“Speaking of fucked up…” she began, feeling the need to change the topic. “I’m sorry about everything that happened with theimperilast night.”
Looking sideways at Turner, she saw his smile fall, a look of guilt passing over his face.
“Is…is the man okay?” she asked gently. “Ty told me that you’re…responsible for them.”
“Yeah,” Turner said, as if grateful that she’d asked. “He’s okay. But just for the record,noneof that was your fault.”
“I know,” Ena said, nodding to herself. Didn’t mean she felt great about it, though. She knew she’d done the safest thing for everyone by playing along with Cole’s fucked-up game, but she still hated that she’d been a part of it. “So what is it you do for theimperi?” she asked. “Just like…look after them?”
“Something like that,” Turner said, looking away again and turning quiet.
They walked the rest of the way to the Archives in silence, so many follow-up questions on her tongue, but she got the sensethat whatever Turner did for his father and theimperi, he didn’t like talking about it, so she held it.
Once they arrived, Turner escorted her to her usual alcove before leaving to attend to his duties, and Ena turned her focus to figuring out the final piece to the binding ritual.
Now that they knew what all the symbols on the amulet represented and how they worked, Ena needed to understand the mysterious spellwords that she’d heard in her vision.
Spells had so much to do with intention, and if she didn’t know what the words meant, she wouldn’t be able to get the intention right to reverse it, and then the spell would fail.
So, for what felt like the hundredth time, she decided to look through the best resource they had—the witch’s journals Ty had gotten from Petyr. But as she flipped through one of them, seeing the same old references, she found herself wondering yet again who the witch who wrote them was. The journals gave no indication about their age, gender, Gift, or even which Coven they were from.
But that got Ena thinking…how would this witch, whoever they were, know about the amulet’s existence at all unless they were from Occidens? It made sense for them to be, but she hated to accept that as fact without evidence. Besides, the journal looked old, and there was always a chance that the amulet had at one time been with one of the other Covens.
Maybe it would be helpful if Ena could determine the witch’s Coven of origin for sure, so she started to flip through the journal looking for clues about that instead.
It was extremely dry stuff, and Ena’s eyes were starting to glaze over when she found an obscure trade reference near the end of the journal:
A man from Tyndell requested two vials of a pest resistance potion for his orchard, however since the fallout with the otherCovens after the dark spell, trade with Tyndell is no longer allowed by the treaty, so his request was rejected.
The passage was short, and the mention of the “dark spell” so innocuous that Ena almost didn’t catch it. Could it be referencing the binding ritual? She wasn’t sure, but the “fallout with the other Covens” had to be referencing the rivalry between Occidens and the other two Covens.
This told Ena several things, because if this witch had been no longer allowed to trade with Tyndell, she must’ve been from Occidens—Tyndell was located near Aquilo, and on their side of the treaty line.
Ena felt relieved—that was at least one mystery solved—but now there was a new one too. Because if the “dark spell” was indeed referencing the binding ritual, and she described the fallout as being due to that spell…was the binding ritual what originally caused the rivalry between the Covens?
That would be huge, if so. None of the witches truly knew what had caused the rivalry between the Covens—it had simply always been that way, for as long as they all remembered. Of course, now she wondered if the matriarchs had known all along, and if it was just another thing that had been kept from her. But, either way, it being the cause of the rivalry would only make sense if the Coven matriarchs disagreed about the spell somehow.
Ena wracked her brain trying to remember what she could about the three witches in her vision—what they looked like, what they felt.
One witch, the one with brown hair and blue eyes, had seemed to take satisfaction from the daemon woman’s pain and punishment. She’d clearly been the ringleader of it all.
But the other, the one with pale-blonde hair and hazel eyes, had seemed…concerned—trepidatious almost. Was it possible she didn’t fully agree with what was done? And if she were fromOccidens, that could explain why there was a falling out between the Covens afterwards. If their matriarch didn’t completely agree with what was done to the daemons, or came to regret it afterwards, that would explain the discord between them, and the subsequent treaty keeping them in separate territories.
It was a good theory, but there were still so many unanswered questions—like how the amulet ended up in Occidens anyway, and she still wasn’t any closer to deducing what the spellwords meant, but still, she felt pleased to have made some progress.
She was still flipping through the journals, looking for further confirmation of her theory, when a voice greeted her.
“Hey, beautiful,” Ty said as he approached her table.
“Ty,” she greeted, her face instantly lighting with a smile that felt beyond her control. “What are you doing here? It’s only midday.”
“I know. I finished up early for once and wanted to come see you. And help with the research, if you need it,” he said, sitting down at the table. His large frame seemed to take up so much space, and she couldn’t help but blush as he got close to her, thinking of last night.
“I’m glad you’re here, for several reasons,” she said, scooching a bit closer to him. “But mostly because I think I figured out something important.”
Ty looked around the Archives, making sure they were alone before he nodded at her to continue.
“I think a disagreement over the binding spell is what caused the rivalry between the three Covens,” she said.
