Page 8 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter five

The Name I Buried

T he following day, I walked the gardens and practiced my fighting skills on a patch of grass. In the early evening, with my stomach growling and no food in sight, the maid came and told me to put on a dress.

The dress was green. Deep, forest-dark, trimmed in silver at the collar and cuffs. It fit too well. Whoever had sent it either guessed my size perfectly or had taken it from one of the bond’s pulses. Perhaps Darian had searched my memories to find out my measurements to send to the seamstress.

I crossed and uncrossed my arms. Had he seen the reflection of my naked body in the mirror?

Shame didn’t exist for the bond. It extended past intent, past privacy.

My thoughts felt taken—like they were never mine to begin with.

What else had he seen? What pieces of me did he carry now—without permission, without care?

The maid fastened the back. Her fingers were cold against my spine. “You’ve been summoned to the Silver Table.”

I met her gaze in the mirror. “What is it? ”

“A court feast.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“To be seen.”

Seen by whom? The nobles? The court? The bond? I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

The dress fell to my ankles. The silver trim gleamed in the candlelight.

I moved my shoulders back. The fabric didn’t fight me.

No corset. No laces. Freedom dressed as elegance.

When she finished, the maid stepped back and unwrapped a small cloth bundle.

A dagger rested inside—slim, refined, wrapped in a sheath that fit the width of my hand.

She held it out with both hands. “It’s ceremonial.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s sharp.”

“Still ceremonial.”

The blade gleamed, polished to a sheen so fine it caught the light like water, but beneath its surface ran dark veins—quiet scars from where the Fae-Steel had been folded again and again.

I turned it in my hand, feeling the balance, and slid it into the lining of my boot where it vanished like a thought withheld.

Outside my chamber, two guards waited. They didn’t speak. One walked ahead of me, the other behind. At the end of the final hall stood a pair of high, arched doors carved with skulls and crescent moons.

The guard ahead opened the door. The bond responded, and I recognized it. It wanted to observe what I would do in that room and what I would become.

Light spilled out in gold and wine-red, carrying the scent of roasted meat, spices, fruit syrup, and something faintly magical underneath. A charm to dull tongues. A glamor to smooth tempers. Laughter rose from within—too loud, too easy.

The Silver Table wasn’t silver at all. It was long and black and veined with something indigo that shimmered under candlelight.

The room around the feast and fae glowed with soft yellow fire caught in hovering orbs.

The ceiling arched high enough to vanish into shadow.

Fae nobles filled the seats. Robes and rings and high collars.

There were some human priests and priestesses, too, and I wondered if any were assassins. Perhaps there was a spy who had slipped the previous knife into my chamber. The green dress caught their attention. Every gaze found me. I’d lost the last of my cover.

The steward called my name: “Lady Talia of the Borderlands, Consort of the Crown.”

They all turned. Every gaze pinned to me—some like nails, some like questions. I saw it register in their eyes, the way they took me in: the human girl who’d tried to kill their prince, who’d been claimed by a magic older than their laws, who now stood before them as his bound Consort.

Darian sat at the head, keeping his gaze on the candlelight and food.

My stomach clenched, but I kept walking.

One foot, then the next. The council hall stretched longer than it had moments ago.

A bead of sweat crept down my spine. Don’t stumble.

Don’t pause. I puffed out my chest and tilted my chin back enough to look like I belonged.

Let them think I was proud. Let them believe I wasn’t afraid.

Inside, everything tightened. My ribs. My throat. The bond stirred beneath my skin, too aware. It didn’t like the stares either, but it didn’t shrink from them. Neither did I.

I walked the full length of the table proudly.

The seat beside Darian was empty. I didn’t take it.

I took the one a few places to his right, between fae nobles.

That earned a few glances. One of the nobles—a hawk-eyed woman with silver threads in her braids—nodded slightly. Approval? Amusement? I couldn’t tell.

He stared at all the faces around us except mine, and his shoulders shook with silent laughter. I rubbed my brow, slow and firm, as if I could press the moment out of existence. I’d meant to shame him. Not entertain him. Why did it always feel worse when he laughed?

A plate appeared in front of me. I hadn’t seen the servers move. Meat glazed with dark fruit. Roots sliced into crescent moons. A pastry shaped like a rose. I picked up my fork but didn’t eat.

Darian spoke without turning. “You’re supposed to pretend to enjoy this.”

“I’m better at pretending when no one warns me. ”

He didn’t reply.

The woman across from me leaned forward. “You held your own in the second trial. The construct isn’t known for mercy.”

I met her gaze, wondering if they had somehow recorded it. “Neither am I.”

Laughter rippled down the table.

Another noble raised a glass. “The consort has teeth.”

“I have knives too,” I said.

More laughter. Softer this time. Uneasy.

The courses came and went. Darian stayed silent. I ate enough to look polite and drank enough to seem calm. Near the end of the meal, a pale man in red and with pointed fae ears leaned across two plates and said, “Is it true you tried to kill him before the bond took?”

I didn’t blink and shot to my feet. “Would you like to find out?”

Darian set his goblet down. “Enough.”

The bond rose. I sat back, nostrils flaring. The red-robed fae looked away, cheeks flushed pink. The feast ended with a soft chime. Plates vanished. Candles dimmed. Nobles rose in a wave of silk and perfume.

Darian stood. So did I. We walked side by side to the door.

When we arrived at the hall, he said, “You didn’t embarrass me.”

“Good. I wasn’t trying to impress you.”

He glanced at me. “You didn’t have to.”

“Why give me this dagger?”

“To see if you’d try again.”

“And what if I did?”

“It would have been entertaining for everyone to see how the bond wouldn’t let you.”

“So I’m entertaining, am I?” I hissed.

“I would say. I am glad you didn’t try to kill me again, though. I am glad that you were silent.”

At the stairs we stopped, and I frowned. “Why summon me here if all you want is silence? ”

He gazed past me toward the darkened corridor. “I wanted them to see you. And I wanted to see what you would do.”

“And?”

“You didn’t disappoint.”

I was performing a moving meditation in my chamber that night, on a sheepskin rug and under the light of the half moon, which beamed through my window.

The phase of the moon reminded me that I had been living in the Moon Court as Prince Darian’s Consort for one week. After I finished, he opened the door without announcing himself and stepped inside as if I’d called him.

“Did you hear me earlier?” I asked.

“Sometimes I hear and see you, when the bond chooses to echo.”

I turned toward the fire and swallowed.

He stepped beside me. Not touching. Not towering, even though he was a foot taller than me. “They liked you tonight.”

“Some of them did. Some of them wanted me gone.”

“And what did you want?”

I squinted at him. “To kill you. To leave. To be rich and free. But I didn’t do any of those things.”

He lowered his shoulders and nodded slowly. “You’re learning.”

But I didn’t want to learn him. I didn’t want to become fluent in his moods or softened by his rare honesty. And yet, I was.

We stood in silence for a long time. He turned away slightly, and I thought he looked sad. Was I being too cruel to him? For a moment, there was an ache in my throat as I wondered what emotional wounds he carried.

But then I balled my hands and inhaled a sharp breath through my nose.

After the feast at the Silver Table, he had admitted to me that he found it amusing that the bond controlled me and wouldn’t let me kill him, and that was why he had passed the knife onto me, to make it a funny show. He was evil.

He was watching the fire now. “You whispered my name.”

“You weren’t invited.”

“The bond doesn’t care.”

“I don’t either.”

He smiled without showing his teeth. “Lie better.” He turned and left.

The link between us throbbed once in the silence that followed.

The summons came before breakfast as a single word on a slip of paper left on my tray: Empathy.

I knew what that meant before I returned to the chamber. The Moon Court of Vyrelen believed in three things: control, response, and vulnerability. The first two I could fake. The third was harder.

They led me into a chamber shaped like a shell cracked open and hollowed.

The walls curved inward, smooth and seamless, like the inside of a pearl.

Sound didn’t echo here. It sank. Every footstep, every breath, swallowed by the air, which shimmered faintly with a trace of magic that hung like mist waiting to be named.

At the far end, the council stood half-shadowed along the wall’s arc, like the first time, in cloaks that made them partially invisible.

Darian was already in place behind a crescent-shaped stone table veined with silver.

He glanced up when I entered. Barely a flick of his eyes.

He focused on the center of the chamber again. That was where the real focus lay.

A low circle had been carved into the stone floor, etched in shifting bands of red and silver.

A new tester stood nearby. Cloaked in grey, he cupped a glass orb in his hands, which gave off a fragrant smoke that smelled of melted cypress oil.

The type of artifact I’d learned about in old rebel reports but never seen with my own eyes.

I paused near the threshold, curious and hiding my fear of the unknown.

“You will enter the bond,” the tester said.

“Already in it,” I muttered.

“You will deepen it. You will give it memory. It will choose what to show us.”

“You mean I won’t choose?”

“No. The trial selects.”

My jaw locked. They wanted to understand what I had buried. I stepped into the circle. The bond met me there with pressure and hunger. It opened inside me like a door I hadn’t noticed until now.

And then the room fell away.

I was fifteen, and it was snowing. The mountain pass looked the same in every direction. White. Wind. Ice-blind cold. I stumbled through it with torn gloves and boots too small, my fingers blue, my teeth chattering.

My mom’s voice was still in my ears: Keep moving. Keep your head down.

But she wasn’t here. She’d stayed behind. They’d told me she would catch up. That had been six hours ago. I was alone. I fell. The snow swallowed me to the waist. I kicked free. Cried out, but I was alone.

I crawled to a rock and curled beside it, thinking it might block the wind. My body shook. My face burned. I saw him as a fifteen-year-old boy. He was the same age as me. He had dark hair and boots that fit. A wool scarf wound tight across his neck. He held out a flask.

I remember taking it and drinking. The burn of it down my throat. The way the world steadied a little. He never told me his name, but he asked what my mother was called, and I told him, ‘Ocean.’ He stayed with me until morning. And when the caravan found us, he vanished into the trees .

I remembered his voice. “You aren’t dead yet. That’s something,” he had said with a chuckle.

I gasped as the chamber snapped back into focus. My knees hit the stone. I didn’t remember falling. But the vow-magic brushed my mind—soft and curious. Darian stood at the edge of the circle, watching silently.

The tester tapped the crystal. “She has completed the trial.”

The Bone Seat spoke quietly. “Her pain is old, but real.”

I stood on shaking legs. Darian reached out and brushed my arm, but I pulled away.

Later, alone in my chambers, I stared into the mirror above the washbasin. The candles’ flames were dimming. I let them witness the worst of it. It had projected from my mind, into the crystal ball and then onto the ceiling. How they did it, I didn’t know.

I cupped water in my hands and pressed it to my face. The cold didn’t help. The heat behind my ribs stayed. The memory had surfaced like a wound, refusing to close.

I hadn’t spoken that boy’s name in ten years. Not since the fire. Not since the oath I swore over his body—never aloud, never where anyone could hear. But tonight, the name rose inside me. His name had been Ryn. I had buried him so deep I forgot where I’d put the grief. But the bond hadn’t.

He was the first person I ever tried to protect. And the first one I failed. I whispered his name once, just to hear it again. The vow-magic throbbed under my ribs. Softer than before.

I blinked. “You remember that?”

It thrummed under my ribs as if it had filed the memory away beside its own. I stared into the mirror a long time after that. My reflection remained there, but I saw myself differently. Something inside had changed .

Darian thought he held the truth of this bond. He thought he understood what it gave him. I wondered what it would take to show him something as raw. Something that could hurt him back.