16. Chapter Sixteen #2
“Isn’t Max a little indisposed right now?” Turner asked, raising his eyebrows significantly.
“Yes, but we can find him, and we should do it now,” Kaya said. “If the cravings are already escalating…time is of the essence.” Then she turned into the dark woods, beckoning Ena and Turner to follow.
***
Kaya led them through the forest. It was the dead of night still—the only light coming from the bright, full moon shining overhead. Ena Knew there were others around them—be they the stryx who had Changed, or other wild animals—watching them, but she wasn’t concerned about them. She couldn’t be.
After a while, they came to a stream. It was beautiful, its crystal-clear waters reflecting the moonlight in such a way that it almost seemed to sparkle.
But Ena hardly had time to absorb its beauty, because suddenly, she noticed that farther down the stream was a gigantic, white bear—almost as large as the one that had attacked them several weeks ago.
It was crouched innocuously by the stream bank, drinking deep of the water, but it paused when they approached.
It lifted its head, its dark eyes watching them.
Ena froze—instinct taking over as a predator spotted her, but then Kaya spoke to it.
“My heart’s blood, I’m sorry to interrupt your Change, but we need to speak with you. It’s a matter of some urgency,” she said.
It prowled towards them, its fur shining in the moonlight. She thought for an instant that maybe Kaya had been mistaken and this was just an ordinary bear, but then, before her eyes, it began to Change.
Its stark-white fur seemed to dim as it began to shed from its body, falling in clumps on the snow-covered ground.
At the same time, its limbs seemed to retract—getting smaller and more proportionate for a human.
The bear let out a grunt of effort as it fell on its hands and knees, concentrating.
Its skin split on its face, peeling away to reveal the pale skin of a stryx underneath.
A human mouth and nose emerged, and as the pile of fur and skin completely fell away, Ena could see the white and solid black of Max’s eyes once more.
In what seemed like seconds, the man, not the bear, was before her—nude as the day he was born and breathing hard. She could see his fists bunched underneath him—squeezing—as if he were in pain, then the man sat back on his heels, gathering himself.
“I know two Changes so close together is tough on you, my heart’s blood. Are you alright?”
“I will be,” Max gritted out, panting from the effort. “What is this about?”
“It’s about one of our newcomers,” Kaya said, glancing at Ena. “She may be in bloodlust.”
Max’s head snapped up at that, and he slowly raised a leg, stopping on one knee for several breaths before standing all the way up. He moved as if his limbs were sore and unused.
“Bloodlust?” he asked, his voice somewhat gravelly, like his vocal cords were brand new. Which, she supposed, they were, if they had just reformed.
Kaya looked at Ena, then back at Max, nodding. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s sit together by the stream, and she can explain.”
The four of them cleared a downed log by the stream of snow and sat along it.
Blessedly, Kaya lent Max one of the furs she wore, so he didn’t have to have the conversation in the nude, and Turner, without having been asked, began to gather sticks for a fire, using his incendia to light it in seconds.
Max watched, fascinated, as he did so, likely never having seen a daemon’s Power before, but he didn’t ask any questions, just observed with curiosity. Once it was alight, he turned his attention away from Turner and towards Ena instead.
Ena explained as she had to Kaya—how around the time she found out she was pregnant, when they’d broken the bond, she started to notice strange reactions to blood—during the ritual, her handfasting, after Ty was wounded, and then now, even with him gone, to the blood Xoe had put in the tea.
She explained how it had been getting worse—more consistent and intense—causing headaches, and she feared at some point, she might not be able to stop herself from drinking some.
“That does sound like bloodlust,” Max said, his voice concerned.
“But I’m not sure how that’s possible. Bloodlust only occurs in those like us,” he explained.
“And we’ve never had contact with witches, aside from Kaya here.
At least not that I know of…” His brow furrowed slightly, as if considering something. “Both your parents were witches?”
“Yes, my mother was from Auster, like me, and my father was from Aquilo,” she explained.
“And your grandparents?” Max asked. “Do you know them?”
“My mother’s parents died young, from what I know, and my father was raised just by his mother. I never met any of them—both my parents died when I was two,” she explained.
“So your father’s father? He is unknown to your family?
” Max asked, though Ena felt like this was grasping at straws.
There was no way she had stryx heritage.
It wasn’t like there had been stryx just walking around the Aquilo Coven—she would have heard stories about that—and besides, her grandmother had been a seer, a highly coveted person in the Aquilo Coven before she died.
It would have been a big deal if she had had relations with any strangers from the other side of the—
Fucking Gaia and Iblis combined.
The story—the one Greya used to tell her. The one she was reminded of when they were trapped in the snowstorm.
A seer who fell in love with a stranger from the other side of the Chasm Mountains.
Gaia, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t put those two things together before.
Could that really be true? Greya had told her the story so many times as a child, and she’d always known her grandmother had been a seer, and that she had gotten pregnant without being handfast, but she’d always assumed it was a mortal who’d done it, or someone else unsuitable—it wasn’t unheard of for witches to have babies even though they weren’t handfast.
Never in her wildest imagination would she have thought the story Greya had told her—the one she had learned from their father—was true. Could it possibly be?
“Ena…” Turner said. “You look like you’re having a thought. Care to share with the group?”
“The stryx,” she said. “Have any of them ever traveled to our side of the Chasm Mountains?”
“Not in many, many years,” Max explained. “Long before your birth. But there was one group—a group of three—who were sent right around the time I was born.”
“What happened to them?” Ena asked.
“They never returned.”
“Gaia…” Ena said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I think…I think it is possible. I think those three made it—or at least made it most of the way.”
“Why do you think that?” Kaya asked in disbelief.
“The story…” Turner said. She had told him the story when they’d been trapped in the snowstorm, and clearly he was putting two and two together just as she had.
“What story?” Kaya asked, trying to keep up.
“My father used to tell my sister this story before he died, and she told it to me. It was about an Aquilo witch, a seer, who helped three strangers stranded in a snowstorm in the Chasm Mountains. And how she…fell in love with one of them. I always thought it was just made up, but now…some of the things about the strangers makes me think they could have been stryx.”
“Like what?” Max asked, following her story raptly.
“Like they had pale skin and dark eyes, and that they’d traveled all the way there because their home was beset by horrible storms and they needed to relocate.” Ena looked up at Max, gauging his reaction to this information. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” Max said solemnly. “It is why the three were sent over the Chasm Mountains. The storms have been getting worse for decades. Game has been dwindling. It is why there are so few of us left now—the blood is running out.”
“So it’s true,” Turner said, his voice in awe. “The story you told us is true. And if the seer from the story was your grandmother, that makes you…”
“Part stryx,” Ena said, her voice devoid of any feeling.
Because what? Like seriously. What in the actual fuck was happening?
Could she really be…stryx? How could she not have known this before?
Had her father known? She knew she’d gotten her pale skin from him, but he was a witch.
He had a Gift and never drank blood as far she knew—which was admittedly not much because he’d died when she was so young, and everything she knew was from Greya or Heran or other witches in the Coven.
All of a sudden, Ena felt her control crack, but it wasn’t sadness she felt, or overwhelm, it was anger. Because this was like the bond to Iblis all over again—more information about witches, daemons—stryx—that she’d never known. Knowledge that had been kept from her.
Had this been intentional too? Had her father known and never told anyone? Or had others known and never told her?
She hated the unknown of it all, and she couldn’t handle it. She didn’t want to think about this anymore—about any of it. It was too much.
“But wait,” Turner began, interrupting her spiral. “Why did she only just now start craving blood? Why hasn’t she craved it her whole life?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Max responded. “I have only known one other like you—someone who is part witch and part stryx. Our daughter,” he said, looking over at Kaya.
“And she does require less blood than other stryx, so it’s possible that, because you are even less stryx than she, the blood cravings were dormant until you came of age, or were triggered by the pregnancy… any number of possibilities.”
Ena supposed that made sense, to an extent, but it wasn’t the dormancy of her blood cravings that she was focused on. It was the fact that Kaya had a daughter—another child besides Ty.
“A daughter?” Turner asked, his face grave, as if the idea of Ty having a half sister he never knew about haunted him too. “Is it Xoe?”