Ty sighed in frustration, and for a second, Ena thought he wouldn’t respond, but then he did. “No. I never met her. My father took me after she gave birth to me, and I never saw her again. I don’t know much, but I know their union wasn’t forced, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“No,” Ena said hurriedly, horror rushing through her at the thought. “No, I wasn’t implying that.” Then after a beat, she asked, “So what happened to her?”
Ty was quiet for a second, seemingly focused on dodging some particularly protuberant tree roots. Ena was aware that she was prying into private matters, but when someone kidnapped you, lied to you, and casually threw the loss of your virginity in your face, you had a right to be somewhat tactless, right?
“Her Coven banished her and she wasn’t welcome in the Underworld, so she left. I don’t know where she went.”
Ena was quiet after that. She hated Ty, for everything he’d put her through since she’d met him, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel a little sympathy for him. She’d lost her parents at a young age, too, but to know that your mother had likely suffered because of your birth was a lot to deal with. She felt the urge to change the subject quickly, so as not to force either of them to dwell on the past.
“How does your Gift work then?”
“Thevenator?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never met another witch who had it before.”
Ty looked over at her in surprise. Did she say something wrong? Before she could dwell on it, the moment was gone, and he answered her question.
“Well, I can see really far, farther than most humans, even in the dark. I can see a wider spectrum of colors, too, than I used to, before I got my Gift. And I have an unparalleled sense of direction. It’s virtually impossible for me to get lost. And I also have a heightened sense of hearing and smell, like a hellhound.” Ty smiled to himself at that. Ena had heard of the mystical beasts that kept the daemons company in the Underworld. She’d thought they were a myth, just like so many other things having to do with daemons. Ty spoke about them with something like…affection on his face, which bewildered her to no end.
“That’s what allowed me to find you, even in the rain,” he continued. “You were surprisingly fast, I’ll give you that. And you were right—you didn’t leave much of a trail, but I could still smell you.”
Ena scrunched her nose up at that. That was…weird. She wondered what she smelled like to him. “How did you get your Gift without a Summoning? Do daemons have a Summoning?” she asked, changing the subject away from her smell.
“Sort of. We have a version of it where we receive our Powers from Iblis. It’s…intense.”
Ena was quiet for a second, wondering if she should pry further. She didn’t know how much he’d be willing to share, but surprisingly, Ty continued on his own.
“Daemons believe that in order to prove ourselves worthy of Iblis, we must face our own suffering and chaos. The Trial, as we call it, is where we do that. All daemons go through it at age twenty-seven, and if we survive, we are granted a Power from Iblis and are bound to serve him forevermore.”
“Face your own suffering and chaos? What does that mean?”
“Essentially…we are left alone in the deepest part of the Underworld for days on end. No light, no food, no water. It…does things to you. To be alone, in the dark, that long.” Ty’s face took on a haunted look, like he had been dragged into thememories of his own Trial. “After a time, if Iblis shows himself to you, you receive your Power. Only then are you allowed to emerge.”
Ena paused at that. That sounded…horrific. The worst she’d had to do was drink the burning psilovenom. Granted, it had made her hallucinate and then feel like shit the next day, but to essentially be left to go mad in a dark cave for days on end was unimaginably cruel and terrifying. Ena couldn’t believe Ty had gone through that. Turner and Steig too.
“So when…” Ena hesitated, not wanting to dredge up painful memories. “When you went through that, you emerged with a Poweranda Gift?”
“Yes.”
“But how is that possible? Did Gaia come to you too?”
“I don’t know,” Ty replied. “I don’t think she did, but I’ve never… I don’t know much about her, really.”
This whole conversation was starting to make Ena’s head hurt. How Ty, a half-witch, could have received his Gift from Gaia without her directly Gifting it to him made no sense. Ena went silent as she contemplated this new information. Once again, she was struck by how similar daemons and witches were. Both received their magic when they were twenty-seven. Both had to undergo a special ceremony of sorts to receive it. She guessed it made sense, given what Heran had told her about all magic coming from the same source. She wondered what else they might share in common.
They continued on the rest of the afternoon in relative silence, stopping to rest once or twice more when they came across a water source. Ena was pleased that her fingers and toes seemed to have returned to normal today, and her muscles were clearly adjusting to the long days of walking, because they didn’t hurt quite so much anymore.
Still, Ena was grateful when the sun began to get low in the sky, and Ty declared that they should stop and make camp.
Ena built the fire herself this time while Ty went off to set a trap for small game—if Gaia granted them, they could have something other than dried jerky to eat in the morning—but Ena didn’t try to escape while he was gone. She knew it was futile after hearing about his Gift.
By the time he returned, Ena had cleared the area of sticks and pokey plants, then made a small nest of leaves on a bed of moss and was getting as comfortable as possible. Everything was a bit muddy still from the heavy rain, but it was better than nothing. Gaia, she was getting incredibly tired of sleeping on the ground, and she thought that she might just spend an entire week in bed when she got home. The plus side of falling into the Sacred Pool, however, was that her dress and cloak were slightly cleaner than before. She’d take what she could get right now.
Turning her back on Ty and the fire, she started to lay down.
“Uh-uh, little viper. You’re sleeping with me tonight.”
She jerked back up to find Ty beckoning her over to where he was sitting on the other side of the fire.
