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After palpating it a moment, she tries again and watches me for a reaction.
Satisfied I won’t die of a twisted ankle, she digs her knee into the toe of my boot to lock it in place. She yanks on the crisscrossed laces to sharply tighten them.
Like before, she hovers over me on the ground. She’s barely touched me until now, but watching her use long, deft fingers to take care of me warms my chest.
Steady, efficient hands retie and then double knot the bow. She gives a final jerk on the loops to make it impossibly tight.
When she glances up, a sly smile spreads across her face.
“I think you’ll live,” she informs me.
“Thanks. I was waiting for your confirmation.”
Brynn rolls her eyes and stands. She pivots and starts back down the mountain.
My hands are gross and wet leaves stick to my legs, but when I attempt to get up, I’m frozen in place.
Because under my hand, cracked in two and icy cold, is one of the moonstones that formed the ward line.
And its illumination is dim.
Chapter Two
“I’m going to be in so much shit,” I whine.
Brynn yanks harder on my wrist to haul me up the mountain. The cracked moonstone swings in her other hand for momentum while she drags me to the cabin.
“Then make haste,” she replies.
“Dislocating my shoulder will slow us down.”
After my initial panic attack over breaking the stone subsided, reality crashed into me like a fireball.
There is a gaping hole in our ward line.
The land isn’t protected. Things can get in—and take our stores out.
To make matters worse, tomorrow is the festival to purify and renew the land. If anything gets in that shouldn’t be here, not only will the coven have to deal with the damage, but we may miss the blessings for a whole year.
And, possibly worse, it’ll prove to Miri yet again that I deserve to be a lowly coat room attendant.
At least I haven’t started crying yet.
“Miri is going to punish us for weeks,” I bemoan.
Brynn swings around to me.
“If you’d bothered to tie your shoelaces, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” she spits.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. If you hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t have fallen.”
“If you’d been watching the trail and not my ass, you’d have seen me stop.”
“Watching your ass means I should be aware when you stop.”
“And yet you didn’t see the stone.”
“I didn’t fall on it on purpose!”
