Page 44 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Cold. It pressed into my fingers first, then seeped under my cloak and found the hollow of my spine.

Goosebumps covered my body, and my hands gripped the hilt of my ancient blade, but the chill didn’t leave.

I lay on the hard ground, and the late winter wind sliced through, thin and whistling through the ruins behind me.

In the distance, ash drifted between the trees like gray snow.

Where was I? I blinked, but my vision stayed blurred at the edges. Something had screamed, hadn’t it?

I lay on the edge of the largest fighting ring, the earth beneath me bare and split with old frost cracks.

The surface was hardened from icethaw—flat and unforgiving, a dull grey crust broken only by a segmented spiral gouged deep into the center, its pattern still sharp.

Someone carved it there recently or maybe long ago.

Three falcons wheeled above me, their cries lost to the stillness. They circled not in unison but in loops and drops and sudden reversals, as if chasing something no one else could see. I remembered falcons meant something once. Or someone. The memory hovered outside my reach.

The arena sloped slightly west, overlooking the scrubbed-down meadow and the jagged edge of the forest below. Farther off, the orchard wall was visible, silver trees lined like soldiers in sleep. Behind me, the Keep stood quiet—its main tower watching like an empty eye.

I pressed my palm to the cracked spiral and felt a pull beneath the stone. Not pain. Not heat. A knowing.

In my heart, I knew the falcons were my friends.

A voice came to me. Confusion and worry caused it to tear through the vortex penetrating the ring of flint stones at the circle’s center. And then the bond. The bond.

My pulse stuttered. “Darian,” I croaked aloud.

No answer.

The air smelled wrong. Like moss, but electric. The corridor. It was coming back to me now. The Boundless’ intrusion. Priestess Jinth’s madness. Poor Rainer and her lamenting daughter, Willow. Branwen, Lina, Nessa—had they made it?

I remembered Branwen’s fingers twitching, Lina sobbing into flour-dusted hands, her strawberry blonde curls in disarray. Nessa had been urgently asking if my coin and my blade remained intact. I hadn’t seen what had happened to the women afterwards, but no one was out here. I was alone.

There had been so many people. Where were they now? Sunken into the ground like the old man with twin fish on his palm?

My dizziness came back, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Darian. Gods, Darian. I’d left him on the wall, not knowing if the bond would spare him.

I staggered toward the Keep where lights flickered behind frosted glass like the last breath of a dying fire.

Something buzzed past my cheek—a firefly in daylight. It blinked once and vanished.

I stood, turned, and trudged to the Keep. Only the distant sound of fire filled the empty courtyard. I turned toward the Keep’s great hall. Through the narrow slit of the main door, I saw flickering light and shadows moving. I pushed it open.

A fire crackled in the hearth, the scent of herbs and blood and wet wool hanging thick in the air. Sael kneeled on a rug near one of the mats, holding a clay cup to Jack’s lips while her golden-haired fae cousin, Dawn, poured water into a shallow basin.

Jack’s usually rosy skin was pale, and black skulls now occupied the place of his five turquoise sigils of the hammer and tongs with ivy.

The sound of my heartbeat thrashed in my ears as I pulled up my sleeve to find my crescent moons over waves still visible and whiter than my skin. The one on my chest remained, as well. That may have explained my sanity.

Nearby, Ruen lay shivering under a heavy blanket, lips cracked.

Branwen, Lina, Nessa, and Rainer lay stretched out, comatose, eyes white and fluttering like they were dreaming of things that no one should see.

Fen muttered under his breath and repeatedly hit the floor with his fist, as if to break free from his current state.

In the far corner, Priestess Jinth, bound at the wrists and ankles, had wild eyes, and her raven hair was a mess. She spat curses in an old tongue I didn’t recognize, her voice rasping like it had been screaming for hours.

The hairs lifted on the back of my neck as I approached Sael, who rinsed a cloth in a bowl of dark water.

“Why is she tied up?” I nodded toward the priestess.

“She wouldn’t stop attacking the children,” Sael said.

“Something got inside of. Possibly a demon. It happened after the man with the blue fish on his palms sunk into the ground. Darian held off the ash-man, but after he fell, the Boundless tried to kill Jinth because she turned dangerous. We stopped them and told them to leave or stay in the barn, and that we would take care of her.”

“They tried to kill their own?”

“They nearly did. Said it would be mercy. That the demon inside her had devoured too much already.”

“So what stopped them?”

“Dawn, Astrid, and I held her down,” Sael said. “But she was too strong, so Ulric the blacksmith, that lord from the tropics, and Lymseia helped pin her while Astrid talked sense into the Boundless.”

“What about Holt and Lord Fen?” I asked.

“They ran into the forest first with the smuggler and his nephew.”

“Bramlen and Ben,” I murmured to myself.

“It was all too much for them. Lord Jeyin and Lymseia left after that with the wolves, saying they’d catch up to Lord Fen and Holt. The wolves were cr ying, you see. I think the smuggler and his nephew managed to get out of here during the pause in the demon’s conjuring.”

“So you all saved the Priestess?.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that she has different opinions. I told them killing her wouldn’t end it. Said we needed to drive it out instead.”

I nodded proudly and turned my gaze back to the spy-witch. Her body quaked now, too fast, teeth bared, eyes rolling back as she snarled something low and guttural. Her skin looked wrong—too pale and too flushed all at once, like it couldn’t decide what belonged to her anymore.

Astrid moved among the mats with careful strength, her grey braids swinging, beads catching the firelight.

Her well-being pleased me, unlike that of our sick friends.

For an old woman, her movements were still nimble.

She paused to press a cool cloth to Branwen’s brow and muttered something soft I couldn’t hear.

I stepped closer. Dawn and Sael’s marks remained similar to the remnants’—purple and messy and unformed.

But my friends who walked the corridor experienced something else.

The once beautiful vowmarks on all the injured transformed into something grotesque.

Where suns, rivers, roses, and diamonds once existed, now bleeding vines, rotting circles, and blackened skulls remained.

Except for Astrid and me. Where my marks bleached to white, which was sometimes the case, her vines still glowed a vibrant green.

“What court were you marked by?” I asked, unable to keep the tremble from my voice.

Astrid paused. Her hand tightened around the cloth. “Vines. Summer Court. I was lucky. My marks protected me when the bond ruptured. It could have been the court. Possibly just stubbornness.”

“Do you think the others will come back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “After we brought them into the hall, Willow brought that copper bowl filled with memory-objects—remember?”

“The copper bowl with the cracked quill, ring of iron, and other items?”

“That’s right. But it didn’t work. Those items seem dead to magic and life, just like our friends.” Astrid stared at Rainer, and her chin dimpled as she held in her tears.

“The families ran when they were able to,” she continued. “The Boundless have taken shelter in the old barn. Lord Jeyin and Lymseia fled before the chaos ended. They took the wolves. Holt, Lord Fen, the smuggle with his kid, and Ulric decided to leave together as well. I think Holt blames himself.”

“Why?”

“Something to do with the combs.”

I took mine out of my pocket, pleased to see the runes intact. I checked my blade and coin, and neither showed a difference in looks.

Astrid’s gaze was far away. “We haven’t seen what it did to the ones who fled. Colleen, Lord Fen, Lord Jeyin, and more. I haven’t seen them.”

I swallowed hard, my gaze bouncing between Sael and her cousin, Dawn. Both pure fae. They held hands comfortingly, whispering about their patients. They were the picture of poise and sorrow.

“Prince Darian is upstairs,” Astrid said. “We found him near the wall. He’s breathing but… he’s been affected and he said he wanted to be alone.”

The corridor spun as I climbed the narrow stair. Every mark on my body itched beneath the skin, like it remembered something I hadn’t. The bond remained unbroken—but it was reversed.

The tower chamber door stood ajar. A fire was lit in the hearth—its warmth barely touched the air, but it was something.

Darian lay on the stone floor. A feather mattress had been placed beneath him, blankets heaped over his still body. He lay unmoving, his eyes open wide and staring at nothing.

My throat caught. He remained present, yet the bond didn’t. He had never looked at me like this, not even when he hated me. This wasn’t hatred. This was absence.

“Darian,” I breathed, dropping to my knees beside him. “It’s me.”

No reaction. Not even a change in breath. Just that awful emptiness in his face—the kind of still ness that didn’t belong to him.

The vowblade clanged softly against the floor as I let it rest beside me. I studied the hilt again, double checking the three runes remained the same. The third rune—the eight-petalled flower—sank into the metal, as if it burrowed.

My thoughts flitted between trust and worry as I tried to remember what the runes meant. I had some memory lapses. “Talk to me,” I whispered to Darian.

He remained silent.