“I’ll answer that, if you answer something for me too,” she said, meeting his gaze. There was no more beating around the bush. It was time to address hard truths. And Ty clearly agreed.
“Okay,” Ty said, conviction in his voice. “I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
“Well,” she said, wondering where to start. “First of all, I’m not a cold-hearted bitch. I couldn’t just leave you to be murdered in cold blood while I fled into the woods. And I couldn’t leave you to bleed to death with no help either. And then, well…” She fell silent for a second. This was maybe more than she’d been prepared to share with this man who’d betrayed her trust, but she felt it needed to be said. “I’ve never used my magic like that—to harm others. And I’ve never used my Gift before. I was forbidden to use it, unless expressly for Gaia’s will. And… I used it to kill a man.” She paused, letting her words sink in. This was the first time she’d admitted it out loud, and the truth of it hit her like a ton of bricks. “I don’t quite know how I feel about that,” she continued. “And so, I’m not sure I’m ready to go home right now. I’m not sure I could face them,” she finished quietly, shame coloring her voice.
She hadn’t admitted that out loud either, but it was true. She didn’t know how she’d face Heran and Greya and the rest of her Coven after what she’d done. What would they think of her now? Witches were meant to maintain Gaia’s balance and help mortals. They allowed death, didn’t fight it when it wasnecessary, but they didn’t actively encourage it, and they never purposefully caused it. But she had, and she’d felt so alive doing it. And now, deep down, she wasn’t sure she was worthy of serving Gaia anymore.
Ty seemed to hear everything she didn’t say. He was quiet for a minute, listening to her. Then he spoke softly, but confidently. “Ena, you acted in self-defense. I can’t believe your Goddess, or your family, would fault you for that. Yes, the man was attacking me, your sworn enemy,” the corner of his mouth curved up slightly at that description, “but had he killed me, he would have come for you next. And honestly…I didn’t recognize those men, but there’s a good chance their lawless state was a direct result of daemonic intervention. That guilt should be on me, not on you.”
Ena was surprised. This was the first time she’d ever heard him express any sort of regret for serving Iblis. She didn’t know what to make of that. She tried to take his words to heart, though, and they did soothe her guilt ever so slightly.
She nodded at him, but there was something else that weighed on her—something she’d barely been able to admit to herself. And Ty, being what he was, was the safest person she could think to say this to.
“I think,” she started quietly, “when I used my magic like that, when I gave myself over to my Gift…I think I was channeling Iblis’s will, not Gaia’s.”
Ty stared at her, his brow furrowed in concern. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, Heran told me that some Gifts could be shared between daemons and witches because our magic comes from the same source. We were created jointly by Iblis and Gaia.” Ena waited to see a strong reaction at this information, but when Ty didn’t give one, she continued. “I know that my Gift is one that daemons usually have, so maybe, when I use it, I’m naturally more inclined to channel Iblis, rather than Gaia. I mean, I feltso scared and chaotic during the fight, I didn’t know what to do, so I let something…else inside me take over. Something that felt disordered and disruptive, and not at all like Gaia. But,” Ena added, looking away as tears of shame flooded her eyes, “I didn’t dislike it. I felt powerful and…I know in the moment, that saved me, but it was wrong.”
Ty reached out with his hand, as if to comfort her, then brought it back as if thinking twice. He was quiet for a minute as her words sunk in. “Look at me, Ena,” he said. When she didn’t, couldn’t, lift her gaze to him, he reached out gently with his hand and tilted her chin towards him. Their eyes met, and his were solemn and filled with understanding. “Violence…it requires that. It requires you to give in to the absolute chaos of life and death. Even if you didn’t want to, you did what you had to do, and it sounds like you know that. Who’s to say whether it was Gaia’s will or not? I won’t judge you, and no one else has to ever know.”
He gently released her chin but she didn’t look away. His words warmed her heart more than they should. For a minute, she felt like she was speaking once more to Ty the young mortal, not Ty the grown daemon. The way he seemed to understand her, and she him. How had they gotten so far from this? How were they back here once again?
“Can I ask you something then?” Ena asked, her tone serious.
“Alright,” he said. The sunset illuminated his face in golden purples and blues, and he met her stare with his eternally intense gaze.
“Why didn’t you come back? All those years ago.” Ena’s voice shook, even though she tried to steel it. “You promised you would. And…I know you regret it. I understand that it should never have happened, because of what we are.” Saying those words, though she’d tried to convince herself a thousand timesover that they were true, still felt like a knife to her heart. “But I need to know. Was it all a lie?”
Ty looked away from her to stare at the fire. For a second, she wasn’t sure if he would answer, that maybe she was wrong to bring this up and they should have left the past in the past, but then he looked up at her again, and that intense vulnerability was back in his eyes. There was sadness there, and regret, and longing, but underneath it, Ena could feel his simmering rage.
“I wanted to come back, Ena. So badly,” he said quietly, intensely. “I tried, the next year. I tried to convince my uncles to let me go back, but they wouldn’t. That summer…” He sighed, shaking his head slightly. “You probably guessed this already, but we weren’t on that trip to establish trade relationships for our metal goods. We were there on a mission from Iblis to spread disease. It was my first mission, actually. My first time mingling with mortals and witches. One of my uncles has the power to amplify the spread of infectious diseases through touch, and so he mingled with travelers during your Litha celebration to spread a plague that they would carry back to their home villages. I was there to assist him and add to the cover.”
Ena stared at him in horror, memories from the fall and winter after they met clicking into place. “I remember the outbreak that year. We worked constantly that fall and winter to keep people from dying in villages all up and down the Chasm Road. That was you?”
“My uncle, but yes,” Ty confirmed, a defensiveness in his voice. “It was us. That’s what daemons do, Ena…whether we like it or not.” His eyes turned hard as he stared at her.
“And you don’t like it?” Ena asked. She’d never thought of daemons as being reluctant servants of Iblis. She thought they all did it gladly and willingly.
“No, I don’t,” he replied, looking back at the fire. “Not always. But it doesn’t change what I have to do. And that’s why I couldn’tcome back. That next summer, after we met, I tried to convince them to bring me on another mission with them, thinking I could sneak off and go see you. But they wouldn’t allow it. I think they knew,” he said ruefully. “I was supposed to mingle with the witches and the mortals that summer, to maintain our cover, but I think they saw that I got a little too…invested in you.”
Ty paused, as if waiting to see if she would say anything, but Ena was speechless. This was more than she knew what to do with.
“The summer after that,” he continued, “I went on my own. I wanted to see you that badly.” He smiled sadly at this confession, shaking his head at his own foolishness. “I made it halfway there before they caught up with me and dragged me back. They beat me within an inch of my life and said they’d do the same to you if I tried it again. And that’s when I realized that I was a fool.” Ty’s voice turned hard again, the rage he felt creeping into it like a spreading wildfire. “I was so incredibly stupid for ever thinking something could be possible between us.”
He looked at Ena then, and his eyes were filled with a desperate, cold certainty. “You didn’t know I was a daemon, but I knew you were a witch. And I knew what happened to my mother. So, after they finally beat some sense into me, I decided to forget you. In fact,” he scoffed, seeming to get angrier now at these recollections, “I spent years sleeping with anyone and everyone who would have me, trying to get you out of my head, but it didn’t help. I never forgot you, Ena. Never. In fact, I’m so obsessed with you, I think you’ve ruined me for anyone else for the rest of my life. And part of me hates you for it, because I know I can never have you.”
His green eyes were glowing in the fire as darkness fell around them. His face was hard, and there was pain behind his eyes, mixed with the rage that she knew was always there, just under the surface. Whether it was for her, or his uncles, or the wholeGoddess-damned world, she wasn’t sure. But hearing his words, hearing his confession, she felt it too. And it was too much; it was all too much.
“You hateme?” Ena asked incredulously. She couldn’t believe the hypocrisy of that statement, and everything she’d worked so hard to push down, down, down, came exploding out of her. “I waited for you that next summer, and the next, and the next. I asked every traveler I saw if they knew how to get a letter to Yalta, but no one had even heard of it. I was pathetic,” Ena spat. “By the fourth year, I knew you weren’t coming back and I felt like such an idiot.”
Ena quieted then, shaking her head. She spoke her next words carefully. “I know you’re not the same person you were back then—you’ve made that abundantly clear. I mean, Gaia, I thought you were mortal. But I’m not the same girl you met either. Something died in me when you didn’t come back. Something broke. And I’ll never get it back.”
Tears filled her eyes at the truth of those words. She’d felt so broken, so lost, since that summer. She’d never been able to get back the feeling of being alive like she was when she was with him. It was as if she’d put all her hopes and dreams for her life into one person, who had abandoned her, leaving her empty. And Gaia, she knew how pathetic that sounded, how fucked up that was, and it made her even angrier.
“I’ve pushed away every single guy who’s tried to get close to me since then. For fuck’s sake, I haven’t even—” Ena paused, shaking her head. Some wounds were too deep to reveal, even now. “I told myself I just didn’t want a relationship, that I hadn’t met the right person, but I think a part of me has always been waiting for you to come back. And now, here you are, you came back. And you’ve absolutely ruined me. So you know what? I think I hate you too.”
She went quiet, letting her confession echo through the woods. All she could hear was her heart beating, and all she could do was fight back her own tears.
