Page 45 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

I wanted to reach for him but didn’t let myself. Outside, wind howled through the broken arches. And somewhere deep beneath the Keep, I swore I felt the corridor stir. My vowblade vibrated against the stone.

Darian exhaled one word: “Abigail.”

The name burned through me, but I didn’t recognize it.

I didn’t move for a long time.

The fire in the hearth cracked low and uncertain, barely touching the icy air.

My breath misted as I slid under the blankets beside him—slowly, carefully, like he might break.

The mattress beneath us was feather-stuffed, but the cold soaked deep into the stone.

His body remained still. That scared me more than anything.

I wished to believe he felt me here. That some part of him still recognized the space I filled. The way my shape curved toward him had once meant something, hadn’t it?

I curled on my side and laid my head gently against his chest, listening for the rhythm. Still there. Steady. But his arms didn’t lift. His eyes didn’t close. He stared, glassy and unblinking, at something I couldn’t see.

My fingers brushed his shirt, knuckles aching from cold and fear. “I should get you downstairs,” I whispered. “There’s heat. Soup. People who love you.” I closed my eyes and rested my palm over his heart. “Please,” I said. “Come back. A little. You don’t have to speak. Just… be here.”

I almost reached for his hand, but stopped. What if it didn’t reach back? What if the tether between us had unraveled in the dark, and I hadn’t noticed it go? I stared at the place where our skin had once sparked. Nothing now.

His lips moved, barely. “Alon,” he whispered. “I want to be alone.”

Th e word pierced through me. It was soft.

Familiar. He’d said it before, on the night I first saw the depth of his loneliness.

Not “leave.” Not “go.” Just that gentle ache: Alon.

Alone. I waited for the bond to twitch with awareness.

But it stayed flat, as if Darian’s voice had come from a place buried too deep to reach.

I buried my face against his chest. I didn’t cry. I didn’t dare. I just listened to the silence between us. I rose when I couldn’t bear the stillness anymore.

The corners of the chamber darkened, and the silence settled like dust in the air. I tucked the blankets back around Darian and traced my fingers once along the line of his jaw—hesitating for a second before I turned away.

The tower stair creaked beneath my boots. The Keep was quieter with exhaustion. The kind of quiet that came after screaming.

As I passed the main hall, I heard Willow’s sobs cracking through the silence like brittle glass. The sound of a child crying in earnest. I froze by the corridor arch. Sael kneeled beside her, arms wrapped tightly around the girl’s trembling form. Neither of them looked up.

I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t. The sound chased me through the back halls and into the cold.

Outside, the courtyard had fallen to ash and shadow.

The gate had been left open. Ash stirred faintly along the path, curling in thin lines like smoke.

The orchard loomed ahead, and beyond it, the tree line shimmered with frost. My breath fogged the air as I slipped past the gates.

I didn’t know where I was going until I the rhythmic thud of an axe boomed through the air.

It echoed through the trees, sharp and methodical. A sound that belonged to the living. I followed it until I found him—Ulric, sleeves rolled to the elbow, splitting logs with clean, heavy strokes. His wheelbarrow was half full. His eyes remained fixed on his work as I approached.

“You should be inside,” I said softly.

“I was ins ide.” His voice was gruff. “Had to do something, or I’d lose my mind.”

I waited.

He split another log, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “You seen him?”

I nodded. “He’s breathing.”

Ulric let the axe hang loose in his grip. “But not… there.”

“No.”

“He saved us. Did you know that?” Ulric didn’t look up as he split another log.

“Who?”

“Your husband, the Prince of the Moon Court.”

I often forgot I was his consort. That word didn’t sit right, especially with him silent in a room above us, not seeing me. I didn’t feel like anything to him. I was nothing but a voice on the wrong end of a broken tether.

“Darian saved us?” I asked. “I can’t remember. I must have passed out.”

“Yes. It was after you fell,” the blacksmith confirmed. “The bond was howling. Everyone was falling, going mad. But he—Prince Darian—stood right there, between that thing and the Keep.”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“His sword was lit up,” Ulric said, gripping the handle of his axe like it might fly away. “Like it had caught fire. Energy swirling around it—silver and violet.”

He spat to the side, jaw tightening.

“The violet reminded me of the Bone Seat and his remnants. Well, him being his son an’ all, I ain’t surprised.”

He paused, glancing toward the ruined spiral emblem carved into the stone. A bitter breath left his nostrils.

“I swear, that broken spiral looked like it was trying to repair itself when the prince’s sword lit up. It paused. Just for a moment. Tried to fill the crack and segments long enough for people to run.”

The words settled between us like grit.

Then Ulric jammed the axe into the chopping block with a heavy thunk . “I don’t care if he remembers it or not. I do.”

“And after that, he fell unconscious like so many more?”

“He did, yes. Have you seen the Priestess?”

“I have. Sael told me about you and the others tying her up so she wouldn’t attack any more children.”

He nodded once, breath ragged from the hard work.

My gaze dropped to the ground. “We don’t know what it cost Darian yet.”

“Don’t we?” His voice cracked slightly. “The others—Lina, Rainer, Nessa, Ruen, even Jack—they’re half gone already. And him?” He stared at the trees, as if still seeing it. “He was the last one out. I saw him. Standing past the edge of that spiral like it hadn’t touched him. But it did.”

He wiped his axe blade on a rag. “He got us out. Whatever that cost him, he paid for it. I hated him for a long time. Hated the way he looked down on us. Hated what he was born into. But now—he’s one of us.

Maybe more than any of us.” He placed his axe carefully down. “I wish I knew how to bring him back.”

The wind stirred. A falcon circled above, quiet and low. It wasn’t one of the three gray ones, though. It was larger and golden.

It took my breath away.

“I think,” I said gently, “we have to let him find his way.”

Ulric looked at me sideways. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll go after him.” I didn’t hesitate. “Wherever he is.”

He gave a rough, broken sound that might’ve been a laugh. “You would.”

“I have to.” I glanced at the wheelbarrow. “Do you need help getting that back?”

“I’ve got it.”

I turned to leave. “If you see the wolves, Lord Jeyin, and Lymseia, tell them he’s still here and I’m awake.”

“We carried everyone in except you, by the way, Talia,” Ulric said.

I gulped and nodded.

“There was a patter n of energy shining around you, you see. They were beautiful. Nothing like the skulls which hurt the fallen. We didn’t want to break it.”

“What did it look like?”

“Mermaids, crescent moons, fish.”

“Fish like the sigils on that evil old man’s palm?” I swallowed again, wondering why someone with such a pretty sigil could be so evil.

“No. Your fishes were silver. There were crabs, too.” He let out a booming laugh. “I think you had the whole ocean to protect you, young Talia the Fifth.” Ulric looked at me like he understood more than he could say.

The courtyard was quiet when I returned.

Dusk had fallen fast, painting the stones in bruised blue and grey.

Somewhere behind me, I heard Willow whimpering.

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. If I did, I’d shatter with her.

I was about to climb the stairs. Then I backed up instead and left the Keep the way I had come, changing course for the orchard.

The trees looked different in the fading light. Older. Stranger. The same shapes I’d known since autumn—but not. The branches clawed upward like hands, and ice glistened along the bark. That’s when I saw her. Lina.

She stood near the largest oak, barefoot in the snow-muddied ash, her nightdress clinging to her legs. Her eyes were open, but unfocused, her mouth slack. Sleepwalking. Her fingers dragged slowly across the blackened ground, tracing a spiral into the frostbitten earth. Over and over.

I froze. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been stretched out on a makeshift mattress in the great hall—unmoving, her breath shallow. She shouldn’t be standing.

A shape moved above h er. It was the golden falcon I had seen circling above when Ulric was chopping wood. It perched on a low branch directly overhead, wings half-extended, watching.

My elbows pressed to my sides, making me as small as possible. I might have been a trained assassin, but I hadn’t been trained in fighting demons.

Was the falcon possessed by one? Its sigil hadn’t changed into a skull, and it wasn’t comatose, but the sigil had changed to a pattern which now made the hairs lift on the nape of my neck. It didn’t stir as I approached. It didn’t blink.

My blade pulsed. I slid it from the sheath.

The second rune—the eight-petalled lily—glowed faintly beneath the metal. New lines burned through the steel beside my three marks—two more sigils I didn’t recognize. One of them curled like the spiral Lina was still drawing. The exact same spiral.

My heartbeat kicked. I crouched slowly, watching her. Her fingers dragged perfectly, without hesitation. The spiral was deep and unbroken, and it seemed as if something was guiding her.

A firefly landed on the back of my hand. It pulsed in time with the warmth that bloomed beneath my palm. I looked down. My crescent moon and waves mark was glowing white, whiter than bone.

Then I heard it from the place the bond used to be—where memory lingered. Darian’s voice was faint and fractured. “Abigail.”

My great grandmother’s name, the Water Seat of the Moon Court. She was beautiful. The echo passed through the broken bond like a thread pulled from someone else’s memory. And still it hurt. I almost said his name aloud to drown it out.

The spiral on the ground flashed once. Lina stilled, her hand pausing mid-stroke. Above us, the falcon launched silently into the air and veered toward the dark trees. The firefly hovered away, too.