***
Images came to her, quick and disjointed.
She saw faces she didn’t recognize. She saw a moonless sky and a darkened forest.
Three women were holding hands, standing in a sacred circle. They chanted spellwords she’d never heard as they surrounded another woman kneeling on the ground.
The kneeling woman was bloodied and weeping. Ena felt her fear and her guilt. She saw the tears track down her face, leaving lines in the dried blood there.
She saw an athame drag across someone’s wrist—she couldn’t tell whose. Then she saw the blood collecting in a golden chalice. Ena’s wrist burned as if her own had been slit. Ithurt, and her vision was blurred.
She saw the amulet. It somehow seemed to glow in the moonless night as one of the women, one of the witches, held it by the chain and dipped into the chalice until it was covered in blood.
She heard the kneeling woman beg for mercy as the amulet was placed over the head of one of the witches—a brown-haired woman with gray streaks, her blue eyes impassive and cold. She felt the woman’s disdain and hatred for the kneeling woman as if it were her own.
Then the kneeling woman screamed as if her heart was being ripped from her body, and Ena screamed too. She watched the woman collapse on the ground as the amulet stopped glowing.
The brown-haired woman smiled as she removed the amulet from around her neck, and Ena felt her satisfaction. She turned to hand it to one of the other women who’d been chanting. She had pale-blonde hair and hazel eyes. Ena felt her wariness and concern.
She saw the three women leave the forest, abandoning the body of the woman who had kneeled. The woman was still alive, she was breathing, but something seemed…different about her. Something seemedless.
Finally, she saw the amulet, sitting innocuously in the box she’d found it in, and as the lid snapped closed, Ena’s reality returned to her.
***
She lay on the floor, staring up into Ty’s face.
“Ena?” he asked frantically, his voice tight with fear. He stroked her hair from her face. “Can you hear me now? Are you okay?”
Clutching her head, she sat up and looked down at her chest to find the amulet gone.
“What the fuck was that? What happened?” Ty asked, still searching her body as if he could find a physical wound.
“I—I don’t know,” Ena said as she looked around. They were still in the altar room. Everything had been turned over, and she lay on the ground next to the trunk she’d found the amulet in.
“Did you see something? Your eyes they…went white. And you were screaming. You didn’t respond to me and then you collapsed on the floor.”
“I… Where’s the amulet?” she asked, suddenly realizing that it was gone.
“I took it off you,” Ty said harshly, as if this was obvious. “It was hurting you.”
Ena’s mind frantically tried to understand what had happened, what she’d just seen. It must have been a vision, triggered by the power of the amulet. She knew that visions were possible, but extremely rare. They were usually sent by Gaia herself and would occur in sacred spaces or when someone came into contact with a sacred object.
But what had it been a vision of? The past? The future? Because she saw the amulet end in the box she’d just found it in, she had to assume it was the past. What had they been doing? Ena wasn’t entirely sure, but whatever it was had felt…wrong. So wrong.
Whatever it was, she Knew it was an abomination of Gaia’s power.
Ena looked up at Ty again. “Tell me why you need the amulet, Ty.”
Ena had never asked him directly, not since that first night. But after everything she’d just seen, everything she’d just felt, she needed to know. Something horrible had occurred, and Ena had a feeling there was much more to this amulet than she had originally assumed.
He shook his head. “Now is not the time. We have to go. You made a lot of noise when you screamed, and we need to get out of here before we are found.”
At that moment, Steig and Turner came bursting into the room, weapons drawn.
“What the fuck is going on? Did you find the amulet? We heard Ena scream.” Steig glanced furiously between the two of them, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Yes, I have it, but we can talk about it later. We need to move now before we’re discovered,” Ty replied, dragging Ena to standing.
