars twinkled above us, like pinholes pricked into paper.

“Whose memory?” I asked.

“Yours.”

The following day, Darian woke me up, just back from the river, his shirt still off and hair damp. I knew I needed to wash before we tried to meditate with the bond and work magic, so I went to the forest. The river cooled me. I emerged from its depths cleaner and steadier.

The moment seemed almost sacred as I prepared to commune with the bond, washing away any impurities and cleansing myself both physically and spiritually in the cool, clear water. The forest seemed to hold its breath, anticipating the magic that was about to unfold.

When I returned, Darian was pacing in the largest fighting pit, clothed in a white shirt. “Ready?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Aren’t we going to do it?”

“Yes.” I arrived at the link with memory. The scar on my chest warmed beneath my tunic. The truth that I hadn’t let go of. I whispered, “Show him.”

The air split open like glass under pressure, and the Keep vanished. We stood in a village made of stone and dust. My village. Wind pulled ash through the empty square. The buildings leaned inward like they were listening. The well at the center had long since gone dry.

I hadn’t seen this place in ten years.

Darian stood beside me, silent. The bond rebuilt everything—down to the scent of cracked grain, the slant of shadow before a storm. It did not soften the truth. It did not blur it. It made it sharp .

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Where I stopped being a daughter.”

We walked the main path together, past doors sealed tight against memories that still clung to the stone. There weren’t any voices behind them. The stillness was so deep that it felt heavy.

At the edge of the square stood a house. One broken shutter hung loose, tapping against the wall with the wind. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. The air was colder there.

Her body hadn’t moved.

Mom lay across the table, arms stretched out, limbs stiff. Her skin had gone blue. Her wrists remained bound with the same cords I remembered—brown with wear, tied too tight. No one had untied her. No one had come.

Darian stood frozen at the threshold. When he stepped forward, it was slow, as if he feared the floor might collapse. “How did she die?” he asked.

“They said it was punishment. For refusing the draft. Refusing the tax. I don’t know what part of that was true.”

The air pressed down hard, but the bond didn’t interfere. It held back, letting the shape of the memory run its course.

In the corner, the younger version of me sat cross-legged on the floor. Still. Silent. Waiting.

The bond blurred her edges, as if she didn’t quite belong to this world anymore.

Darian kneeled beside her. “You didn’t cry,” he said.

“No. I waited.”

“For what?”

“For the guard to leave. Then I cut the rope. Buried her. Lied about how I found her.”

He turned his head to study me.

“Why show me this?”

“Because you keep searching for the moment I broke. It was here. And I chose it.”

“I have something to tell you,” he said .

“What?”

“It’s about your friend who came with you when you tried to murder me during the new moon ritual at the Moon Court.”

“Priestess Jinth?”

“Yes.” He touched his temple and grimaced. “I told you the interrogator killed her, but now I’m uncertain. My memories are scrambled.”

“So what else do you think could have happened?”

“I have a memory of letting her go before ordering my spies to follow her, so we could find the rebel organisation you both worked for.”

I heaved a sigh. “She wasn’t my friend.”

“She was your foe?”

“No. Just someone to help get me get in to the Moon Court.”