The heat of the water was a heavy, liquid silk that seemed to pull the tension directly out of my bones. Beside me, Kaspar was silent, his head tilted back in the moss and his eyes closed. Steam curled around us, glowing with the iridescent light of the quartz dome.
“Gisela constantly wrote about ‘marrying the beast to the earth,’ but she never explained what it meant,” I started, my voice echoing softly off the crystal walls. “It seems to just be a metaphor.”
Kaspar opened his eyes, they were still hazy. “Gisela believed that the mountain wasn’t just a place, but a living consciousness.”
I moved closer to him, the water rippling against my skin. The fear that had defined so much of my stay here had been replaced by a fierce, protective ache. I looked at the silver scars that marred hi
