Page 34 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty-four

Memory Magic

W e walked home with the sun at our backs. The ash-man caught up and showed me four flat stones with white spirals on them. “These are the wardstones, Princess. They will protect us at the Keep and its surrounding lands.”

The name “Princess” surprised me. That name was unfamiliar to me, but I smiled and nodded. “Thank you for helping us.”

By midday, the trees thickened. Moss swallowed the sound of footsteps and conversation. Fog pooled at the roots. Branches stuck out like blades. These weren’t like the trees near the Keep. These trees were older, rough-skinned and sloping, the ground soft with moss and old leaves.

I stayed near the front at first, walking with Darian, but the crowd behind us grew denser, louder, more restless with each hour.

By the second day, we weren’t twenty-five anymore. We were thirty. Then thirty-nine. A girl carrying a sling. Two cave women from the western cliffs. A trio of boys who didn’t say where they came from, but their marks gleamed in the dark. By the third night, we were fifty-five .

We camped in shallow hollows. Under trees. Between crags. Darian stopped us when the children dragged. There was one woman, too, with a round belly and tired eyes who refused to stop until someone forced her to sit.

I kneeled beside her. “How far along are you?”

“Far enough.”

The wind cut through the trees. Rain fell sideways. I woke in the dark once, soaked and shivering, and found Darian crouched beside me.

“You didn’t pitch your tent right,” he said.

“It collapsed.”

He sighed and tugged his own cloak loose, draped it over my shoulders. I didn’t say thank you. He didn’t ask for it.

The fifth morning, Nessa collapsed. It happened fast. One moment she was helping Ulric pack the canvas. The next, she stumbled sideways; her face gone pale, her lips dry. Sael caught her before she hit the ground.

I dropped to my knees. “What is it?”

“Pneumonia,” said Lord Jeyin’s voice from behind.

The lord from the tropics of Thornroot sat near the wolves each night, never speaking, but always listening. He squatted, opened his pouch, and began crushing leaves between his dark fingers.

“She has a bacterial infection in her lungs, and it will kill her if she doesn’t have some medicine. Luckily, I studied tropical herbology as a hobby. These miravera leaves always work.”

“Will she live?”

Without answering, Lord Jeyin pressed the pulp to Nessa’s temples, her chest, and whispered something under his breath. Nessa’s breath hitch, steady again. By noon, Nessa was upright again, leaning on Ulric. I stayed close the rest of the day.

The weather stayed cruel. One night, the wind tore two tents down. Another day, the river near our camp flooded, and we doubled back, adding half a day to the journey.

But still we walked .

Darian kept the pace steady. At night, he took the worst watch shifts. When the rain started again, he built a lean-to with his bare hands and gave it to the pregnant woman.

I watched the way Prince Darian strolled through the camp at dusk. He only spoke when people asked him questions.

Our eyes met. Something caught and didn’t let go. I didn’t look away. I was afraid of what lived inside him now, the thing the Bone Seat had passed through his blood.

I wanted him. Not for the bond, but for the loneliness I saw matching mine. Our tether between us didn’t matter. Loneliness still recognized both our names.

It took us eight days to reach the edge of the known path. Fifty-five people. Dozens of marks. Four wolves. Two falcons. One memory rising behind us. And ahead, the Keep was waiting for us.

A few days had passed since we returned to the old keep—our quiet, crumbling home that now held nearly a hundred. Smoke hung in the air each morning, clinging to wool and fingers and drifted upward from the fire pits we never let go out.

The middle of fall pressed in around us. Leaves turned brittle before they dropped, the trees stripping themselves bare. The sun rose low. The nights bit deeper.

More arrived each day. Tired, marked, half-frozen. Many travelled a great distance and arrived with empty stomachs. Some had children. Others carried bundles that weren’t food, weren’t tools—just the last small pieces of what they’d refused to leave behind.

Most bore three full circles. The ones who did were fed and counted. Shown the tents. Given a task. Some knew how to boil water or tan hides. Others knew nothing but fear. That was enough. Fear meant they had seen the Bone Seats and chosen not to kneel.

Those with only one circle were turned away. We couldn’t risk it. The bond didn’t flare with them. They couldn’t walk the corridor. Some begged. Some cursed. Some tried to lie, but the vow always caught it. Fen turned them back with a flat voice and without apology.

But the remnants were different. If they had broken free, if they could name what held them, if their eyes still recognized themselves—we let them through the gate.

One woman limped in barefoot and silent. The half-formed shapes on her inner arm had been burned. The scars were fresh. But pain had jarred her loose from forgetting, and her empty shell of a consciousness was filling again.

Branwen caught her when she collapsed and held her until she remembered the name she’d buried. It came out as a whisper. It followed as a vow. The gleaming purple patterns dimmed, and two shifted, forming a pair of complete circles.

I’m unsure how we helped a remnant to become a marked. It simply happened when she remembered her name. Maybe it was the land where we were living. Maybe it was because she was in our presence. We gave her a bed near the forge and a blanket that had belonged to Darian.

One early morning, when the winter sky was still black and the fat waning moon sank low, the marked ones gathered in the largest fighting circle. More still came quietly.

The corridor had not reopened since the night before we’d left, but its imprint lingered in skin and stone. I sat by the dying fire. Darian stood near the gate. Nothing moved, but the stillness felt like a breath caught in the throat.

Branwen came with Willow. They sat beside me without asking.

“She dreamed again,” Branwen said.

I turned to Willow. “The corridor?”

She shook her head. “A name that wanted to be remembered.”

Darian looked over. “Whose?”

“I don’t know. But it started with an L. ”

Cold slid down my spine. “The vow keeps more than we know. Even what we haven’t found yet.”

Others gathered—slowly at first. Then more.

Lina, her curls braided back now, a line of flour still on her cheek.

Ruen with his carved staff. Nessa Tidehook, getting over her pneumonia and leaning on Ulric’s arm.

Lymseia, quiet-eyed, folding blankets for the children.

Astrid came next, her staff tucked behind her shoulder.

Fen Arclay nodded a greeting but didn’t speak. He helped Sael light a new torch.

Holt looked on from atop a boulder. His black tangle of hair flipped over the burned side of his skull, face, and neck.

His fingers curled around one comb he still hadn’t gifted to someone he waited for.

Even the man with goats stood near the edge.

The smugglers, too—ginger-haired both of them, the boy’s blindfold tied more neatly than before.

Jack stood slowly. His back hunched, white beard thick as lichen, but his voice rose clearly. “The Fifth isn’t a chain. It’s a return. To the old way. Before forgetting became a kind of silence.”

The vow-magic ran through the circle like a signal. A shimmer touched each palm.

Colleen, with her cloud of black hair cascading down her back, kneeled at the edge. “I want to remember something that isn’t mine.”

“You already have,” I said.

Darian crouched near the coals. He pressed his hand into the ash. A circle. Then another. A fifth mark drawn. He looked up at me. “It doesn’t end here.”

“No,” I said. “It begins again.”

The snow came without warning. The first flakes were thin, dry, and falling gently from a colorless sky. They landed on skin and stayed. Quiet and dry, like ash. I stood at the ridge above the lower ring with Darian and Branwen. Below us, the marked ones lit their fires in silence.

“They’ve learned to light them without the vow,” Branwen said.

“Or the vow learned to wait.” Darian gave me a sidelong glance.

I watched the blind boy—the smuggler’s nephew from Skull Cove—wrap a scarf tighter around his face. Willow passed him one glove. We hadn’t given orders for three days. No one had asked for them. And still, they built, cooked, carried, remembered.

From the trees, near dusk, a woman emerged. Sael was with her, walking beside her like she’d always known her steps. The woman wore cracked boots and a shapeless cloak. Her face was young, ears were fae, and hair was gold.

“Sael’s cousin,” Branwen murmured. “I dreamed of her. Her name is dawn. She has the sight of a falcon, apparently.”

I chuckled under my breath. “You dreamed of all that?”

“Only in parts,” Branwen confessed.

Dawn only spoke when she was close enough to hear, and like Sael, she was beautiful. Her gaze locked on mine. “The Bone Seat of the Moon Court is offering and giving.”

Darian scowled. “Giving what?”

“Power. Any kind. To anyone. All they have to do is forget.”

I frowned. “Forget what?”

She answered plainly. “Name. Place. Language. Parents. Self. He doesn’t care what’s gone, only that it is. It gives him power.”

Darian’s mouth twitched. “He’s unmaking them.”

“No. He’s selling forgetting as freedom.” Dawn unwrapped a cloth from beneath her coat. Inside it: a child’s locket and a half-burned vowstone. “He gave this to a girl in the East Quarter. She was eleven. Now she stares like the dead. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t ask who she is.”

Branwen exhaled a sharp breath through her nose. The thread inside me scanned the story. The stone vibrated with what it had been. The pause in the woman’s breath. The ache in the metal locket’s shape .