Gwen recoiled and turned her head away. Her thoughts swarmed with memories of the dragon, and of the instant its mesmeric gaze had swallowed her and she’d chosen to let herself fall into its abyss. Of that moment of cowardice that was hers alone.
‘We’re good,’ she heard herself say to Tabitha, as if from a long distance. ‘Let’s do the thing.’
Tabitha hesitated, shrugged, and began.
She lit the candles. She touched droplets from the abalone bowl of water to their foreheads. She gave them each a stone, smooth on one side and jagged with crystals on the other, to hold in their palms. She sprinkled hot ash from the fire over their hair.
‘Close your eyes,’ Tabitha told them, as she resumed her place by the fallen tree. ‘And speak with me.’
She began to chant. It was no language Gwen recognised, and though she was hardly an expert in linguistics, she got the feeling it was no language anyone else would have recognised either. Gwen heard Isobelle join in, falteringly at first, until she began to get used to the strange sounds. It took Gwen longer, but eventually the unfamiliar syllables became easier to speak, without having to concentrate so very much.
At first Gwen felt merely irritated – how was she meant to stay on guard for an intruder when she waschanting nonsense with her eyes closed? And then, as the time stretched on, her irritation transmuted into an almost unbearable restlessness. She cracked her eyes open, glancing at the surrounding woods, at Tabitha, and – lingering a little too long – at Isobelle. Her hand itched to touch her sword, but she had a damn crystal in her hand instead. She knew at any moment she would have to move, or else scream from frustration.
Nothing was happening. But, of course, that was to be expected. What good could chanting nonsense in the woods do?
God, I wish I had told Isobelle what the dragon did to me, the instant she ran to my side that night.
The thought came unbidden, and with it a rush of grief that nearly staggered Gwen. All this time and effort spent trying to hide how it had violated her soul, hide it from the girl she loved, the only person who really knew Gwen, reallysawGwen … all she had to do wastell her.
Her lips were still forming Tabitha’s chant, her voice still pouring forth sound.
A chill ran through Gwen, taking the place of that sudden, strange wave of emotion. What was it Tabitha had said?
This spell may seek out deception here …
A change had been spreading through Gwen’s thoughts as she chanted. Her mind had been narrowing, focusing, drawing inward to the core of her. Now, as their voicesrose higher, the words tumbling faster, her body began to sense a shift, too.
A heat, a tingling, like the first wave of sensation through a half-frozen limb warming by a fire. A quivering, golden light, as of sunlight reflecting off a thousand shivering aspen leaves – and yet Gwen’s eyes were closed. She could see the light anyway, feel the source of the warmth.
Magic, her mind said wildly, too lost in the rhythm of the chanting to find any thread of scepticism to hold on to.
The feeling had a direction, a specific location in the space to Gwen’s left. The sensation was as visceral as the instinct that told her, in a fight, where her enemy was without having to look. Only this time, that instinct told her who the source of the sensation was.
The energy was coming from Isobelle.
A cry split the chanting, and a heavy, crashing thud. Gwen wrenched her eyes open and looked first at Isobelle, who was looking back at her, eyes wide and luminous, but as startled as Gwen was.
It was Tabitha who had interrupted the ritual, having staggered back against her makeshift altar and knocked over several of the objects on it, including two of the candles. Gwen hurried forward and stamped out their flames, before taking a closer look at Tabitha. Her own heart was pounding, and it felt like she had just wokenfrom the most impossibly beautiful dream. She blinked hard and forced herself to focus.
‘It’s not working,’ Tabitha gasped, looking as dazed as Gwen felt. ‘Itwantsto work, but … there’s a blockage in the way. A secret still. One of you is hiding something.’
Gwen looked at Isobelle. Isobelle looked at Gwen. Between the moonlight above and the fire at Isobelle’s back, her expression was impossible to read.
‘Please excuse us a moment,’ Isobelle said to Tabitha, tilting her head to summon Gwen off to one side. Her manner was as polite and gracious as ever – her voice was shaking as though her entire world had upended itself.
They went some distance, until the campfire was nothing more than a dim orange glow, and Tabitha was out of earshot.
‘Did you feel that?’ Isobelle asked, the question bursting from her, her eyes burning with excitement.
Gwen shivered. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘How can I know what’s my own mind, and what’s … something else?’
Isobelle made an impatient sound in her throat. ‘Because I felt it too, that’s how.’ She drew a quaking breath. ‘All right, spill. What are you still hiding?’
Gwen took a step back, astonishment and defensiveness mingling into outrage. ‘Me? Why do you think I’m the one hiding things? You’re the one who had that letter from your parents all this time—’
‘But you know about that now!’ hissed Isobelle. ‘It isn’t secret anymore. It has to be to do with your nightmares, doesn’t it? You never talk about them, you never explain what happened between you and the dragon in that moment it held you paralysed – what about it haunts you still.’
‘What could that have to do with any of this?’ Gwen retorted, even as fear clenched tightly around her heart. God help her, but Isobelle was too smart.
