Page 21 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Darian watched them suspiciously from the perimeter of the fighting ring. When too many voices began finishing each other’s thoughts, he pulled me aside near the Keep wall.

His voice was tight. “The bond is linking them, without me, without asking.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need to ask anymore,” I suggested.

“Or you gave it permission when you walked the corridor.” He gripped my wrist. His eyes flashed silver .

I yanked it back, frowning; the fear hitting fast. What was wrong with him? Why was he angry at us? Was he still my enemy? Had I been wrong to think we’d moved past that?

The fire behind us crackled, like bones under heat.

“You think this is a mistake?” I mumbled.

“I think it’s a threshold. And I don’t know what’s on the other side.”

I looked past him at the twins, drawing circles in the dirt with the tips of their boots. The tether slid down my spine like mist through old stone. “It’s not speaking for us anymore.”

Darian’s jaw tightened as he glared over the fire at the woodcutters and the other marked ones, the other mixed-bloods.

“You still think you’re better.” My voice shook with fury. “Better than the villagers. Better than me.”

“I never said that.”

“No?” I snapped. “Because it sounds like what you meant. Like being part human would be the worst thing that could happen to you.”

He turned his face away, but not before I saw the flare in his eyes. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“I’m speaking the ones you won’t say. You look at these people like they’re beneath you.”

“They are strangers. You trust them too quickly.”

“And you—” I pointed at his chest. “You’re still clinging to the version of yourself they raised. The prince. The Pure-Blood. The one who calls humans weak unless they die for him.”

His mouth opened. I cut him off. “Maybe it would’ve been better if you kept calling the Bone Seat your Daddy. ”

He turned so fast the firelight caught the sharp line of his cheekbone. “I never called him that.”

He gritted his teeth and looked past me.

His fists were curled at his sides. “I don’t even remember my father’s face.

I fight with myself every night before I sleep, trying to know what’s true.

What was planted? What was taken? I was told they turned to ash when we bonded—my parents.

But I don’t remember them burning. I don’t remember them at all.

I only remember my brother’s blood. His screams.”

His voice broke again. Everything in his face hardened, but I could still hear the ache in it, the fracture beneath the steel. He turned and stalked off toward the woods.

I should’ve felt pity. But all I could think of was how easy it had been for him to dismiss the rest of us. Grief didn’t make him kind. It made him cruel in the quiet. I stood there, too angry to follow. Too angry to care.

So what if he didn’t remember? I had to bury Mom with no one to help me. I had to scrape a grave for the boy I loved before I could say goodbye. And Dad? He had walked out a year before with dry eyes and never looked back. He left us. Left me trying to understand why.

So no, I didn’t pity the prince. Not when he made it clear—he still saw us as less. The marked ones didn’t speak. They hummed. The same sound the corridor made when it opened. And I knew—we weren’t waiting for the Bone Seat anymore.

The heat hadn’t broken, even by sunset. The sky hung thick with haze and the buzz of mosquitoes. No moon rose—too early. The full moon had been two nights ago. Now it lingered somewhere behind the hills. We stood watch on the battlements above the Keep.

Darian was beside me, arms braced on the stone edge. We hadn’t spoken since the argument, and the silence between us hadn’t softened—though we stood side by side. The mark on his wrist shimmered once.

And then we saw them. Twenty or more moved along the tree line. Women with baskets, men with hunting knives, children trailing behind. A few carried bundles, others brought nothing. They came slow but steady, eyes scanning the crumbling walls .

“They think you called them,” Darian said.

“Maybe I did,” I said. “Without meaning to.”

His expression didn’t change, but I saw the sharpness in it. The worry he wouldn’t name.

As they got closer, I leaned forward over the stone. “Come to the courtyard! We’ll answer what we can!”

Darian didn’t wait for them to reply. He turned and led the way down the stairs. I followed.

The villagers had gathered by the half-collapsed forge, faces flickering in firelight. Some hung back. Some stared. A few children clung to their mothers. One boy with patchy curls clutched a sling of dried herbs.

A broad-shouldered man stepped forward, jabbing a finger toward my chest. “Look at my hand and arm! These aren’t natural. We been havin’ dreams we don’t remember wakin’ from. My wife muttered names in her sleep. I’ve seen yer in my dreams. Yer face. Yer circles. What kind of spell is this?”

A younger woman stepped beside him, eyes narrowed. “You a witch?”

I didn’t answer. Darian did.

“She’s bonded,” he said. “Marked by ancient vow-magic.”

The woman spat close to his boot. “What even is vow-magic? Are you saying she summoned us?”

“No,” I said. “The bond echoed. You answered.”

Another man—older, thin-limbed, face leathered by the sun—lifted his hand. His palm bore a faint curve. A half-circle, hidden in the crease. “I got this three nights ago. I woke with it. Dreamed of a mirror. Shattered.”

Gasps broke out in the crowd. A woman covered her mouth. A child whispered, “Me too.”

I swallowed. “You aren’t cursed. You carry no mark from me. This is old magic—older than kingdoms. But it’s lost its reins. The Bone Seats shaped it to serve. Now it’s remembering what it was before. I escaped the Moon Court and set it free.”

“You ain’t a fae!” a woman in the back shouted.

“No, and l went to the Moon Court from the Borderlands to kill the prince.”

Murmurs spread. One man cursed. Another shouted, “So it’s true what they say—that you’re from the wilds, that you’re bringing ruin!”

Darian moved fast. His voice cracked like a whip. “She’s not bringing ruin. The Bone Seats did that already.”

My chest caught tight. I hadn’t expected him to defend me. Not after last night. Not after what I had said. He still wouldn’t look at me. But something in him had bent toward me or toward what I stood for. I swallowed hard.

The man hesitated. “You say you’re fae! But how can you prove it?”

Darian stepped into the light and pulled up his sleeve to display the three rings marked into his skin.

The edges had thickened and woven. Fine lines now twisted between the circles like growing roots or braided thread, linking them in a way that hadn’t been there before.

They twinkled silver and were beautiful, like him.

I couldn’t contain my surprise as I let out a yelp and covered my lips with a hand. I pulled up my sleeve to see if mine had changed, too. They hadn’t. The circle beneath my collarbone was still a simple ring as well.

He stared at the new patterns, frowning—as if he wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed or amazed. “I am the Fae Prince of the Moon Court. And I have seen what they’ve done to humans and also to the fae. To memory.”

Silence again. But this time, it felt thinner. Tentative.

Astrid staggered to my side and gripped my arm for balance. “For four hundred years, the Bone Seats of the ten Fae Kingdoms have rewritten minds. Blinded the unseeing. Twisted the tether that once let us name ourselves. But the borderlands… something’s always been different here.”

“None of you have to stay,” I said. “But if the bond has echoed through your dreams, then it’s already in you. And it’s not a curse. It’s an invitation.”

The anger didn’t vanish. But it softened. And confusion stayed.

Darian turned to me, voice low. “We should move them to the fighting ring. The grass is soft and there’s more space.”

We led them across the courtyard, into the wide training circle where the dirt still bore marks from where the bond had sharpened weeks ago. No one questioned it. They followed .

The sun had already set beyond the hills to the west. In the sky, amber melted to violet. The ring filled. Thirty-something souls, including the earliest arrivals, standing in a place that remembered magic. Darian stood at one edge, and I at the other.

And the bond—quiet all day—finally moved between us, waiting.

“Why did you try to kill the prince?” a little boy asked in a squeaky voice.

“I was offered money. A lot of money. I was told he and the nine other princes of the Fae Realms use their magic to control the humans beyond the Borderlands in all the landmasses of Caldaen.”

“Isn’t it true?” a man asked. “You obviously failed at what you set out to do.”

“The magic prevented Talia from stabbing my heart. It bound her to me instead.”

“I don’t think it’s magic anymore,” I said. “It’s memory. The mark chose me. Or I chose it. I walked through the corridor while awake.”

“What do you mean, you walked through a corridor?” a twin woodcutter asked.

I explained before adding, “I shattered a mirror that held no reflection. I opened a gate. I stepped through.”

There were no cheers. No kneeling. Only silence, the kind that pays attention.

One woman stepped forward. Her auburn hair fell in waves around her face, framing the brightness of her turquoise eyes. She was broad-shouldered and quiet, with hands shaped by work. Nothing in her posture asked to be noticed—but everyone noticed, anyway. “Can I walk it too?”

I didn’t lie. “I don’t know if it will let you.”

“But if I speak my name?”

“Say it.”

She looked down for a moment as though searching for something. When she finally lifted her head, her eyes met mine. “Branwen.”

The vow-magic thudded once. It was quiet but deep, and I could feel it in every chest. Everyone exchanged glances before looking up. The sky flickered. And for one breath, the world paused .

Branwen stepped back. “It heard me.”

I nodded. “Then maybe the door’s already open.”

Behind the circle, Darian stood with his arms crossed. He watched as the marked ones moved toward each other. They formed a loose circle. A few of the unmarked turned away and walked back toward the trees. But some remained. And the bond didn’t judge. It swung.

With the sky so clear, we slept outside. That night, the fire needed no wood. It remembered us.