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Chapter Fourteen

Ena decided she had no choice but to continue walking, both to try to keep warm, and in the hopes that she might reach the Sacred Pool before she lost any appendages to frostbite.

There was a cave there that she, Heran, and Greya had spent the night in when they’d visited.

Reaching that shelter was her only guaranteed way of surviving.

She was shivering uncontrollably when the sun finally rose, and the temperature mercifully crested above freezing.

The rain didn’t stop, but at least now it was normal rain, and not freezing rain.

Her muscles ached and she felt like shit. Her teeth chattered in her skull and she’d lost all feeling in her fingers and toes. Her nose was next.

Around midday, she knew she needed to climb another tree to check her position, but she was worried about the branches not holding, especially after last night.

She picked the youngest, sturdiest pine she could find, and battered her frozen fingers climbing its branches until she rose above the tree line.

The clouds had lifted a bit and she could see the Chasm Mountains to the east, and the sun, blurred by the clouds, already dipping west. After walking most of the night and morning, she was finally, mercifully, right in line with the Lost Sister. She should be close—very close—to the Sacred Pool.

The branches held as she climbed down from the tree, although her feet slipped a few times on the slick ice that still covered them, causing her heart to pound nearly out of her chest. But at least that had the benefit of bringing a bit more blood flow through her body.

Now, instead of moving south, she started to wander around, moving slightly east, then zigzagging slightly west, trying to find signs of the Sacred Pool.

She continued that way for several hours, looking and listening for any signs of the cave, the pool, or the stream that fed from it, but everything looked the fucking same—the same forest she’d been traveling through, the same flat landscape.

She could barely see more than twenty feet through the forest because it was so dense.

Terror started to fill Ena as the sun began to get low in the late afternoon and she found herself going in circles.

Where the fuck was it? There was so much ground to cover here, and she had no idea where exactly it might be.

What if she was wrong and the Sacred Pool was further east?

Or further west? All she could see in every direction were fucking trees.

She knew she might not make it with all her fingers and toes intact if she had to spend another night exposed to the elements.

Just when she was starting to panic, she heard it.

Underneath the high-pitched sound of the falling rain, was the low bubbling of water. She moved toward the sound like a moth to a flame, and it led her to a delicate, crystal-clear stream running through a bed of fine, light-brown sand.

The water was so clear, she could see straight through to the bottom, where pebbles of white and brown and green dotted the streambed.

The banks on either side were covered in a bed of moss and ferns that looked comfortable enough to sleep on.

It looked so beautiful, so dreamlike. She hoped to Gaia it wasn’t a hypothermia-induced hallucination.

She frantically walked upstream, knowing that if this was the stream she remembered, she would find the Sacred Pool at its source.

The elevation began to change as the landscape sloped gently upwards.

As she walked, every so often, she saw small eddies and pools where the natural cold springs added to the stream’s flow.

She knew that if she stepped into one, her foot would sink down, down, down into the liquid sand on the stream bottom.

How deep down the freezing-cold quicksand went, she didn’t know.

She and Greya had spent a significant amount of time testing the limits of the springs by sticking longer and longer branches down into them, but they never found the bottom.

It was this memory that gave her hope as she dragged her shivering, aching body one step at a time, following the stream for over an hour until she came to its source.

Ena nearly broke down sobbing at the sight.

The pool was just as she remembered—a deep, oval-shaped pond about twice her body length in one direction, and three times it in the other.

The water was a light, murky blue from the minerals that filled it and, occasionally, a bubble of air rose to the top and popped.

The pool itself was a natural cold spring.

It created the stream that she’d been following, which eventually flowed into a creek, likely the one she’d drunk from two days ago, which in turn fed the River Wry.

Beyond the pool, formed into the rock wall behind it, was the cave she remembered. Well, she called it a cave, but it was more of an overhang formed into the small rock outcrop that had been carved out by the moving water of the spring over time.

Taking a moment to breathe deeply in relief, and thank Gaia for her blessing, she began to gather what she needed for the spell.

Time was of the essence. She desperately wanted to hunker down in the cave and start a gigantic fire, but the sun was setting and she wanted to get the message for help sent now.

Who knew what else would befall her, or what the daemons were up to in her absence.

She’d do the spell, and then she’d focus on getting warm.

Since her blood was required, she’d need something to cut herself with. She wandered around the surrounding area until she found a sufficiently sharp stone, then she squatted on the banks of the pool, and peered into its murky depths.

She hoped to Gaia that this worked. This was her only shot at getting help and not having to face the rest of the journey home alone, in the freezing rain, without supplies, and recovering from frostbite.

She reached down into her Knowing as she attempted to push her pain and fear from her mind. She concentrated on the light-blue color of the water, the constant sound of rain falling into the pool, and the solid stone in her hand.

She pictured Greya in her mind’s eye, the way her pale-blonde hair reflected the light, and her brown eyes warmed with a smile.

She concentrated on the way Greya made her feel safe and loved when she was in her presence.

She focused on her desperate urge to speak to her sister, to see her.

She lifted the jagged stone to her palm and then—

“I can’t let you do that.”

Ena spun to look for the source of the voice and lost her balance at the edge of the pool. She felt her body tip and she pinwheeled her arms to no avail. The last thing she heard before she tumbled into the murky blue water was the voice shout her name in fear.

“Ena!”

The next thing she knew, her head was underwater and she was falling, falling towards the bottom of the deep pool.

Her arms and legs thrashed wildly, her cloak getting tangled around her.

She could hardly see in the dark water, and it was cold—freezing cold.

Her fingers and toes already lacked feeling, but the water was a shock to her lungs, making them seize in her chest.

She heard a loud splash next to her, or maybe that was just her own thrashing, and then a large arm encircled her waist and pulled her back against an equally large chest. She saw and felt the person’s other arm and legs push and kick them both towards the surface.

As soon as her face broke from the water, she gasped for air.

Her rescuer, holding on to her under her arms, swam her backwards towards the edge of the pool.

Ena swiped frantically at her eyes, clearing them of water, and continued to gulp air into her shocked lungs.

The person holding her spun her around and lifted her towards the bank, which she grabbed greedily as she pulled herself up.

She coughed and sputtered on all fours until she was confident her feet would hold her.

Then she rose to her feet, turned around, and came face to face with Ty.

“You,” she said breathlessly, her heart plummeting in an instant.

“Me,” Ty replied, standing before her soaking wet, and looking incredibly pissed off.

“H-how did you find me?” Ena asked in disbelief, her teeth chattering. She almost had to shout to be heard above the sound of the rainfall.

“I tracked you. You’re welcome, by the way,” Ty said as he moved to pick up the saddlebag he’d discarded on the bank of the pool.

“What?” she barked. She was about to absolutely lose it. This could not be happening. Not after everything.

“There’s n-no way. I’m a w-witch. I left no trail. You c-couldn’t have been tracking me this w-whole time, not unless you have heightened senses, and the only people who have that are witches with the G-gift of—”

“ Venator.”

“ You k-know about the Gift of venator ?”

“I have the Gift of venator .”

“W-what? No, no, no. Your Power is furor . You t-told me.” Ena was feeling slightly hysterical now, her entire plan having blown up in her face. She was shaking and shivering, feeling more delirious on her feet by the minute.

“I have both.”

“Both?! How is that p-possible?”

“Do we have to discuss this now? You’re fucking freezing and so am I. We need to get under that shelter.”

“Yes! Answer the d-damn question.”

“Fine!” he yelled, looking completely exasperated. “I’m half witch. On my mother’s side. Happy?”

“What?!” Ena had to sit down. She was actually feeling lightheaded. This was way too much information to absorb when only minutes ago, she’d been about to contact Greya and had finally been on her way to getting out of this nightmare.

She swayed and stumbled backwards to a tree, but Ty caught her arm, steadying her.