Page 25 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter seventeen

What Remains Awake

B y morning, only ghost-embers remained in the courtyard ring.

There was enough light to outline the shapes of bodies curled close.

Some were on bedrolls, others on cloaks, and a few with no cover at all.

Willow muttered in her sleep, and Astrid snored.

I was nearly under again when a shift in the air pulled me back.

Darian was awake. He lay beside me, close enough that I could feel the pull of him. But his pale eyes were open, looking at me.

I peered through the slit of one lid, enough to see him watching through lashes, eyes bright in the dying firelight. I wondered if he realized I was looking. If he cared. If he meant to be that close.

A flicker of heat crawled up my neck. There was uncertainty and caution in the stillness of his face. It tugged low and sharp, like wanting him would unmake me if I wasn’t careful. I didn’t trust him .

Darian’s vision from Astrid’s song still sat behind my ribs. It had come the second time she sang, and I hadn’t told a soul: a boy signing a treaty, eyes hollow, hand shaking. A man fleeing through a gate. And Darian, five or six years old.

What if he was considering ending it? The bond. Me. Us. What if he couldn’t? He blinked once, finally. Rolled to his back. Exhaled. I kept still. Whatever passed between us in that silence wasn’t spoken. But the binding vow monitored.

We rose slowly. The silence didn’t want to be broken yet. Astrid stretched and cracked her shoulders. Willow whispered something to her mother, who nodded without looking up. Fen crouched near the hearth pit, sharpening his knife. Branwen handed me a shallow bowl of water.

The river still hadn’t resumed flowing, but none of us spoke about it.

We gathered on the edge of the ring again, where the stone felt warmer than the rest of the yard.

Lina’s strawberry blonde curls tumbled around her pink and freckled face as she tore bread into even pieces with thick fingers.

She’d already boiled roots and a lump of salted meat Fen had brought back the day before.

I sat on the edge of a low stone wall, noting bread being torn into chunks and passed from hand to hand. Willow chewed slowly beside her mother. Astrid rested against her staff, eyes half-closed. Darian hadn’t spoken since sunrise.

The tether pulled, and we all turned at once.

We saw him before he stepped close. The Bone Seat from the Moon Court in his gray, ragged robe moving through the trees at the edge of the meadow. This time it was only him and his envoy with her black braid wrapped around her neck, long-limbed, tanned, and silent.

He crossed the meadow like it wasn’t there, eyes already fixed on us. When he arrived at the ring, he stepped inside as if it had been built for him. The envoy’s face looked even more hollow than the day before, while the Bone Seat’s eyes were the same unholy ultraviolet.

All twelve of us marked were present. Branwen anchored her feet wide apart, eyes on the ground.

Ruen gripped his walking stick. Lymseia stood with her arms crossed, jaw tight beneath the blunt line of her black bob.

Ulric rolled his shoulders once, quiet. Fen didn’t blink. Willow held onto her mother’s sleeve .

The Bone Seat looked at me first. Then Darian. Then the others, one by one. “You’re still here.”

The words sounded like disappointment. Or disbelief. Like he’d expected the bond to devour us before he arrived.

Darian stepped forward. “Say what you came to say.”

The Bone Seat smiled faintly. “I only came to remind you all that tethering yourselves to memory has a price. And to remind you, dear boy, what you signed.”

I swallowed my curiosity down.

Darian stiffened beside me. “I was a child. I don’t remember what I signed.”

“But I do,” the Bone Seat said. He turned to the rest. “You should ask him what his signature bought.”

Astrid’s voice cut across the courtyard. Low, even. “He was ten years old. It wasn’t his fault.”

I frowned, a flicker of alarm catching in my chest. Astrid was aware of it? Was she more attuned than the rest of us? It would make sense. She’d been the revered wandbearer of her village long before the binding vow marked her.

The Bone Seat’s eyes narrowed, too. “You talk as if you are certain.”

“I am.”

He stared at her like he wanted to burn a hole through her skull. “How?”

She didn’t answer.

His smile slipped. The silence turned brittle.

Ulric grunted. “Speak plain, death-walker.”

The Bone Seat’s eyes slid to mine. “You want truth? Fine. Kill me, and Prince Darian dies with me.”

Branwen choked on her breath. Ruen cursed. Lymseia surged forward before Fen caught her arm. Willow’s mother pulled her daughter behind her. Even Astrid’s staff shifted in her grip.

Darian blinked. “You lie.”

“He’s not lying, Prince Darian. I’m afraid to say I saw it.” Astrid said.

Darian turned on her. “What did you see? ”

Her knuckles were bone-white around the staff. “Your mother. Kneeling. Her mark stripped. You crying behind her. Too small to understand. And the Bone Seat standing over her.”

Darian’s throat moved once. “You beheaded her,” he said, voice raw.

The Bone Seat didn’t blink. “She disobeyed.”

“You murdered her,” Darian said. “And claimed me.”

“I did more than claim,” the Bone Seat said. “I made you. I am your father.”

A stillness hit the ring, sharp and deep.

“I don’t believe you. No!” Darian shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Astrid said quietly. “It’s true.”

Darian shook his head. “No. My mother was the queen. My father was the king.”

“He fled because I took everything,” the Bone Seat said. “Including you. After the birth of your dear brother, your father lost interest in the Queen. The King was happy with his mistresses. Your mother needed a lover, and I was there to provide. We made you.”

Darian’s hands clenched. I half expected blood to bloom from his palms. His whole body looked like it wanted to reject the name. The prince took two steps toward him. I moved faster.

I drew my blade and lunged.

My fae-forged sword dissolved mid-swing from the hilt outward, falling in a line of grey powder between us. The pieces drifted like burnt leaves. Nothing remained in my hand but a dead hilt and air.

The Bone Seat didn’t flinch. “That was unwise.”

“You kill for less,” I said, breathing hard.

“And I will again. There are still villages in this valley. Beds full of humans. I could empty them before dusk.”

His voice was quiet yet filled the space like rot. “You carry my mark deeper than any of them.”

“I would kill Talia. I would kill myself. If it would end your rule.”

The words dropped like iron. No one moved.

The Bone Seat turned to Astrid. “You knew. And still you let them gather. ”

“They deserve to remember,” she said.

“And you deserve to lose them.”

He turned. Began walking.

“You’re afraid,” I called after him.

He paused at the edge of the circle. “I am. Because the bond remembers what I buried.” The next thing we knew, he vanished into the trees.

My palm burned. The first ring was filling in with patterns like the petals of a rose. I wasn’t the only one.

Willow stared at her arm as a third circle formed like a leafy climber rising from the second inside of her wrist. Fen stared as a third circle grew on his right arm. Lymseia gasped aloud. Ruen laughed once, hoarse. Darian didn’t move.

Intricate coiling lines now linked each circle. The tether hadn’t broken. It had changed.

The sun had softened by the time we left the courtyard. The older ones stayed behind—Nessa and Lina claiming their knees had earned rest, not exercise. Ruen and Jack settled near the forge. Ulric muttered something about his bones.

So we went without them.

Seven of us. We took the narrow deer path behind the barracks and followed it east, where the meadow lifted and bent toward a line of crumbling stones and the ridge that overlooked the far valley.

The ground rose gently under our boots. The grass had turned crisp in places.

Patches of thyme released their scent underfoot, sharp and green, and bees moved lazily over late-blooming stalks.

Astrid led with her staff, the hem of her long skirts brushing nettle and seed heads.

Rainer kept Willow close, though the girl darted ahead whenever a bird called or a scatter of sun broke through the trees.

Branwen walked beside Lymseia in silence.

They hadn’t spoken since the Bone Seat’s revelation, but I Branwen kept pace with her all the same .

Darian and I walked last. For a long while, I didn’t try to fill the silence. A breeze stirred the curls at the base of my neck. I saw the line of Darian’s profile, sharp as ever. But his posture had changed. Less proud. More haunted.

“You didn’t know?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I wasn’t told. Even the treaty was hidden from me. I remember ink on my hands. I remember how the men looked at me when they made me sign. I remember someone saying the king had fled. I thought...” He stopped. His mouth pressed shut. “I thought he died.”

“And your mother?”

His throat moved. “I think she sang. I think she was trying to keep me calm when the Bone Seat came.”

Down the slope, the sky was clear and pale. We had climbed high enough to see the patchwork of low villages in the far distance. So many houses. So many people who had no idea what stirred in the bond.

Astrid slowed near the ridge. “Everything you are remembering is true, poor dear Prince Darian. I am sad the memories coming back to you are so tragic,” she said without turning. “But the truth wears masks.”

Darian’s jaw twitched. “So it’s true. He killed my mother?”

Astrid didn’t speak.

We stopped near a half-fallen arch of old stone. The view stretched open—valley, river, sky. The air moved differently here. It carried age.

Darian turned toward me. “I would kill you and myself if it meant ending this. I would kill you and myself if that’s what it took.” His voice cracked. “But I’d die not knowing if it was me… or him still pulling the strings.”

I nodded slowly. “I believe you’d try.”

“I don’t know what I’m becoming.”

Astrid stepped forward. “You’re becoming what they tried to erase.”

Lymseia stared at her arms. “So let the bond decide.”

She raised her forearm. The others followed. The tether shimmered silver across our skin. It flickered with new colors and new strands, too—threaded, coiling, living .

My third circle was nearly whole now, below the bend of my elbow, with pattern-work between the other rings like stars and moons curling around a forgotten gate.

Willow’s marks shimmered like resin sealed in amber. Astrid’s vowmarks became bright green vines. Branwen’s glowed leaf-green, too. Even Darian’s had changed—his circles thick, the threads between them curled in a script I couldn’t read.

The wind paused, and between two flat slabs at the edge of the ridge, it opened. The corridor.