Page 36 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty-five

The Corridor’s Child

B y late afternoon, the snow fell in soft, heavy flakes, gathering on the awnings before sliding off in wet clumps. It melted as it touched the puddles and packed earth of the courtyard.

The old smithy became a sort of second hearth. Awnings stitched from oilcloth and old canvas stretched wide above it, held firm with rope and metal stakes driven into the half-frozen ground. Woven carpets, some worn, some new, lay beneath the awnings.

On top of these, they placed long rows of soft sheepskins. The fire pit burned hot, fed hourly by memory and ash. Several of Lord Fen’s carriages arrived that morning, their wheels slick with mud, and the drivers brought more than food.

One carriage carried linens and rugs. Another, dried meat and root vegetables.

But the last one held three wide-eyed boys and a girl with a birthmark across her temple.

One of Fen’s far cousins. She awoke with three rings burned beneath her skin and dreams of a corridor made of stone and thread.

Her mother sent a crow, but its flight wasn’t solely instinctive.

Lord Jeyin stood at the edge of the battlements two nights before, eyes closed, hands resting on the falcon’s back. He’d seen the house Fen described using his bond-sight. That was enough. The bird had flown straight, landed at dusk, parchment tied tight. The carriages followed the next day.

Now the courtyard felt lived in, almost warm.

Children sat beneath the awnings, stitching coats or chewing bread.

The youngest played tag, slipping and skidding across wet patches of stone before collapsing in laughing heaps onto the rugs, and being told off by adults for forgetting to take their boots off.

Lina stood near the embers. She possessed no children of her own, but the little ones pressed close anyway, drawn to her voice and the warmth of her stories.

The baker from the village downriver, now displayed neon pink flower marks blooming along one cheekbone.

One vivid flower bloomed faintly from her chest, the center of her vow-mark hidden beneath her apron.

The forge suited her. Heat and story seemed to rise from her together.

Workers pulled the last loaves from the ovens.

As her helpers swept crumbs from the long stone counters, Lina brushed her hands on her skirt and nodded to the children.

A few wolves lay stretched out on the rugs, too, runes shifting black and white along their bellies.

The children leaned against their sides, stroking fur and whispering words of comfort into the wolves’ ears.

I waited at the edge, shadowed by the lowest beam, wondering why the wolves’ runes were not the bright red of Lord Jeyin’s. Surely Ember Court wolves should carry red as well—bold and burning. These were something else.

Lina began her story.

“There used to be thirteen courts, each one located inside its own kingdom. The residents weren’t only fae.

They were mixed-bloods. Actually, the Elemental Seats needed to be mixed-blood, because only part-fae-blood along with part-human-blood can walk the corridors,” she said.

“I know this from our binding vow, like you may learn things, too.”

Some children exchanged wide-eyed glances, while others nodded frantically. Some threw their hands into the air, desperate to share their stories.

Lina shook her head. “You can exchange your stories later. Let me tell mine first. The court I am to speak of doesn’t exist anymore.

It was destroyed. A long time ago, that court grew from vine and bloom.

The Flower Court. It was a court of memory keepers and dream-tenders, of vow-marked seers who wore petals on their skin and let old roots speak through their veins.

But their court was quiet. It didn’t fight.

And when the Bone Seats rose, it was the first to fall. ”

The children shifted, silent.

“My ancestor was a vow-carrier,” Lina went on.

“She walked the corridor alone, the day it closed for good. She left a piece of herself behind. I’m only a humble baker, but I found it.

I had never heard of courts or vows. But I dreamed of gardens in the shape of stars.

Of women with pollen on their fingers, speaking languages I never learned but always understood. And when I woke, this mark bloomed.”

She touched her cheek, where the flower wound along her skin like a branch in bloom.

The children leaned in closer.

“I don’t know why she gave me this. Possibly to announce its loss aloud. So here it is. The Flower Court was real. It isn’t anymore. But the corridor remembers. And so do I.”

A hush settled under the awning. One wolf rolled to its side and yawned, exposing the moving runes in the shape of snowflakes on its stomach.

A child traced a finger along the pattern, wide-eyed.

Willow sat with her new friends, legs crossed and back straight, as she listened.

I stood silently near the west wall, Darian beside me.

The corridor ran beneath the keep now, like a river under stone. It would rise when it needed to.

“Do you smell that?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. “Ash. But not fresh.”

He nodded. “Smoke from memory.”

Darian and I followed the orchard path while snow fell slowly, quieting the world around us.

Something burned, bitter, and almost sweet, tangled with the usual scents of bark and damp fruit.

I knew it before I admitted it. Magic. Old magic.

Underfoot, the leaves were slick with melted snow, crushed over rotting apples that bled brown into the soil.

Crows gathered in the upper branches, silent, which was unusual for crows.

He walked beside me, his hand close to the hilt of his blade. The trees opened ahead .

A man stood beneath the boughs—taller than Darian by several inches, with long white hair. Horns curled back from his temples, dark and smooth, like polished obsidian. A cloak of shadow rippled around his form. It moved without wind.

Red orbs floated around him, flickering faintly like coals suspended in water. His eyes matched them—deep red, almost luminous, locked on us without blinking. His pale face was unnaturally smooth and beautiful, untouched by time or weather.

His hands hung open at his sides, bare against the winter air. Snow soaked the decaying foliage and fruit around his boots, yet the cold didn’t appear to affect him. He looked like he had stepped through the wrong kind of door—one that never should have opened.

The air bent around him, the way heat bends above fire. And still, he didn’t move. He only watched.

But something in me recoiled. He was real. But he didn’t belong.

Darian shifted his stance. From the corner of my eye, I saw the flicker of fear in him. He tried to hide it, but the tether snapped once across my ribs, enough to make me know what he would never say aloud.

“Who are you?” I asked.

His voice rasped like stone over dry wood. “A leader.”

“Of what?”

“Beings you’d rather forget.”

The space behind him wavered like a godly portal. Darian’s hand brushed mine.

The man remained still. “This place has been marked three times now. Once by force. Once by choice. And once in silence.”

“You didn’t come from the Bone Seat?” Darian asked.

“No. But the demons came through the same gateway we wish to use.”

The trees held their breath.

“What do you want?” I said.

“You’ll soon find out.” He vanished.

Darian didn’t look at me. “That wasn’t from this world. ”

“No.”

“Is it a demon from the Fissured Realm?”

“I don’t know.”

We walked back through the orchard, our boots cracking frost along the path. The air was sharp with cold, but the sky had softened to pale gray, snow sifting down in loose flakes. Smoke curled low near the old forge.

Bramlin sat inside the circle of memory stones, his ginger hair dulled by ash.

The ring stood at the far edge of the largest fighting arena.

A group of men had stretched a wide awning above the stones, staking it between tall posts; the melted snow had darkened its canvas.

Someone had laid down woolen blankets and thick mats from Lord Fen’s carriages, layered with straw beneath to keep the damp from seeping through.

The fire at the circle’s center burned low, its warmth rising in slow curls of smoke.

Bramlin had pulled a faded wool cloak tight around his shoulders, the hem dusted with ash.

His blind nephew slept against him, head resting on Bramlin’s thigh, wrapped in a sheepskin sent with the food and shelter crates.

They looked like they’d been sitting that way for hours—guarding something, or waiting to remember.

Colleen was there, too. She had draped sheepskin rugs across two stones and used a flat skillet to toast rounds of flatbread over the coals. A sleeping wolf lay beside her. The runes along its side flickered between black and white, which still confused me.

It rained that night persistently. It was the kind that sinks through stone and skin.

The marked ones did not scatter. They stood around the largest fighting ring, in the open, outside of the awnings which covered the memory stones.

Their eyes tilted to the clouds, arms relaxed at their sides.

Some spoke names. Some said nothing. Willow stepped into the mud barefoot, like the earth still held names.

I stood by the western window. Darian stood beside me, shirt half-buttoned, rain sliding down the line of his neck.

A glimpse of bare skin showed through the open fold—smooth, defined.

He appeared oblivious to the cold and damp, though droplets clung to his lashes and darkened the fabric clinging to his chest.

My fingers ached with the need to touch him.

“We were never supposed to last this long,” he said.

I glanced away for a brief time, feigning interest in something through the window. “Says who?”

He shook his head. “The way things used to be. A mark like this—“ He tapped his own chest, over his collarbone. ”—it was meant to bind. Not root.”

“Maybe that’s still true,” I said. “Maybe we just forgot what roots are for.”

He looked back out across the courtyard. The copper bowl still sat near the firepit, water collecting in it now.

“Do you think the Bone Seat is watching?” he asked.

“He’s always watching.”

“Then why hasn’t he moved from the forest?”

“Because he’s hoping we will.”

He nodded, quiet again.

Outside, Lina stepped into the downpour in the largest fighting ring. She raised one hand to the sky and let the drops run down her arm as she called out to the marked taking shelter, “This is the first rain I’ve trusted in years!”

No one clapped. No one spoke. But a vibration spread, and it said, ‘Home.’

“What if this doesn’t end in fire or blood?” Darian said.

I turned my head toward him. “Then we’re already winning.”

“And if it does?”

“Then it ends with someone still remembering.”

I thought about the man with horns, and the bond curled tightly in my spine, fearfully.

The dream came before dawn. The bond shimmered with it—soft, insistent. Like it had passed through both of us at once. I opened my eyes in the quiet chamber. The fire had burned low.

Darian lay beside me, eyes already open, staring at the ceiling as if trying to follow the last threads of it. His breath was slow. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. We’d seen the same thing. The bond had pulled us under together.

Willow stood at the edge of the corridor.

The red thread still circled her wrist, trailing like a living tether between her and the vow.

Beside her stood a boy. One I had never seen: white-blonde hair, bare feet, confident and smiling.

The bond caught on him like it recognized something.

Like it had already tried to mark him, but hadn’t finished. Or couldn’t.

The boy shimmered faintly. He was a seed. The corridor had planted him. Now it was watching to see if he’d root.

I sat up slowly. Darian followed, jaw tight, still watching the dark space between the hearth and the door. “Who is he?”

I shook my head. “Not someone. Not yet.”

Movement stirred in the courtyard. A pot scraped over stone, and I woke up. Darian woke, too. His bedroll was right beside mine, his fingers resting on my wrist. He flinched away quickly and rubbed his eyes.

Willow came to the doorway. Her hair was braided, slanted forward over one shoulder. Her marks shimmered orange along her arm. “The corridor gave me a name for him.”

“For who?” Darian asked.

“The boy you both just dreamed of.”

Darian and I exchanged a knowing look.

“What is it?” he asked.

“His name is Llyr.”

Darian said it softly, like the word held weight. “That’s a root word.”

“Yes,” she said. “It means both begin and undo.”

The bond shimmered orange from her palm, arm, chest .

I nodded. “Then we keep him in the circle.”

Willow turned and left.

I rose. The air in the chamber had warmed slightly, but something still hung between us. Past the ridge and barely through the trees, a glint flickered through the trees—metal, or magic, or something watching.