Ella's POV
The moon was a sliver above us, faint and cold, like a blade pressed against the sky.
I followed Remo through the trees in silence, heart pounding with every step. He hadn't said where we were going—only that the mark I'd seen on the old well couldn't be ignored. There was a tension in his posture, a readiness I recognized now: the calm before something breaks.
His back was rigid beneath the fitted black of his coat, his voice low as he muttered, "The sigil is old. Older than any witch mark I've seen."
"It reacted to me," I whispered. "It didn't glow until I got near it."
He glanced at me then, just briefly, his expression unreadable. "Exactly."
We stopped in a clearing thick with mist. In the center stood a stone archway, moss-covered and half-swallowed by roots. The grou
