Then Ty grabbed his ax from his tent behind him and took off into the woods without a word to any of them.
Chapter Thirty-three
Ena
Tyhadbeengonefor 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 timealone. 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 meanwe—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 matterwherethey 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—herCoven—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 needanythingelse?” 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.
