Page 9 of Marked by the Enemy (The Binding Vow #1)

Chapter six

Etched in Bone

W hen I returned to my chambers, something waited on my pillow. An unmarked box. No ribbon to make it a gift, no seal to declare a sender. Pale, sanded wood. No hinges. No ornament. The lid rested lightly in place, like it wanted to be found.

I didn’t open it at once. I stood at the edge of the bed and stared. My fingers hovered over the seam. The bond lay quiet. Nothing stirred in the corners of my mind. The tether held its silence.

My elbows pressed into my sides. That unsettled me more than any warning would have.

Eventually, I lifted the lid.

Inside lay a white comb made from bone, gleaming with a sheen too fine for any human polish. A shimmer veined through the bone, which was something more elusive than light. Memory, perhaps, or intention.

I’d never seen anything human-made that gleamed like that. It was too fine. Too certain of itself. This work had a magical quality, a vibrancy our tools lacked.

Its surface held long, slender markings, almost too fine to catch at first glance.

The first was a crescent moon cradling a water droplet, two river-lines beneath.

The second: a star or maybe a flower of eight points, symmetrical and knotted, bound to a circle.

The third showed two rings interlocked, pierced by a vertical line with a flame at the top.

The Boundless had shown us scraps of stolen relics from temple ruins up north, once. These were human runes from the Northwest Tarnwick. Unsure what they meant, I decided to find out.

I slid the lid back over the box and pushed it under the bed without touching the comb. The wood caught slightly on the stone floor before slipping from view. I sat on the sheepskin rug, legs unbending, hands slack on my thighs. My eyes drifted to the ceiling, but they didn’t really see it.

Darian wouldn’t have sent this. He spoke plainly. This wasn’t his method. Someone else had been here and had left something with meaning behind. And the tether hadn’t so much as stirred. Not a flicker. Not a push of warning.

That chilled me. The bond hadn’t stopped them. It had let them in. Because it wanted to see what I’d do next. And the worst part was that I wanted to know, too.

I didn’t sleep well. The comb stayed beneath the bed, quiet and harmless in the way sharp things always are before they’re used.

When dawn touched the windowpanes, I dressed in my plainest tunic, tied my hair back, and left without waiting for a guard. Let them wonder where I’d gone.

The palace archive lay beneath the northern wing. Its entrance was narrow and flanked by columns that whispered with spell-runes too old to be decorative. An old woman sat by the door, wrapped in four layers of wool. She barely looked up as I passed.

Inside, dust and vellum hung in the dry air. A steward blinked at me from behind a stack of scrolls.

“I need records,” I said. “Bone combs and runes from Northern Tarnwick.”

He jerked a thumb toward the back. “Far stacks. Keep your voice low. Some of us read in the morning.”

I didn’t bother with a response.

The farther I walked, the older the shelves became. Scrolls wrapped in fabric. Books bound in hide and cord. Some of the volumes crackled when I pulled them free. The paper was brittle, the ink rust-colored with age.

I flipped through a book of ceremonial combs—each carved from bone, each traced to tribes in the various Realms of Humans all over Caldaen. Some of their patterns were ornate, but familiar.

I turned to the rune dictionary. Not fae. Human. That alone unsettled me. I searched for the three runes carved into my comb. The rune on the left of the comb didn’t appear in full—but when I broke apart the shapes, I found water here, and the Moon Court there.

There were so many runes from different continents and islands, so I searched only those in Tarnwick, and then the Northwest Tarnwick river lands.

I finally found rune in the middle. It belonged to a northern tribe in Lunegard that worshipped the moon, river, and ocean. That was where Mom came from.

Lunegard was across the river from our village, Riverell. I had loved it in the Deltara Lands, living by the great white river called the Northern Run. Everything went wrong after we left to journey to the Borderlands .

I let out a small yelp. Had whoever left the comb in my room known I had family from Lunegard? The third meant marriage. I stared at the page, pulse tapping under my skin. If these runes were human in origin… how had the ten fae courts built their power from them?

My mind froze, searching for answers, and my stomach fluttered. The bone combs referenced here also had human origins. How did the comb get carved by the fae and have human runes? It made no sense. It must have made sense to whoever left it in my chamber, though.

I turned back to the page, double-checking the listing the second rune.

It was definitely the sigil for the Valari Tribe in Lunegard, across the Northern Run from Riverell.

In the corner of the page, inked sideways along the margin, was a handwritten name.

I squinted and held it closer: Talia of Tarnwick.

My whole body stilled. Cold spread down the backs of my arms.

The ink seemed fresher than the rest of the page. It looked as though someone had come back years later and decided to leave a message that only I would find.

I traced it with my finger. It couldn’t be a coincidence. This volume was at least four hundred years old. I turned it again. Checked the spine. Checked the layers of the entry. No date or origin of the comb appeared.

I covered my mouth with a palm and stared at the writing— Talia of Tarnwick. I marked the page with a ribbon torn from a fraying scroll and closed the book.

On the way back to the upper wing, I passed a balcony that opened onto the sparring yard below. The breeze pushed against my side, cold and sharp, and I might have kept walking, except I saw them.

Two fae men stood in the yard, talking. Darian and the Bone Seat councilor.

Their stances were informal. Darian said something I couldn’t hear.

The councilor responded. His head turned upward.

He saw me. Darian followed his gaze. We locked eyes.

Distance, stone, height, it didn’t matter.

The tension coiled between us instantly. He didn’t look surprised.

Neither of them moved. When I finally turned and walked on, I did it slowly. Let the bond wonder what I had found. Because I couldn’t tell what was worse: that the book had known my name before I was born, or that someone in this palace had wanted me to find it.

I waited until night when the palace softened, when the last guards at his chamber doors let their shoulders ease. That was when I moved. I didn’t knock. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Darian sat by the fire, boots off, robe loose at the collar, a half-full glass resting in one hand like he’d barely remembered to hold it. He looked up, unsurprised. It almost broke me that he wasn’t startled. As if he’d been waiting, expecting me to come back—even after everything.

“You saw me,” I said.

“Yes.”

I closed the door behind me and crossed the room until the table stood between us. “What were you discussing with the Bone Seat?”

His hand froze around the glass and set it down carefully. “The city’s unrest.”

“Lie again and I walk.”

His jaw tightened. “He asked if I still trusted you.”

“And you said?”

“That I never did. But the bond is forcing me to learn.”

I didn’t flinch. “Someone left a gift in my chambers. A comb. Bone-carved and crafted by the fae, but with northern etchings of human runes. Do you know anything about it?”

“Only that those kinds of gifts haven’t been used in centuries.”

“There’s a book in the archive,” I said. “Eighty years old. My name is written in it, in the margin.”

He stood abruptly and grabbed his cloak. “Show me.”

The archive was colder than the upper halls. Scrolls lined the stone, and dusty air hung heavy. The steward didn’t question us. He barely looked up.

I led Darian to the back, where I had tucked the volume between two crumbling records. I pulled it out and handed it over.

He opened the page slowly, reading the margin like it might shift. “Talia of Tarnwick.” He closed the book, silent for a long time.

“I thought you were Talia of the Borderlands.”

“I wasn’t born in the Borderlands. I was born in Tarnwick.”

His eyes widened. “You were an unseeing?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

“Do you think the bond is older than they say?” he said, changing the subject.

“I think the palace is older than your court admits. I think the court remembers only what it wants to. And someone else remembers the rest.”

“Not me,” he said.

“You don’t control it?”

“No. Neither did my parents.”

The truth struck sideways, like a blade meant for someone else that still drew blood.

If he hadn’t been steering the ship, had anyone ever fought for him?

My breath hitched, and I decided I would wait for him to tell me about them when he was ready.

I stepped closer and looked up at him. “Are you sure this isn’t you holding the reins? ”

His eyes met mine. “I never claimed I did.”

There was a pain at the back of my throat, and all the hatred toward him loosened, its target unclear. My chin quivered. If he held no power, the blame for enslaving the unseeing didn’t fall on him.

The bond wavered between us, witnessing my guilt and regret, quiet like breath. I wanted to hate him. But the bond didn’t let me lie to myself.

“I won’t be shaped by this palace,” I said. “Not by the Bone Seat. Not by the court. Not by your silence.”

“And me? ”

“You’re a weapon dressed like a prince.” But even weapons had a glint to them. And I hated that sometimes, I wanted to reach for his. “If I let you shape me, it’ll be into something sharp enough to break us both.”

“Talia,” he said as I turned away.

I frowned at him.

“You’re correct. But that doesn’t mean I want to see you break.”

“You think I’m close?”

“I think they do. And that’s more dangerous than what I believe.”

I brooded alone in my chamber for two days. The comb and book held their secrets, but they weren’t what dragged me down. The heaviness came from the memory the Councilors had taken—pressed into the bond during the rites.

My darkest memories had bubbled up to the surface again from the shadows where I’d drowned them.

I drew the curtains and let the room stay dim.

Light came in anyway, slipping between the seams, never quite enough to warm the stone.

I left the meals untouched. Even the bond held back.

The mark on my wrist pulsed bright the first night.

The burn of silver was so sharp that it lit the entire chamber.

By morning, it had dulled, but it didn’t fade. It never did now.

The bond didn’t reach for Darian. It didn’t tug or throb or whisper his presence. It curled back into itself, quiet and alert, like a creature watching from beneath the floorboards.

I didn’t light the fire. I sat on the rug with parchment spread around me and tried to draw her again. The woman from my dreams—the one with the vow mark across her brow. The five circles never joined, though, as if the ink and quill had a combined consciousness of their own .

I had no trouble drawing her face and hair. She sometimes appeared young, laughing, her hair braided with silver thread. Other times she appeared elderly, her face lined like bark, her mouth open in a silent cry.

The fifth circle never closed. It didn’t matter how steady my hand was or how many times I tried. The final line slipped. Broke. Refused to seal the vow-mark. The bond, the mark, or whatever power bound them together refused to let me draw it.

I pushed the pages away and pressed my palms to my eyes until blinding white bloomed behind them. Still the snow came. The memory that they had watched. My secret memory. The teenage boy’s name had been Ryn.

I gathered the pages in silence and folded them until the faces vanished beneath the creases. I fed them one by one into the hearth and watched the flames curl through them, burning the woman into ash.

Her identity was unknown to me. I only knew she was dangerous. And if anyone saw the mark I kept trying to copy—those five interlocking circles—there would be questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

When the last edge blackened, I wiped the ash from my palms and stood. The air in the room grew colder, but the bond had warmed beneath my skin, like something resting with its eyes open.

I moved to the washbasin and held out my left hand, the one with the vow-mark carved deep into the skin. The silver ring shimmered faintly in the candlelight.

“Lift,” I said.

The bond answered. Water lifted from the bowl in a single rising strand and climbed like thread pulled from cloth. The column hung in the air, narrow and unbroken, wavering only slightly.

I focused, sending my consciousness deeper. The water shifted at my command. The column flattened, split down its length. Three narrow blades peeled away, thin as needles, suspended like knives mid-throw. They held for one full breath.

They dropped. The splash was quiet. The basin rippled. My hands stayed steady at my sides, but my mind burned with awareness. The bond had obeyed.