Page 22 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter fifteen

Purple Fire

T hey came with the moon. The sky stretched above the Keep like old charcoal.

Starless. Thick. Heat still clung to the earth.

The fire in the courtyard popped low behind us, and thirty villagers stirred in the dark.

Some curled in cloaks. A few children already slept, limbs tucked tight against their mothers’ sides.

We saw them before we heard them. Torchlight cut a slow curve through the lower trees. Like before, there weren’t any banners or sigils. Just the shimmer of tethered riders, ten in total, and the Bone Seat walking ahead of them.

His robes looked like grief worn too long. But his eyes shone ultraviolet in the firelight, brighter than torch-glow, rimmed with something colder than flame. A hue that didn’t belong to any living body.

He had bonded riders. The sight of them made my jaw tighten. I hadn’t expected that. Had the bond chosen them, or had he? Had they even chosen? Their steps matched his without hesitation. Either they were loyal—or remade. My stomach pulled tight.

He was early. Too early. He’d promised the new moon. This was not the new moon. This was a warning pretending to be a reckoning, and I wasn’t sure if I was more angry at his timing—or at how easily he’d brought tethered soldiers while calling mine unstable.

We stood at the clearing’s edge. Darian on my left, hand near his blade. Me in the center. The others—Branwen and the villagers—lined out behind us in a loose semicircle, firelight playing off their cheeks. They weren’t organized. They weren’t armed. But they didn’t run.

The Bone Seat stopped ten paces from me. “You were given until moonrise.”

I stepped forward once. “You said the new moon. You’re early.”

His gaze cut past me to the villagers, their faces lit with gold and shadow. “And yet still too late. Who are these?”

“They came on their own.”

His eyes moved over them. “And the bond welcomed them?”

“It didn’t stop them.”

Behind him, the tethered riders dismounted. Torchlight hit their arms. The marks glistened—crooked, knotted, purple, and sickly. They glistened like bruises in the lamplight. They bent and looped like a child’s first drawing. Like a thread pulled too tight before knotting in panic.

They were etched across palms, inner wrists, forearms without pattern or logic.

Some bore one mark. Some two. The third was never complete.

Its ends never met, like a failed attempt at fusion.

Like memory interrupted. One man’s clumsy mark was carved into his cheek.

His gaze remained fixed on nothing in particular.

His chest barely rose. No awareness. No spark.

“These aren’t envoys,” I said.

“They’re remnants,” the Bone Seat answered. “Failed pairings. Rewritten.”

Darian stepped forward, his voice a blade sheathed in warning. “You hollowed them.”

“I preserved them.”

“Why?”

“The is why. I can’t understand why you pretend, Prince Darian, that you were uninvolved in this.”

I gritted my teeth and frowned .

“Oh, he didn’t tell you about the treaties he signed?” The Bone Seat quirked an eyebrow at me and raised a hand.

The riders moved forward at a medium pace. But it was enough to disturb the torchlight. Enough to make every child stir in their mother’s arms. Enough to make the tether in my back rise like smoke from a forge.

Beside me, Branwen whispered, “They don’t feel real.”

“They aren’t,” I said. “They’re echoes with shape.”

“I preserved what could still serve,” he said.

“For what?” I asked, still unsure about what treaties Darian may have signed.

“For this.” He snapped his fingers.

Three of the riders moved. They closed in on the woodcutter twins—boys barely past seventeen, with one circle each burned into their palms.

“Wait—“ I stepped forward.

Too late.

The riders surrounded the twins in a perfect triangle. One dropped to a knee, pressed a palm to the dirt. The other two raised their hands. Purple glimmer pulsed from the second circle on each rider’s wrist.

The bond lashed through me, unsure and confused. Purple light shot outward in a jagged ring, catching both young men mid-step. They didn’t fall. They froze. Turned gray. Crumbled. No blood. No scream. Only ash.

I heard the howl of wolves echo through the trees, low and mournful. Two ghostly princes appeared where the twins’ ash had fallen. They stood barefoot upon it, veiled in moonlight, flanked by three translucent wolves. Three falcons perched on spectral arms.

The princes kneeled in the cinders. Their shoulders shook with grief too old for words. With a final cry from the wolves, they vanished—swallowed by mist, leaving only silence behind.

I stumbled back, choking on the dust. The bitter taste of scorched magic filled my mouth. Willow shrieked. A mother with bobbed black hair collapsed to her knees, clawing the earth where her sons had stood.

Branwen lunged forward, but Darian grabbed her arm. “No. Not yet. ”

Another rider screamed—one of the remnants. His third circle flared brightly and imploded. Flesh cracked. Skin blackened. His whole body collapsed in on itself like a burned husk. Ash Gone.

Five others surged forward, targeting villagers with only one circle. A little boy with black curly hair was gone in seconds. He can’t have been more than six years old.

The bond inside me flared, wild and horrified. I opened my mouth to stop them, but Willow was faster.

She raised her arm. “Stop!” The voice wasn’t hers. I recognized it but couldn’t place it, and it echoed across the valley, spilling over the hills. The bond flared purple through her. “We were never yours to lose!”

A shockwave ripped through the courtyard, flattening grass and lifting the forge ash in a halo. The advancing remnants collapsed mid-step. Some screamed. Some didn’t.

The Bone Seat’s eyes narrowed. Ultraviolet turned searing. He took one slow step toward Willow and shouted, “What did it show you?! How did you do that?!”

Her voice was her own again. Small. Angry. Shaking. “I won’t tell you how. You’re evil! It didn’t show me anything. It asked.”

“Asked what?”

“That’s none of your business! You’re evil! Are you aware of that?!”

Around us, the villagers reeled—ten gone, others on their knees, stunned. The courtyard stank of scorched magic and old grief.

The Bone Seat turned his gaze to me. “This is your army?”

“No,” I said, voice hollow. “This is what comes after one.”

Darian stepped beside me. His hand found mine. I gulped. Perhaps we weren’t enemies anymore, and he was on my side. But what had that been about a treaty? My hand didn’t fit in his.

The Bone Seat’s gaze lingered on us, and when he left, his remnants followed. They vanished into the night, leaving only dust behind. The circle didn’t hold silence. It held the sound after it. The kind that came when you wanted to scream but didn’t know where to start .

A woman with raven black hair, cut short under the ear, pushed forward through the knot of villagers. Her face was wet with tears and streaked with ash. The scarf around her shoulders had fallen, and she left it there unattended. A small boot lay in the dirt. Warped. Half ash.

“You brought this,” she spat. “You. You stood there and let him come. Let them come.” Her voice cracked, but her rage didn’t. “We followed dreams and songs and threads and promises, and now my son is smoke.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came.

The woman turned to the others. “You saw it. You saw what they did. It will happen again. Next time, it’ll be your children. Your kin. Go.”

Others followed her gaze. Five moved first. Then three more. Then a pair of sisters who hadn’t spoken since arriving.

Branwen joined my other side. Her hands stayed loose, but her mouth was drawn. “Let them go,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t mean they won’t come back. Fear runs, but it can circle back.”

But I barely heard her. My knees had locked. My hands were shaking. My gaze stayed fixed on the ground where the twins had turned to ash. My sinuses itched, and a sob caught in my throat, but I swallowed it. I didn’t cry. Not here. Not yet.

From the side, Willow’s mother pulled her daughter close. “We’re going. That’s it. We never should have come.”

But Willow shook her head. “I’m staying. The bond spoke through me. That means I got to learn what it wants.”

Her mother’s face crumpled. “You’re ten.”

“I don’t care. I’m still staying.”

In the shadows by the well, the little girl with cropped brown hair clung to the stone edge. Her face was blotchy, eyes swollen. Her small fingers dug into the mortar.

“Me dad’s gone. Ain’t nothing to carry home now, just the words. I’ve got to tell my brothers and Mommy. I got to tell them he went like a candle.”

I crouched beside her, but Nancy wouldn’t meet my eyes .

“He shouldn’t have come,” Nancy whispered. “But he did. He dreamed it, too. We all dreamed. I got two marks. Dad only had one. I reckon that’s why it took him. He wasn’t ready.”

“I’m taking Nancy home,” a woman said. “I’m her next-door neighbour. Need to tell her mother and brothers that the man of the house is gone and ain’t coming back. I have me own kids to look after, too. Should never have come.” She put an arm around the little girl, and they left last.

By night’s end, ten more had gone. Some wept as they left. Some didn’t look back. Only twenty remained.

The elder called Ruen with dreadlocks and a twisted spine leaned on his walking stick, black eyes sparkling and sharp. “We’re too old to run. If this is war, let it be war.”

Astrid—otherwise known by her people as the wandbearer—sat beside Willow and offered her a hunk of dried bread. “If the girl can learn the bond, so can we. She showed us more than most ever do. We need wardstones, too, so that Bone Seat and his army of the unconscious won’t return.”

The air settled, heavy with smoke and grief. I watched the last of the leavers vanish into the dark beyond the Keep.