Page 31 of The Arcane God

“Really?” he asked, popping his head up to look at her. “Wow! Can I?” he asked, moving to place his hand on her stomach.

“Sure. I don’t think you’ll be able to feel it, though. It was barely there, but I definitely felt it.”

Turner held his hand gently on her for a few seconds before removing it and shaking his head and smiling lightly.

“What is it?” she asked skeptically. “There’s no way you felt something.”

“No, you’re right, I didn’t. It’s just…” Turner looked at her, his eyes welling with tears. “Ty should be here for this.”

Ena looked away from him, not having the capacity to hold his grief as well as her own right now.

“But in a way, it’s like he’s still kinda here, you know? Inside you,” Turner said, as if that was supposed to help her. Ena knew what he meant—that this tiny piece of Ty would be inside her child forever, no matter what.

But somehow, the idea made her angry, and she suddenly wanted to shout at him—because that statement made it seem like he’d accepted that Ty was gone.

“He’s not really gone. He could still come back,” she wanted to argue. That was what she told herself, because the alternative—that he was really gone, and she’d have to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to him forever—was unbearable.

Blessedly, she was distracted from her painful thoughts when she heard shuffling outside the tent.

She and Turner looked at each other—he had heard it too.

“Is it…?” he asked, his voice low and cautious.

Ena shook her head. “Not an animal,” she said. Her Knowing had told her as much. “A person.”

Could it possibly be…?

She all but ran out of the tent, throwing her shoes on as she went, Turner following suit. Did she dare hope…?

But as her head emerged from the tent, her heart sank, and her stomach immediately tightened. Because standing in the middle of the snowy forest was a man—but it wasn’t her husband.

He was older, in his mid-fifties maybe, with jet-black hair and dark-as-night eyes. He was covered in various animal skins, stitched together and draped over his head and body to keep him warm. His features were strong and defined, but he was pale—so deathly pale he almost looked translucent.

And he held a bow pointed directly at her and Turner.

“Do not move,” he said. Ena understood his words, but something about the way he spoke was…different—the vowels were elongated, giving them an eerie quality she’d never heard before.

The man didn’t take his eyes off Ena and Turner as they slowly rose to standing, putting their hands up to show they meant no harm, but he tracked their movements with the deathly sharp tip of a bone arrow all the same.

Ena’s heart raced, and she felt her Gift surge inside her, ready to be used to protect her and Turner if need be.

Then she heard more footsteps approaching from behind them and turned just in time to see a middle-aged woman about her size emerge from the woods, her hand wrapped around a bone knife that Ena felt slowly press against her throat.

She swallowed, feeling the cold tip of the knife’s blade move with the motion.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that, like the man, the woman was covered head to toe in stitched-together furs, but Ena could see her eyes peeking out from under her hood—light green with a dark-green ring around them.

Ty’s eyes.

The familiarity of them was a punch to the gut, and Ena’s breath caught.

“Gaia, it’s you,” Ena blurted out.

The woman looked at her in shock, her eyes narrowing. “Gaia?” she asked. “I haven’t heard that name invoked in a long time.” Ena noted that, unlike the man, the way the woman spoke was normal, as she would expect. She sounded exactly like any other person from back home.

“I’m a witch. Of course I invoke Gaia,” Ena said, speaking slowly and calmly, so as to not spook either of them, but inside, she was frantic with excitement. “And you…you’re a witch, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the woman replied, her voice filled with skepticism. “How did you know that? Who are you?”