Page 29 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty

The Memory That Waited

T he frost came early, like a fine, glittering layer of diamond powder that settled on the stone. It dusted the outer walls before dawn, catching on the training ring’s edge, clinging to the woven cloaks of those who rose first.

I stood at the western watch, one hand on the cracked archway. Darian was strolling carefully along the courtyard’s edge. The Keep wasn’t restless, but tense. Behind me, the corridor waited for a decision still to be made by any of us.

Branwen joined me silently on the ledge, her shoulders tense and jaw jutted. She’d seen the same signs as me—too many birds flying east, too much silence in the nearby stream, a faint shimmer in the torchlight that wasn’t magic but memory, hanging in the air like unfinished breath.

Below us, the marked ones gathered in their layers of cloth and shared memory, stitched tighter each day. Their breath rose in clouds, proof that autumn was early—and didn’t plan to wait for winter. Willow placed a flat stone in the center of the courtyard, and the rest stood around it in a ring .

Darian crossed to the stone and stood at the edge. I loved that about him. Despite growing up as a prince, he never attempted to lead. I pitied him for what he witnessed as a child. I descended the steps to join him and the others.

“They aren’t waiting for you anymore, Talia.” He peered at his feet.

“I know.”

“That isn’t a bad thing.”

“I know that, too.”

The tie whirred between us, counting something. “They sense something’s coming.”

“It’s already here.”

“From the Bone Seat?”

He looked east, where the frost didn’t melt. He turned finally and met my dark eyes with his pale ones. He scanned my face as if searching for something on a map. “Perhaps.”

Sael lingered near the corridor’s shimmer, arms folded, eyes sharp.

“The corridor’s getting ready for something,” Willow said.

A tremor moved through the ground, and the stone in the center cracked. I kneeled beside it. The seam ran unevenly.

Darian kneeled, too, and his hand brushed mine. “Will the ground open?”

His hand remained close. My ribs locked up like I’d run too far. “It already has opened.” I extended my consciousness through the tie.

We gathered around the cracked stone and, in spirit, descended through it. The corridor curved inward, lined with shelves. Not books. Not stones. Memory cores. Held like breath in glass. Some shimmered. Some stayed dim.

Branwen’s fingers hovered over one. “People.”

“They aren’t people. They’re moments,” said a voice behind her. That was the same voice as the being I’d discovered in the woods, three moontides past. The identical voice ended the Bone Seat’s massacre when speaking through Willow.

Willow exchanged a thoughtful look with me before touching a core. Nothing changed—except her face, which was puckered with confusion. Her shoulders curled inward. “I met a boy. He told me he wanted to plant a seed. ”

I had become so accustomed to strange visions from the marked ones that I just gave her an understanding look before moving on deeper. Symbols lined the walls. They reminded me of the human runes rather than the symbols of the fae courts.

We left in silence. At the Keep’s edge, the marked waited.

“They saw the place where our ancestors’ memories are stored,” I said.

“They were meant to,” said Astrid.

The corridor shimmered again. Thin. Faint. Enough for one.

Darian came to my side, which had become as normal as breathing.

“You should stay,” I said.

“I won’t.”

“Then walk behind me.”

“I always do.”

We stepped through again. And behind us, Sael watched. Still waiting. Still unable to enter.

The walls thinned as we walked. They looked tired, as if too many memories burdened them for too long.

I led patiently, without questions. Darian trailed behind.

He trusted me. The path bent. The light changed.

We eventually entered a hollow scraped empty by forgetting.

On the far side stood a mirror without a reflection.

“You already know,” Darian said behind me.

I kneeled and laid both hands on the cold floor. Then I whispered Mom’s name. “Ocean.”

The glass cracked. Through that narrow break, memories spilled—woven threads that had never been mine.

A girl glowing blue in an alien forest, where trees blushed pink and gold beside a violet stream .

Three men glowing blue in that very same world.

A hidden blade.

A young woman with cropped hair, drumming beside a fountain in an ancient town.

Darian stepped closer and leaned in.

My pulse snagged. I didn’t show it.

The mirror shimmered and split wider, offering a record of names. All silent. All carried. All mine, because the bond asked someone to remember. My ancestors. When the corridor closed, it didn’t seal. The break stayed as a mark.

“You aren’t only the Fifth,” Darian said, crouching beside me.

“No. I am a record. I think the coin marked me for storage of the records, from the old fifth to the new.”

He pressed his palm to the floor. We both sensed what had never been written, what had never been erased. A vow built for those used up before anyone thought to give them names.

“They couldn’t seal it,” I said, rising slowly.

He rose slowly with me and looked down into my eyes. “Because they never finished it.” He reached for me. Stopped. Said nothing. That said enough.

My lips tingled, and my heart skipped a beat, but I turned away. We strolled back in silence. Something old had passed between us. It was trust, shaped by memory. I finally trusted him, and he trusted me, because of everything we had learned.

When we returned to the corridor mouth, the marked had already gathered. They had seen what we had seen. I peered back to the chamber behind. All those names with no ink. The ones no one spoke about because naming them would make them real.

“We keep it open,” I said, and the tie stirred in agreement because remembering was not enough, and it needed continuation.

We returned to the hall before dusk. The sky wore that strange silver color that storms liked to borrow.

We waited. The vow-magic kept the walls alive, low ribbons of light slipping across the floor in circles full of patterns and symbols, connected by tangled veins of light in the colors of amber, silver, green, and turquoise.

The marked had already gathered. Willow sat cross-legged near the center, meditating with her opened palms facing up on her knees, and her eyes closed.

Branwen leaned on the archway, arms folded.

The elders stood apart. The blacksmith, fisher, and baker sat on a bench.

Sael watched from the doorway. No one spoke.

But they all knew something had changed.

“I saw the chamber,” I said. “Before the courts.”

Branwen straightened. “And?”

“It didn’t demand anything. It helped, exactly as Astrid and Sael had explained. Like a shared mind.”

Darian tied his long hair in a topknot, and for a moment, I hoped he might curl an arm around my shoulders. “It showed us what had been erased.”

Willow’s eyes flashed open. “Any names?”

“Hundreds of thousands. Roles. People who shaped the bond before it was shaped into something else.”

“They were the first,” said Jack. “The unnamed.”

“They weren’t erased,” I said. “They were set aside.”

Sael’s voice echoed in the hall, bouncing off the stone. “The bond remembers out loud.”

The tie stirred in my spine. My gaze darted between Astrid, Jack, and Ruen. “Do you still hear it?”

“Not with ears.” Astrid touched her chest. “I feel it here, in the very center of my heart.”

I sucked in air too fast. Her mark bloomed like mine. A flower. Summer magic in green. It was a flower in the center of her chest, but hers was electric green, like the marks on Branwen’s arm and hand. I wondered for a second if she had an ancestor from the Summer Court, as well .

I dropped to the floor and sat. I closed my eyes and listened. Something answered. It sounded like metal folding under heat. Slow. Careful. Then an image rose. A blade forged for memory.

The air shaped around it. Three runes lifted from the bone comb, drawn into the mix like breath pulled into flame. The metal’s source was a mystery to me. It wasn’t mine. But it waited, quiet and sure.

“What did you see?” Darian asked, always beside me, always close.

I looked up at him, towering above me. “A weapon. I think I’ll be asked to carry it.”

He crouched beside me, then sat. The tether eased. Without a word, Darian opened his arms and pulled me in. And for the first time, I didn’t resist the wanting. I let it hold me.

I leaned into him, and his warmth wrapped around me like it had always known how. His scent hit first—woodsmoke and something deeper, warm and worn like old cedar left in the sun.

The comfort wasn’t loud. It didn’t demand anything.

But it was too much. The kind of too much that didn’t hurt.

The kind that made everything else fall away.

There was no war. Just this. His chest steady beneath my cheek.

His breath brushing my hair. I wanted to stay inside that stillness forever.

Like we were the last two marked—and for once, the bond didn’t burn.