Page 31 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty-two

The Circle Buried

I t had taken four days, not three. The rain started on the second and didn’t let up.

Cold rain bled through cloaks. The ridges slicked.

The gullies turned to sludge. Every incline became a trial.

Every stop meant more blisters. By the fourth day, we barely spoke.

Even the bond was quiet, as if it had fallen into a kind of sleep.

Nessa had insisted on coming. I hadn’t stopped her. I should have. Her cough turned wet and sharp. She lagged behind, even with Ulric staying close.

Each night, Lymseia wrapped her in both blankets and pressed her body close, trying to share the heat. It slowed us more than I’d admit aloud. My shoulders throbbed. My hips ached. My thighs burned with every step. I craved heat. Dry wool. Sleep not stolen on stone.

The gates of Oxford stood open. No one guarded them.

Darian slowed first, hand drifting toward the hilt at his side.

The bond didn’t stir, though it was near the surface of my skin, waiting and watching.

We stepped beneath the old arch. The stone was carved with names worn down to ridges, the words long forgotten. Dust lifted at our feet .

It should have been cold. But it wasn’t. The air was warm here, in a way that made no sense. Dry. Still. The streets were bare, the buildings silent. But there was definitely magic in the stone, air, and sky.

No rain had touched this place, though the clouds hung close above.

No snow lined the edges. We had walked northwest between mountains from the Borderlands into Tarnwick, the Realm of Humans.

It should have chilled our bones. Instead, we sweated beneath our cloaks, unsure what season this place had chosen to keep.

Oxford didn’t choose a world. It floated between.

The ivy that crept along the walls seemed to hold on to forgotten memories, while the paths were worn with the weight of centuries of footsteps.

The windows, once bright and full of life, now held a darkness that seemed to hold secrets and stories of its own.

As we plodded down the ancient paths of Oxford, the halls murmured with vanished names.

I sensed Darian beside me more sharply than I should have.

His steps were silent, but the air pulled toward him.

He hadn’t spoken since dawn. I hadn’t asked why.

But I noticed the way his breath slowed when I walked close.

His hand grazed mine. Too light to be a mistake.

A child peered at us from a second-story window. One hand pressed to the pane before he vanished without a sound.

“They’re still here,” Darian said quietly.

I nodded. “But they’ve learned to go quietly.”

“I know where the wardstones are,” the ash-man said. “Please, let me go and fetch them?”

“Of course,” I said. “Anything which will protect us from the Bone Seat and his remnants.”

He turned on his foot and strolled down a narrow alleyway, under a roofed bridge which connected two old colleges on either side.

Behind us, the others fanned out. Rainer walked near the front, eyes narrowed, shoulders tense.

Willow moved beside her mother, not touching but aware.

Fen had fallen silent since the last crossing.

Astrid was as quick as a fox with her carved stick in her hand, hurrying through the narrow alleys with an ease that surprised me.

She carried her stick and didn’t lean on it .

Lymseia was quiet. She looked older here. She held Nessa’s elbow gently, but didn’t speak. Sael stayed at the rear, watching everything, her expression unreadable. And the ash-man walked barefoot despite Ulric’s protests.

He had taken one of Darian’s spare cloaks, a pair of short breeches that barely reached his knees, and nothing else. His pale skin stayed marked, the lattice faint under the dirt, visible when he moved.

We found the central square, where a fountain stood dry at its center. The statue’s face was gone. Her hands—shattered. Willow crouched near its edge. Her fingers brushed moss where an old engraving had sunk deep.

Fen came up beside me and tossed his mousy brown shoulder-length hair. “It seems as if Oxford is not abandoned. I had been led to believe it was a ghost town.”

“If it’s not abandoned, what is it then?” I asked.

He stared at the broken statue. “It’s waiting for something. It hasn’t given up.”

A door creaked open. We turned as an old woman stepped through a narrow stone threshold. Her hair was white. Her spine bent. But her eyes were bright and whole. She carried no blade. No mark. But the tie wavered as she walked forward, brushing lightly over my skin.

“You walked the corridor,” she said.

I nodded. “So did they.”

Her eyes swept our group—Darian, Ulric, Sael, Nessa, Lymseia, the ash-man, Rainer, Astrid, Willow. “I take it you’ve come for the Circle.”

“The memory,” I said.

She twisted around so her back faced us all. “Follow me.”

We did. Down a narrow passage between two buildings, the walls were so close I brushed both sides. The light dimmed. The air cooled again. The tie thickened, like breath caught deep in the chest.

When the path widened, we stood at the edge of a sunk courtyard surrounded by towering stone walls on all sides, their surfaces worn with age and etched with intricate designs. It was the place in my vision where the witchkin were dancing and drumming .

In the center, the stone ground sloped subtly downward, creating a slight depression that gave the impression of being embraced by the ancient structures. The sky above changed from that miserable beige to a brilliant blue, interrupted only by the occasional passing cloud.

Sunlight pressed through the stones. Warmth stitched itself into our bones. We all took off our sodden boots and socks, laying them along the wall where the sun blazed the strongest. A circle had been carved into the stone. Blackened. Worn. Still intact.

The woman stopped just short of it. “This is where the vow, used as a portal, had major consequences.”

Darian stepped forward. “When?”

“Hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before fae walked this world.”

“Fae weren’t always here?” Darian asked.

“No. Caldaen was never meant for fae. Vow-magic was only created to help the humans.”

“I saw a vision,” I said. “Here, in this place. They practiced the old ways—nature worship. They were drumming. A woman entered a trance. Something… blue possessed her.”

The old woman kneeled and pressed her hand to the scorched stone. “It came from Faerieland.” She didn’t look up. “A changeling crossed the veil and wore her like a skin. More followed after her. They were never meant to come through. The Keepers failed. The veil should have held.”

“The Keepers of the Vow?” Darian asked.

She nodded. “They were supposed to be the protectors. Mystics recorded what happened. It’s here, in Oxford. In the Bodleian Library.”

The tie rose like water pushed by wind. After it settled again, I stepped to the edge and placed a hand on the stone. It was warm from something older than the sun. And below it, something like a shaman’s drum beat slow and steady and far off, still calling.

We stayed in the ring until the light faded.

The sun slipped behind the tallest spire.

Shadows stretched long. Still, we stood, and the marked didn’t ask questions.

The old woman hadn’t returned. The tie was the only thing that moved, sliding past breath and bare skin, winding like something searching for what had been lost.

Darian kneeled first. He pressed one flat palm to the edge of the vow-ring, and his black hair hung around his face as he bowed his head. “I can feel it.” His voice broke the stillness like a low note drawn from deep inside the stone. “This is where it split.”

“Split how?” Astrid asked.

He looked up at her and then at me, and for a moment. “The bond is split because it is grieving.”

The bond swung in circles beneath us. Something deep in the ring answered him in the form of a hollow tone that hung low in the bones. I stepped into the circle. The air changed. It pressed with knowing and remembrance.

I crouched low and laid my hand on the center stone. It was smoother and warmer. I didn’t expect the spark that followed. Memory shot through me, quick and gone before I could close my fingers around it. It was like trying to catch a butterfly with a net made of fog.

But I saw them. A different group of people gathered like we were now. Hands linked. A pale man with dark hair stepped forward. He had a strong jaw and silver eyes. His mark was a layered and complex network of interlinking circles from palm to inner elbow, not unlike Darian’s.

My breath caught. “He’s your descendent, Prince Darian.”

Darian moved closer. His hand brushed mine on the stone. “He looks like my father. But that’s impossible. This happened many thousands of years ago.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

His voice dropped, and so did his eyes. “I don’t. And I shouldn’t call him my father. He ran away like a coward and let the Bone Seat behead my mother, the Moon Queen.”

As I considered what it meant—his father being here, knowing about the fae and possibly the Bone Seats—the tie zig-zagged up my spine and disintegrated in my heart.

I gasped again, and the vision broke. I pulled back, mouth open, lungs slow to catch up. “He cut the vow himself.”

“To stop it from spreading?” Darian asked.

“No. To stop it from surviving.”

He was closer now, kneeling on the ground beside me and gently cradling my hands in his.

The warmth of his touch seeped through my skin, and the subtle scent of cedarwood lingered between us.

His shoulder lightly grazed mine, a touch so soft yet electrifying, and we both remained still.

He was too close. Too close for someone I couldn’t afford to want—and already did.

“We’re what he tried to bury,” he said.

I looked at him. Really looked. “Perhaps the witchkin made a mistake, and he tried to fix it.”

Darian frowned.

The wind rustled through the courtyard, tousling the hair of those gathered around its edges.

The walls caught the wind and flung it back sharper.

As it moved, it stirred up dust and leaves from the ground, creating a temporary whirlwind that sent people’s hair flying in all directions.

But as suddenly as it had started, the wind calmed and left a peaceful stillness in its wake.

Behind us, the others began to stir. I stood. As Willow turned, her body shimmered, and her orange marks sparkled like fallen stars. From them, ethereal threads lifted and danced in the wind. Her eyes held a knowing gleam.

A soft, yellow light glowed at the top of the flat stone, growing in intensity until it was a bright beam that illuminated the entire circle.

The stone trembled. Power hummed under every etching.

Surrounding it were smaller flat stones, etched with intricate runes.

Despite its age, the circle still held a sense of strength and purpose, as if it was patiently waiting for its next important task to be fulfilled.

Darian was watching me. And though the tie didn’t speak, I didn’t need it to. It was in the space between us now. Quiet and waiting for one of us to step closer.

Darian stood beside me, shoulders still tense. His hand brushed mine as he shifted his weight, just long enough that I noticed how warm he was, how close. His eyes hadn’t left the center stone, but his breath had changed. Slower now. Shallower .

I observed the straightness of his nose.

The line of his jaw when he swallowed and didn’t speak.

Something older than the energy of Mother Caldaen rooted inside of me, older than the binding vow.

It rose with the scent of iron and something alien.

It caught in my throat. He turned to me then.

He looked at me like he’d already lost the answer.

I didn’t. But I didn’t move closer either.

The silence stretched between us, soft-edged and full.

He looked away first. A breath escaped him like he’d been holding it longer than he meant to.

He stepped back, giving me space without saying why, and when the others began to move again, he looked away.

His retreat landed louder than his touch.