Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-three
Ena
Ty had been gone for almost an hour. After the many revelations of the morning, everyone needed a second to themselves to eat or tend to their needs, but Ena spent almost the entire time debating whether she should go after him or not.
Was he okay? She knew the topic of his mother was tough for him.
He clearly felt incredibly betrayed by her abandonment, no matter the circumstances, but now to learn with absolute certainty that she was the one who’d given Petyr the books Ty had taken, and that she had had a hand in all this from the beginning?
That must be a lot to swallow. Not to mention the fact that Mel, in all likelihood, knew where she was, and all Ty had to do was ask her, and he could potentially know more about his mother than he had his entire life.
Would he seek that knowledge? Did he even want it?
Ena couldn’t begin to imagine the conflicting feelings that would generate in him, and she desperately wanted to go comfort him.
But her instincts told her that he needed some time alone.
Turner, she noted, didn’t go after him either, so maybe giving him space right now was for the best, but still, her heart ached for him, and she found herself waiting impatiently for his return, just to make sure that he was okay.
The sun was well up by the time he returned with a bundle of firewood under his arm, sweaty and out of breath, but seeming emotionally stable once more. Without preamble, he tossed the split wood on the ground near the fire and called everyone together.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, addressing them as a group as they drew towards him.
“Clearly,” Turner said, gesturing at the abundance of firewood.
Ty gave him an unamused look, but Turner was unbothered—he just smiled knowingly at his friend. It was common knowledge that Ty went to his axe when stressed or overwhelmed.
“We need a plan for what’s next. There’s nothing stopping us from doing the spell now,” Ty began.
“But I worry about doing it here, so close to the Occidens Coven. With Mel having recently left, there’s a chance the witches could come looking.
We should move farther inland, to a more neutral location, far away from any villages.
We can wait to make sure we weren’t pursued, and then do the spell there. ”
Ena nodded. That was a good plan, a smart plan. Looking to Cris and Turner, she saw that they also seemed to be in agreement, but Mel—
“That’s not where you do it,” Mel said, chiming in from where they sat by the fire.
“What do you mean?” Ty asked.
“You—I mean we—do the spell at night in a clearing surrounded by giant evergreen trees. I’ve seen it.”
“Do you mean the Sacred Grove?” Ena asked, her stomach bottoming out instantly at the mention of the cluster of ancient pine trees just outside the Auster Coven near the River Wry.
Mel shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s what it’s called, but if it’s as I described, then yes.”
“Why would we need to do it there?” Turner asked, looking between her and Mel.
“Because that’s where they did it before,” Ena answered for them, the realization dawning on her.
Snippets of the vision she’d had when she first put on the amulet came back to her.
The dark forest surrounding the witches and the rushing sound of…
the river. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized it before, but she’d been so distracted by all the other things she’d seen.
They’d done the spell in the Sacred Grove.
“That makes sense,” Cris chimed in. “The Sacred Grove is a powerful location—the connection to Gaia is strongest there because of the trees’ longevity.
They’ve borne witness to the Turning longer than any other living thing we know of.
That’s why witches love to hold our gatherings there for important events. ”
Ena was silently kicking herself. She’d been so focused on figuring out the elements to the spell and then getting an Aquilo and Occidens witch to join them, that she hadn’t yet considered that it would matter where they did the spell too. But like Cris said, that did, unfortunately, make sense.
Ty turned to her, clearly sensing her distress. “Is this true?” he asked.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “If my memory is correct, I think the original spell was done in the Sacred Grove, likely for the reasons Cris said, and if we want to recreate it, then…it would give us the best chance if we do it there.”
Ty nodded, the weight of this hitting him in the same way it was hitting Ena.
Because if they needed to go to the Sacred Grove, that meant they’d be close to the Auster Coven—her Coven—and that was incredibly risky. If she were recognized, there would be no way they could do the spell in secret.
“Alright then. I guess that’s where we’re going,” he said, giving off significantly more confidence than she felt.
“But I want to be sure—are there any other elements to the spell you think we’re missing?
Do we need anything else?” Ty asked her.
“Because once we go there…something tells me we’re only going to get one shot at this. ”
He was right. They’d be blessed to get in and out of the Sacred Grove unseen, so they needed to have everything thoroughly planned out if they wanted to have the best shot at success.
She ran through the checklist in her mind. They had the amulet—she understood its symbols and the meaning and intentions behind it, and she knew the spellwords they needed to say. They had a witch from each Coven, and they had a daemon and his blood.
His blood…
Another memory from her vision flashed before her: an athame slicing into the daemon’s wrist, making the daemon’s blood drip into a golden chalice. The chalice and the athame used to cut the daemon’s wrist—both of those were ritualistic Wiccan items. Items they didn’t currently have.
“Yes, actually,” Ena replied. “We’ll need a ceremonial chalice and an athame. Both of those were in my vision too.”
“Can’t we just use a regular cup and knife? Why do they have to be ceremonial?” Turner asked.
“No, I don’t think we can,” Ena explained.
“Ceremonial objects like that are anointed with water from the Sacred Pool and blessed by a witch. It marks them as special objects of Gaia, suited for enacting her will, and it’s that intention that makes them more powerful when used in spells.
If we were doing an ordinary, less-complicated spell, we might be able to get away with non-blessed objects, but with something like this…
we can’t risk not using them. Every piece adds to the power of the spell, and we’ll need it all to do something this big. ”
“Well, where can we get those things then?” Turner asked, as if it were no big deal to do so.
“Any of the Covens would have one,” she answered, her mind running through options. “But, of course, getting them without being noticed is the hard part.”
Silently, she chastised herself for not having the forethought to ask Cris to bring them with him when he left Aquilo, but honestly, she’d been so focused on recruiting a witch from each Coven, she had to remind herself that it was a blessing from Gaia that they’d even made it this far.
“I think it goes without saying that we shouldn’t go to Occidens to get one,” Ty said.
“That’d be far too dangerous given how recognizable Ena and I are, and it’s in the opposite direction,” Ty said, speaking her own thoughts aloud.
“That leaves Aquilo and Auster, and since we have to go towards Auster anyway…” He looked at her meaningfully, and she knew what he was going to ask before he said it.
“What do you think, Ena? Could you use your Gift to sneak in and get the objects we need?”
Ena’s heart sank. Could she do that? Use her Gift on members of her own Coven—potentially on Heran or Greya if she had to? She’d considered using it on Cris, and blessedly it hadn’t come to that, but even that had been borderline, so…she knew her answer almost immediately.
“No. I’m sorry, but no,” she said. “I can’t use my Gift on my own family like that. I know breaking the bond is important, but I don’t want to do it that way.”
Ty sighed, almost as if he’d been expecting that answer, but nodded in understanding.
“But that doesn’t mean I still can’t get them,” Ena explained.
“What do you mean?” Turner asked. “How else can you get them without giving us away?”
Ena took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure how the others, especially Ty and Turner would react to this, but it felt right to her.
“I want to reach out to my sister. I want to tell her what we’re planning and see if she can get the chalice and athame for us.”
“What?” Turner asked, shock in his voice. “You just want to walk up to your house and ask her? Is that wise? I thought she was skeptical last time you tried to explain this all to her.”
“She was,” Ena replied, feeling defensive of her sister all the sudden.
“But I want to try again. I know so much more now, and we have Cris and Mel to back me up in case she thinks it’s just Ty clouding my judgment.
” Not to mention, maybe it would help her cause to explain that she and Ty weren’t even together anymore anyway, and she was still choosing to do this.
“And I want to tell her, but I’m not delusional,” she continued.
“I don’t want to announce what we’re doing to the entire Coven, or even Heran, and put it up for debate.
I just want to tell Greya alone, and walking up to the house would not be the best way to do that. So I’m going to send her a message.”
“Send her a message like…?” Cris asked, his blond brows raising in question.
“Yes, I want to go to the Sacred Pool and use the blood-to-blood spell,” Ena declared.
“The blood-to-blood spell?” Ty asked. “You mean, the spell you were trying to do when I caught you there?”
“Yes, exactly,” Ena confirmed.
“Caught you there?” Cris asked in horror. She had yet to fill him in on all those details.