Page 53 of The Witch and His Crow

‘It was another reason I asked you to meet me. Something I felt that you deserved to know, which I’m beginning to regret since you’ve thrown a pile of accusations at me.’

‘A stone?’

He turned it over in his fingers, arching a brow. Carved onto the other side was two words.

The Enduring.

‘A clue,’ Arwyn corrected, handing it out to me. I took it, feeling the warmth of his body etched into the stone’s surface. ‘Recognise it?’

Frustration twinged inside me, like a cord pulled taut and plucked. ‘Are you trying to be smart?’

‘Yes and no,’ Arwyn replied, focusing on the stone with a smile. Then he looked up at me. ‘What about you, have you worked out how I know where to find these clues?’

‘No,’ I said, too quickly.

‘Think,little kitty?—’

‘Would younotcall me that?’

Arwyn surprised me by tapping the side of my head. It should have been patronising, but my skin seemed to tingle, betraying me. ‘What could the library and the skipping stone possibly have in common?’

‘Just spit it out,’ I said.

‘It’s your mother’s story, Hector.’ I almost stopped breathing. ‘All the clues were left by her, for the next hopeful Grand High to find. The library, the lake she visited when she skipped stones with your father. It didn’t take a genius for me to study the documents depicting her time during the Witch Trials, to decipher the key moments that made her experience. It wasn’t a coincidence that The Witch Trials this time are hosted at the castle, the same place hers had been. She left them…foryouto find.’

Arwyn watched me, carefully studying my reaction. I was hyperaware of his attention and tried everything in my power to steel my expression. I failed. Because holding the skipping stone in my hand grounded me to the truth of it.

Memories always weighed heavy when one held it.

Like most of the competitors, I knew everything about my mother’s time during the Witch Trials. I’d read her recount over and over, not for the purpose of ever thinking I’d partake like her, but because it made me feel closer to her.

The library was the first place she’d met my father. Where they made a similar truce like Romy and I had. A coven, whichquickly became something more. The lake was the one we had passed when we ran from the wall of fog. It was where my parents allegedly stayed for the duration of the Witch Trials. The structure of metal and glass I’d seen, was that the place they’d used as a base? Although, as far as I remembered, the stories didn’t tell of my parents skipping stones, but the faded memories I had of my childhood certainly proved it meant something to them.

They’d taken me to a lake in the middle of the New Forest where we’d spent hours casting stones out across the water, whilst my father roasted marshmallows over a campfire. The memory assaulted me before I threw up my barrier and blocked it out.

‘Why are you…’

A pain lashed through my mind, silencing me. It was so sharp, so powerful, that I wondered if it was my body’s way of punishing me for feeling so weak. Between Arwyn’s gentle expression, and the reason he wanted to meet me, I was whittled down to a little boy who craved his parents, whilst feeling the closest to them he’d been in eighteen years.

Perhaps it was a little to do with that, until a voice began as a whisper in the back of my thoughts.

‘Hector…’

I whipped around, searching the landscape, wondering who spoke it. Arwyn must have thought I was crying, because he laid a soft hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve taken you by surprise, it certainly wasn’t my intention…’

My lips parted, a reply starting to come out when the whisper became more of a desperate scream. ‘Hector, do not move. Stay here. I can feel you. I am coming…’

‘Caym?’ I spoke aloud, fisting the skipping stone as reality sunk in.

‘Who else would it be, you fool?’ My familiar’s voice filled my head loud and clear.

‘Are you talking to me?’ Arwyn asked.

Relief blossomed in me, like a flower in spring. Because in the distance, a speck of black speared through the clear sky. A crow—mycrow. Which meant one thing for certain. Wherever the fog had deposited me was far from the boundaries of the castle.

‘Not you,’ I said, smiling to myself, knowing I needed Caym’s presence in such a vulnerable moment. I didn’t even care if Arwyn found out about my familiar. It wasn’t even a concern as I began running towards my familiar, leaving the witch behind.

We were so close when I noticed something else behind my familiar. A cloud of black. It was moving in pace with my familiar, chasing at his tail. And the closer it got, the more I noticed what it was.

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