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"Of course you can see him before we finish healing him," Ashlynn said, deliberately misinterpreting Hauke’s tear-filled question. "But you have to be strong enough to do so. That means eating while I explain things to you, you understand? You don’t want him to worry that you’ve wasted away when he gets to see you, do you? "

"No, I," Hauke began before shaking his head slightly. "Thank you. I, I feel bad, making you feed me like you’re my mother," he said, his horn glittering a pale lavender shade of embarrassment. "I’ll eat. Just, just tell me what’s happened..."

"I could be your mother, you know," Ashlynn said with a light laugh when she saw the puzzled look on the young Frost Walker’s face.

"Ritchel is as comfortable as we can make him right now," Ashlynn said, moving on from the comment before Hauke could ask about it and firmly placing the spoonful of tatare in front of Hauke’s mouth until he took a bite of the rich, meaty dish.

"Talauia and or I have visited him every day to help with his healing," Ashlynn explained. "And Mistress Nyrielle has formed a fresh Blood Vitality Crystal for him to further sustain him while we work to heal him completely."

Hearing Ashlynn’s words, the tension in his body instantly melted away like ice before the summer sun. Her next words, however, startled him so much that he momentarily forgot to swallow the tartare in his mouth.

"I expected that with three witches working to heal him, we could have him restored to health by the end of winter," Ashlynn said, hoping that good news would help Hauke focus on his own recovery. "But with two more witches joining my coven, we may be able to move even faster than that. A circle of five has special significance according to Big Sister Amahle and with Talauia’s help, we’ll be able to place five witches around your father to heal his wounds. "

"Two? Two more witches joined your coven?" Hauke said, swallowing the tartare along with a lump in his throat. He’d dreamed of joining Ashlynn’s coven until his father made it clear that Frost Walkers likely had no place in the coven of the Mother of Trees.

Hearing that two more people had joined her coven came as a shock, along with a complex wave of emotions.

.. Faint hope warred with bitter jealousy and a forlorn sense of helplessness.

Even if there had been a place for him in her coven before, what kind of place could he hope to find in it now that he’d brought about the disaster in the High Pass when the ancestors took possession of his body to attack Ashlynn and Heila?

"You remember Virve from our fishing trip," Ashlynn said with a gentle smile as she held out more of the tartare. "She’ll be my Oak Witch once she completes the transformation she’s undergoing under the branches of the Ancient Oak."

"I see," Hauke said, offering a weak smile. "Virve was very brave fighting the Tuscans. She, she deserves a place in your coven."

"You’ll have to wait to meet Ollie," Ashlynn added, gently prodding Hauke with another spoonful of tartare. From the look in Hauke’s eyes, wistful and yearning, she had the feeling that her coven meant more to him than just a group of witches who could heal his father, but she refused to make assumptions about his feelings until she’d heard from him directly.

"Ollie is on the fourth, no, I suppose it’s the fifth day of his vigil now.

He’s human, like me," she added. "He’s been training with Sir Thane and Sir Marcel to become a knight. He’s also the person who will receive Ice Fang, the companion blade to the one that Erkembalt made for Heila, so I hope that, when the time comes, you’ll be willing to help him master its powers. "

"Sure," Hauke said with a trace of sulliness creeping into his voice before he shook it off. "I mean, of course I can help Ollie," he corrected himself. "It’s the least I can do after... after all the harm I caused to you and Lady Heila."

"Hey, none of that," Ashlynn said, lightly bopping Hauke on the nose. "What’s done is done. Your ’punishment’, is to spend the next five years learning what you can here in the Vale before you return to the High Pass as its next local lord," she explained.

"Until then, I’m just keeping your throne warm, or, cold, I guess," she said, chuckling at the bemused look on the young man’s face.

"Hauke," Ashlynn said, setting down the half-finished bowl of tartare and assuming a more serious demeanor that carried a trace of the majesty and aura of the Mother of Trees. "Before things went so badly in the High Pass, I was intending to invite you to join my coven."

"You were?" Hauke asked, lurching upright in bed and staring at Ashlynn in wide-eyed amazement. "But, but I thought that there weren’t any trees suited for Frost Walkers, except, except maybe a Fir tree," he said, his voice growing quiet and uncertain.

The only person who had heard of a Fir witch outside of the coven of the Mother of Storms was Eugen, the Greenwind Healer, one of the Frost Walker ancestors who had betrayed his trust to attack Heila in the High Pass.

As much as Hauke wanted to believe it was true, that there was a possibility, he had been forced to question everything the ancestors had told him in light of the way they’d abused his trust at the end.

"I suppose that some fir trees might suit you," Ashlynn mused. "But I had something else in mind, a tree I found writings about in Amahle’s records, though I don’t know that there has ever been a witch who mastered this tree. I think you would be the first."

"The first?" Hauke said, blinking intensely as his horn glowed soft shades of green and pale icy blue that mirrored his rising excitement. "What kind of tree has never been claimed by a witch?"

"Let me show you," Ashlynn said, returning to the table to collect copies she’d made of the sketches in Amahle’s books.

The tree that she showed Hauke was short, with a squat trunk that quickly branched into several gnarled limbs and a bark that peeled away in layers like paper wrapped around the branches of the tree.

It’s leaves were slender and rounded with softly sawtoothed edges that reminded Hauke of ice crystals and snowflakes.

"Why is it so... short?" Hauke asked as he frowned at the strange tree, little more than a large bush, in the sketches that Ashlynn shared with him.

It hardly seemed like the mighty sort of tree that could belong to a witch from the Frost Walker Clan who towered over at least three quarters of the other Eldritch clans.

"This tree is called Polylepis, and it grows high up in the Great Shield Mountains in the west. It may be short, but it stands higher up the slopes of mountains than any other tree in the known world," Ashlynn explained. "So, even if it’s short, it still looks down at every other tree in the world. In the West, they call it the tree that connects the sky to the earth with tenacious roots that can break through stone to grip the mountain and tough limbs that can capture clouds. It’s a tree that thrives in a place that would otherwise be barren, and when I read about it, I thought that you would be the best person to discover the depths of its powers. "

"I don’t have a seed from this tree," Ashlynn admitted. "But there’s a witch in Big Sister Amahle’s coven who travels the world, collecting exotic seeds to bring back to the Mother of Thorns for study.

Months ago, I asked if she could bring me one of these seeds so I could offer you a place in my coven.

That offer is still open," she said, reaching out to gently stroke the soft white fur of his forearm.

"You just have to tell me you want it, and I’ll prepare your seed as soon as it arrives. "

"Months ago?" Hauke said, his voice trembling as he looked at Ashlynn with wide, hopeful eyes. "You, you made plans for me months ago? But, but that must have been right after you arrived in the Briar! How could you have known all the way back then that you wanted me to join your coven?"

"Because, when I saw how things were going for you in the High Pass, I thought that you and I, we’re not that different from each other," Ashlynn said, giving the young Frost Walker a smile that contained a hint of sorrow.

"This made you different from everyone around you," she said, pointing at his iridescent horn.

"It also gave you great power. Just like my mark of the witch came with great power, but it kept me isolated and away from everyone around me. "

"I learned from Amahle that covens are like families," Ashlynn said, taking Hauke’s large, furry paw in both hands and looking directly into his pale, watery eyes.

"And I thought, maybe you were someone like me, who needed to find family that would lift you up for the things that made you different instead of trying to tear you down the way I saw people like Torsten doing. "

"It’s a big decision," Ashlynn cautioned before Hauke could respond. "And it isn’t one you have to make until the seed arrives. It may take until spring for your seed to get here, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move in with the rest of the coven while we wait.

That is, if you want to join us," she said.

"You still have a throne waiting for you in the High Pass," she pointed out. "So if you would prefer not to have more to do with this and to walk away instead, then I wouldn’t blame you or resent you, and I would still call you my friend as long as you think of me as one."

"How?" Hauke asked with a voice that trembled with excitement and eyes that glistened like ice beneath a cloudless sky.

"How could I turn away from this when it’s everything I wanted ever since I learned you were forming a coven?

Yes," he said, squeezing Ashlynn’s hands tightly with his large, furry paws.

"Yes, of course, yes. Nothing would make me happier than being part of your coven. "