Page 40 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter twenty-eight

The Boundless

T he Keep was quiet. Not asleep. None of us slept properly anymore. I stood beyond the gate, shoulders drawn back, the blade of Fae-Steel–which Darian had given me all those moontides ago–strapped across my spine and heavier than it should have been.

The human blade had disintegrated when I’d tried to strike the Bone Seat, but I still had this sword, this special sword. My vowblade still hung at my hip, but weapons meant little against unpredictable magic.

Behind me, I could hear the courtyard stirring—crockery clinking, boots trudging on mud and echoing off cold stone, someone yawning into the quiet like it might crack open the morning. A few voices traded low greetings.

And then—

“Ridge! North approach!”

The call rang out sharp and clean. I moved before I thought, hand brushing the hilt behind my shoulder. I didn’t draw.

Darian was beside me a breath later, barefoot, shirt half-fastened, his mark flickering like moonlight against his heart. I didn’t let myself look too long. He always looked tired lately.

“What is it?” he asked .

But I didn’t answer. I already knew.

Something was moving on the other end of the bond—something older, more broken. An energy I hadn’t sensed since Mountain Stone. It pulled behind my ribs like a jagged stitch being yanked too tight. Figures crested the ridge.

At first, they were shadows in the mist. The shapes took form: cloaks, blades, rough boots crunching frostbitten soil. A woman with a half-missing eye. A man with twin knives and a wolf’s tooth scar at his throat. More behind them. Twenty, at least. Maybe more.

But it was their marks that I saw first. Faint. Fragmented. Some cracked and bleeding light like broken flint. None of them were whole. The Boundless. I took a breath. Held it.

High Priestess Jinth walked at the front, her carved memorywood staff clicking once with every third step. She looked past me, as if she foresaw what she’d find.

But he did. The man beside her. Gray hair bound in a leather knot. Deep lines bracketing his mouth. He stopped outside the gate and met my eyes like he’d never once taught me how to disappear in a crowd or kill without regret. “You didn’t kill him! You brought him here instead!”

I didn’t blink. The Boundless still believed the ten fae princes across the three continents and countless islands of Caldaen controlled the binding vow. “You crossed our threshold armed!”

He stepped forward. “And you crossed the line. You married the one you were supposed to kill.”

Behind me, Darian shuffled on his feet, like he was ready to move if I moved. The air behind my shoulders was warming. I wanted to lean into him long enough to no longer be that sell sword who failed.

Magic crackled in the spaces between bodies.

The hairs along my arms and the nape of my neck stood on end.

It wasn’t from the corridor this time. The magic was coming from the marked ones waking around us.

The bond drew tightly in my chest like an ambush predator ready to pounce.

And just like that, the war I’d run from stood breathing on my doorstep .

I approached, bravely, closing the space between me and the accusing. My people were half-woken and watching, and I couldn’t let them see me weakened. The old blood in me still remembered how to move—blade before girl.

The man with the knives who had already challenged me kept his hand at his hilt.

I knew who he was. Korr. His left ear was gone—bitten off in a sparring match years ago—and he walked like he still carried a blade hidden behind his right knee.

I’d trained with him once. Fought beside him on the ice flats of the eastern ridge.

He’d taught me how to slit a throat without splashing blood on snow.

Prince Darian was supposed to be my first kill, and now Korr wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I scanned the rest. Two more I recognized.

A brunette with a jagged scar down her collarbone, Kera, who could throw a dagger between two ribs from twenty paces.

And Priestess Jinth, who Darian told me had died during interrogation.

In only seven moontides, she looked several years older. Perhaps Darian’s interrogator had done her more harm than good. The white of her left eye was clouded like milk left too long in the sun. But her grip on her staff was steady. “Talia.”

My throat tightened, but I kept my stance square. “Priestess.”

She stepped closer. For a breath, I expected her to raise her staff, demand proof, strike me down for the rumors she believed.

Instead, one hand curled against my shoulder, and she leaned in, too close for the others to hear. “Your mother,” she murmured, voice brittle as frost, “would weep to see you married to your enemy.”

My spine locked. What did Mom have to do with any of this?

Behind me, Darian stood frozen to the spot, but the tether between us thrummed. I sensed his accelerated pulse, even before he’d heard the words.

I pulled back enough to meet Jinth’s gaze. “My mother died at the hands of humans.”

Her expression remained taut as she scooped her raven hair around and pulled it over a shoulder. “She had faith in blood memory. And you—you let the prince tie yours to him. ”

A voice behind her muttered, loud enough for me to catch it: “Didn’t think the traitor would be wearing court leathers.”

Another snorted. “You sure that’s her? Thought she’d be taller.”

Korr was silent. I forced myself not to flinch. Not to show the burn behind my ribs where their words landed. Darian took one step forward. Not close enough to challenge, but enough to draw the edge of their attention.

“She’s no traitor,” he said. “And you’ve arrived at our gates, uninvited?”

Jinth didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on mine. “We came for shelter. But don’t mistake that for allegiance.”

I nodded once. “Then come in. You can sleep under our roof, so long as you don’t raise blades against the marked.” I stepped back and gave the signal for the gates to open.

The Boundless walked in, like a storm we’d thought we’d already survived.

By the time the Boundless had eaten and laid down their packs, word had already spread about a meeting.

The courtyard filled slowly and quietly.

First the ones who woke early—Branwen, Sael, Rainer with Willow tucked behind her sleeve—then others.

Jack leaned in the archway. Lina crossed her arms near the firepit.

Ulric remained in the forge, looking outwards through the opened double doors.

His gaze was dark, twinkling, and threaded with the Iron magic of the Storm Court.

Even those still drowsy with sleep began to gather.

Ruen and Astrid stood to the side, quiet and watchful.

Ben leaned into Bramlin’s side. Jack and Lina kept near the edge, arms crossed.

Ulric wiped soot from his hands but didn’t step away from the forge.

The courtyard buzzed with tension—alive and alert.

The Boundless stood apart, bristling. Jinth at their center, her staff pressed upright into the ground as if it could root her where we stood .

“We’re glad you made it,” I said, voice level. “The border’s no place to travel. But before you start preaching your war, you should listen to ours.”

Jinth’s eye swept through the crowd like it was counting something. “You fused with the enemy.”

“You know that already,” I protested. “You saw what happened during the New Moon Ceremony at the Moon Court.”

A murmur rolled through the marked.

“You protect a prince who helped enslave our children,” she continued, louder now.

“You hold hands with one of the ten princes who signed the pact which allowed the Bone Seats to bind memory, strip soul, and fuse light to darkness.” Her gaze landed on Darian like a knife to the ribs. “He signed that treaty.”

I didn’t flinch. I stepped forward, hands bare, voice sharp. “He was a child.”

“And children died because of him,” she said, jabbing her staff into the dirt. “Because of what he helped create. You think the Bone Seats used him? Maybe. But that doesn’t make him clean.”

The bond within Darian tightened in shame. The kind that settled deep and made itself at home.

I kept my voice steady. “The Bone Seats twisted the vow long before many of us were born. We’re trying to return it to what it once was—a choice, bound by will.”

Jinth shook her head. “Sounds like something they taught you after you let him tether you. Your mother never found that to be true.”

My heart stumbled, and the world tilted slightly sideways. “What did you say?”

“She understood her identity long before she crossed the ridge to die with fools in the Borderlands. She’d remembered. She would meet up with her grandmother, the Water Seat of the Moon Court—also the greatest seeress in Luneguard’s Valari Tribe.”

“What? No, that can’t be… How can…” I muttered, confused.

“She was gathering old truths, building a rebel order to protect the real vow. This thing you’re guarding—it’s the corruption.”

My mouth became dry. “She never told me.”

“No,” Jinth said, with something like pity. “But she was preparing you to be one of us. That’s why we took you in after her death.”

The words hung there. Heavy. True. Unwelcome. And for a moment, the courtyard seemed as if it might fracture—between those who had trusted me because I’d come from rebellion… and those who would now question whether I’d betrayed it.

I lifted my chin. “I carry no mark of Bone Seat or Boundless. I serve the vow as it was first dreamed—open, never bound.”

We had breakfast in the largest fighting pit. The Keep was too crowded now, and the pit was the only place wide enough to keep space between bodies, eyes, and doubts.