Page 32 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty-three

Moon on Water

W e stayed in the ancient ring in the sunken courtyard until the light changed again.

It didn’t look like a sunset, but the air cooled and the shadows stretched long, anyhow.

Darian looked thoughtful, and through the bond, I could feel him wondering about the King of the Moon Court.

I never felt what he thought of me, though, not through the bond.

The first family appeared at the edge of the sunken courtyard before tiptoeing into the circle. A woman, a man, three children. Then others came—quietly at first, then all at once. Some had baskets. Some carried skins of water or ale slung over their shoulders.

One led a pair of goats. Another guided a boy with a blindfold. Willow scurried toward the woman with the baskets and touched her wrist. Two circles, one inside the other. The marks shimmered where skin met skin. I stepped forward next. Darian stayed close behind me.

“Who are you?” I asked them all.

The man leading the blindfolded boy had matted ginger hair and eyes so pale they looked white.

His voice was rough and loud, with a pirate’s drawl and a bite of salt behind every word.

“We dreamed of you. Of this place. Of the one who walks the vow without being fused. We dreamed we had to wait until you crossed the river of unmoving water.”

My pulse picked up, but I didn’t speak, because I didn’t know what to say.

“We didn’t think it was true,” said the woman with the baskets. She wore a laced bodice over a plain linen shift, her skirts hitched for walking. Her skin was pale brown, freckled at the cheeks and nose, and her hair fell in a smoky cloud down her back. “But we followed anyway.”

She kneeled and laid her basket down, and some other women did the same with bundles of food and goods. Still-warm bread. Dried fruit. Salted meat. Jugs of ale and sweet-water.

One woman produced flint and kindling and motioned toward the center of the old ring. “May we?”

Darian nodded. His voice was low. “If your marks are true, you’re already kin.”

“We wish to journey with you back to your home in that crumbling old keep in the Borderlands,” she said.

Darian’s voice cut clean across the space. “If you have only one mark, you can’t come with us! Where we go, the bond will pull hard. One mark won’t be enough to keep you safe. Ten already died from the Moon Court’s Bone Seat and his remnants, made to kill.”

A girl raised her palm. Two circles. Then others did the same. Two. Three. Four. No one had one.

Darian exhaled through his nose. “I hope you have packed light. We leave at dawn.”

They made a fire. The children laughed first, throwing twigs and dried grass into the flames. A boy handed me a clay bowl filled with stew and grinned widely enough to show he was missing two teeth. I sat on the ground near the ring, my back straight, and my hands warming around the bowl.

Willow’s mother, Rainer, offered bread to the ash-man from the most ancient of times. He accepted it with both hands.

Darian stayed standing near the edge of the crowd. Three gray falcons passed overhead. The wolves came next—three padded out from between two buildings like they belonged. Their ears stood up. Their fur was thick with burrs and dust.

My breath caught in my throat as my skin turned to gooseflesh, and Darian went still.

“Don’t touch them,” he warned.

“They won’t bite,” said a man standing beyond the light.

He stepped forward, tall and straight-backed, dressed in a long black coat with silver cuffs and buttons shaped like moons.

His skin was dark and smooth, his beard close-trimmed, and his eyes lined with faint kohl.

A ring of twisted iron and ivory circled his thumb.

His boots were polished, though travel-worn, and he carried no weapon I could see.

“When the vow weakened,” he said, “and we dreamed of you, they came to us. Wolves, falcons, even fireflies that wouldn’t leave until we lit torches and followed them. We’ve waited for three full moontides, but the river wouldn’t open.”

His voice was calm and noble. “I am Lord Jeyin of the house called Thornroot. Small in name, smaller in land, but faithful still to the old ties. From my dreams, I have discovered that an ancestor of mine once stood beside the Flame Seat of the Ember Court. before the Bone Seats took their place. I didn’t think we’d reach you.

Do you know where the Ember Court is situated? ”

We exchanged confused looks and shrugged.

“I do,” said Astrid. She had snuck up on us silently, her staff angled over one shoulder. “The Ember Court lies far to the south, on tropical islands beyond Elaren.”

“Yes, you are correct, wise sorceress,” Lord Jeyin said.

“Thornroot is also a tropical island, south of the mainland, but it stretches farther west than the Ember Court.” He gestured to the slight point of his ear.

“I do not know whether my ancestor held a Flame Seat or was only kin to one—but I am mixed-blood, like you.”

“Most of us are mixed-blood,” Astrid said. “Only a few are pure human or pure fae. ”

He held out his hand. Two vow circles shimmered bright red in the center of his palm.

Interlinked. Patterned almost like a heart.

“I have one here, too.” He laughed and rolled up his sleeve.

The same mark glowed on his forearm. “The binding vow didn’t call us to war.

It called us to witness. So we’ve come.”

“The Bone Seat of the Moon Court blocked the river near the ruined keep where we’ve been staying,” Darian said. “It’s a four-day hike from here to the Borderlands. He used his magic to stop the flow.”

“I thought as much. But I sailed to the mainland anyway and met some smugglers at Skull Cove—also bound, also coming for you. The wolves, falcons, and fireflies came with me on the ship—just them, without a single soul besides. The creatures will hunt for us. They’ll watch for lies. They bear marks, too.”

“You sailed alone?” Darian’s brow furrowed. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

Lord Jeyin shook his head. “Three moontides back, I began dreaming of you. I didn’t wait.

I built a small sloop from what was left in my family’s storehouse.

It only had one mast and a narrow deck. There was only room for a few wolves, a barrel of water, and some dried fish.

I bear the title, though the land is meager and the banners silent.

When the vow fell under control, so did our House.

“I sailed north. The journey took nearly thirty days before I arrived at the mainland. Along the way, I encountered pirates near Skull Cove and traded stories with smugglers who bore marks like mine. I followed the call.”

The dark-skinned man patted one of the wolves at his side. It leaned into him, calm and steady.

“The wolves boarded with me, along with the falcons and fireflies.”

A gray falcon dropped from the stone ledge above. It landed on his shoulder without a sound. He gave it some dried meat from his pocket. It took the piece gently.

“The falcons caught fish. The wolves hunted when we sailed close to land.”

He looked toward the fireflies dancing above the circle.

“As for the fireflies, I believe they fed on magic—or perhaps memory, or something even older.”

The wolves moved past us, unbothered, one of them brushing against Darian’s cloak before curling beside the fire .

“I don’t trust anything with that many teeth,” the prince muttered.

I smiled and tossed him a piece of bread. He caught it without looking at me.

Astrid came to me. She grunted and sat, planting her stick upright like a scepter. Her eyes flicked up—bright green, sharper than firelight.

“I have something for you,” said a small, pale man with a terrible burn scarring one side of his face.

The damage stretched down his neck, curling over a melted ear and scalp. He looked mostly human—his other ear was rounded, his feet bare. Dirt lined the creases of his fingers, and curls of wood dust clung to the black hair that remained on the unburned side of his head.

He strolled carefully around the edge of the circle, then stopped in front of me and held out both hands. Resting on his palms was a comb. Carved. Wooden. Smooth. Familiar.

I finally took it, turned it in my palm, and saw the runes. Three of them. The same three as the comb from the Moon Court. I drew out the Bone Comb from my coat and held them side by side. Exactly the same.

“How do you know these marks?” I asked.

The man pointed to the rune in the middle. “That’s the lily. The eight-petalled flower of the Valari Tribe. From Lunegard, in the Northwest Tarnwick. Your line came from there.”

I stared.

He pointed to the rune on the left. “Moon over water. That one is from the Water Seat of the Moon Court. A tie between elemental power and lineage.”

“And this one on the right?” I asked, touching the third.

“Two circles, joined by a vertical line. Flame at the top. That’s marriage. Sacred. It was used when a union had to be remembered by more than blood.”

I blinked. “It’s true. My mother’s family came from Lunegard?”

He shrugged. “There you go then.”

I ran my thumb over the carvings again. A tingle started at the base of my neck. I held both combs—fae in my right, human in my left—and studied them slowly, line by line. My palms shook.

The man chuckled and turned to Astrid. “This one’s for you.”

He handed her a different comb. A different wood had made the comb.

The runes carved into it were almost the same as mine—three symbols in a line—but the first on the left was different.

Astrid held it for a long time without speaking.

Her fingers curled around the teeth like they were fragile or familiar.

I leaned closer. “Do you know what they mean?”