At first, my exhausted, fear-strained mind attributes the creaks outside to the noises of this old building. It’s shifting in the wind, groaning with age—
But the creaks turn to thuds. The unmistakable noises of a body climbing closer.
Then the rattling of the iron lock being lifted, a key fitted, twisted.
Alertness jolts through me, a flame flashing in the dark, and I launch to my feet, my four satchels gripped in both hands.
I cross the room to stand next to the door, my body flush against the wall.
The moment he opens that door, he’ll get a face full of protection spells, which should stun him enough that I can shove him aside, leap out, and run like hell.
My heart slows as the lock clicks.
I sip in a breath, muscles coiled, pulse thudding in my clenched jaw. The manacles clink against themselves as I readjust my grip on the bundles, and I go rigid, willing them to silence. The air around me smells of earthy bay leaves and rich cloves, such familiar scents that every blink tells me I’ll wake up in my own bed, in my own cottage, and all of this will have been a horrific dream.
The door opens.
I watch his arm push it inward, but he pauses. Letting his eyes adjust to the darkness; outside, it’s afternoon, but in here, there are no other light sources, nothing to break the shadows.
Which works in my favor.
I flatten my body to the wall by the door, satchels held to my chest.
The kapitän eases forward. He hooks one leg inside, then the other, and the moment he’s standing fully next to me, all of time seems to stop.
His gaze is on the bulk of the room. Searching for me. His face turns, turns, in another breath, he’ll see me—
I move.
One protection satchel flies, striking him directly in the chest, and the air explodes with a powder of wood and herbs and magic.
Is the cloud bigger than it should be?
Does it…spark a little, like a fire, like more magic than I should be capable of?
I don’t think about it. I can’t. This is my one chance, and I will take it.
I heave my body into his, knocking him off-balance, and I spin, not hesitating as I hurl myself out the window. The clear, empty space opens for me—
But then—
Then—
There’s nothing there. Nothing.
But my body rebounds off that nothingness as though I tossed myself onto a wall, and I bounce back into the room, the breath knocked out of me.
The kapitän is still coughing behind me, still distracted by my spell, so I leap again—
And bounce right back into the house.
What—
What did he do?
I whirl on him and launch another protection satchel. He dodges it, teetering left so it vanishes down the lower level shaft.
“What spell did you cast on this place?” I shriek at him. “Are you—are you a witch?”
He’s not, though; I would have sensed it. I would have felt it, the magic humming in his blood.
The kapitän lurches for me, but I hold up one of my last two satchels, and he stops, arms out, a fine dusting of spell powder graying his hair and skin.
“Of course not,” he says, voice gravelly. He coughs again. “There’s no spell. It’s a house fort.”
“A house—no, I can’t leave!” I point at the door. “You put a barrier so I can’t—”
The blank look on his face stops me.
There’s no magic in him. He didn’t cast anything, but there is magic around that opening.
So someone cast a spell.
I feel the weight of the protection satchel in my hand. A satchel I’d intended to use to stop only him from harming me.
My eyes go to the opening. It’s a two-story drop; I likely would’ve broken at least an arm.
Was it my protection spell that kept me from jumping out of this building?
It shouldn’t have been that powerful, that uncontrolled. The spell I cast was against attackers, not against all bodily harm.
My mind heaves.
I remember the spell I cast on the kapitän’s sister. Hilde.
How she was just…gone.
Did she run away? Or did my spell actually send her away? Somewhere safe, somewhere the hexenjägers couldn’t reach her.
Unease crawls up my spine. Something isn’t right. With my magic. With me, maybe.
I didn’t give in, though. This isn’t wild magic. It isn’t.
The kapitän twists toward me, but I’m not quick enough. He knocks the satchel out of my upraised hand, and when I spin to smash the other one into his face, he ducks, grabs my wrist, and flips me around so my back plants against his firm chest. The last satchel falls from my hand, and he kicks it down into the lower level.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His growl vibrates down my spine.
“You can’t with the spell I cast,” I say, breathless, “but that doesn’t stop me from hurting you.”
I slam my heel down on the top of his foot. He wavers, and I shove out of his arms, but where can I go? Back down to the inescapable cellar? Maybe if I climb purposefully out the window, my spell will let me pass—
The kapitän tackles me to the floor.
Panic sends cold sweat across my skin as I drop, the breath huffing out of me, but through it, I can feel my heart hammering on the wood, the floorboards indenting into my stomach, and the weight of the kapitän on my back, the full hard breadth of his body against mine—it’s too much, too real, too far past the point of no return.
I can’t help it—I scream.
The kapitän lifts up off of me, just a breath of space, and it makes me realize he didn’t land his full weight on me. I’m struck again by how huge he is compared to me, how immovable, and how fragile I am at his mercy.
My scream pitches, catching in my throat, tripping on my own hesitation—if he is so much stronger than me, why hasn’t he hurt me yet?
“Schiesse,” he hisses, mostly to himself, and he moves only to press my arms over my head. I scream again and writhe, trying to buck him off, something, fight back—
He reaches up to my wrists.
And unlocks my manacles.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says again, punctuating each word.
He moves away from me, taking the manacles with him.
I scramble off the floor, putting my back to the corner, breath hoarse in my lungs. My wrists burn at the freedom, the cold air hitting the raw skin like knives.
He’s standing between me and the door, which he leaves open, maybe realizing how dark it is in here, how abyss-like. But even the pale glow of the clouded sun outside does little to shed light on us, casting him in oblong gray shadows.
“Prove it,” I snap. “Let me go.”
“I can’t do that.”
I laugh. It’s cold and brittle.
“I can’t do that,” he repeats with force, “because every hexenjäger in the city is looking for you. And I need you to tell me—exactly—where you sent my sister. Also”—he pauses, and I see his tongue run across his lips, a self-deprecating look of exhaustion that ages him in the low light— “I need your help.”
I go slack against the wall. “What could you possibly need with a witch?”
He frowns at me. “I told you. I’m going to save everyone.”
What he said to me in the cellar. That wasn’t a hallucination?
None of that was.
This hexenjäger…
…wants to set all the prisoners free.
I don’t move. Not to fight back. Not to run. Not to protest.
The kapitän takes that as tentative agreement, and he reaches into a bag at his waist, pulls out a lantern.
When he lights it, his hand goes to the door. My whole body stiffens as he closes it, too aware of how alone we are, of how no one still knows that this hexenjäger has me.
My fear isn’t as potent, though, giving way to acidic confusion.
And that confusion surges up even more when the kapitän motions to the table at the back of the room, that one chair.
“Sit, please?” he asks. “I have a lot to tell you, and little time in which to do it.”