Where is she?
I scramble up. Smoke is everywhere. Gagging, my eyes bleary, I try to look around.
“Hilde?” I choke out.
No answer. But a quick scan of the one-room cottage tells me she’s not here. The rest of the hexenjägers are still sprawled on the floor, knocked out. I don’t remotely care about them. I don’t even bother to check if they’re still alive as I race past their inert bodies, launching over the broken chair and upturned table.
Some of this smoke is green.
Images scramble in my brain.
Where is my sister?
And also: Who was that?
The back door is wide open. Someone—a young woman—burst into my sister’s cottage and threw something…green smoke? At Hilde. And Hilde’s gone.
She’s…gone.
No. No, no, no, my brain screams. Hilde can’t be gone. The whole plan will go to shit if—
There. By the garden post. A woman. Hilde?
No.
The other one.
I rush, boots thundering across the garden as I race to her form. My mind can’t keep up with my body’s actions, but it feels good to act. The woman doesn’t appear conscious, but I don’t risk it. I throw myself on her, pinning her shoulders to the ground with my knees. She moans, eyelids fluttering, and I flick my hand out, calling for the silver dagger hidden in my sleeve.
I may be the kapitän of the hexenjägers, second-in-command, but I have never, not once, believed that witches were real.
Until now.
“What are you?” I growl at the thing beneath my knees, blade held to her delicate white throat.
Her eyes focus slowly. Then they narrow, full of hatred.
She works her mouth, tongue running over her teeth as her lips twist derisively. I mirror her snarl unconsciously, then apply pressure to the dagger. She swallows, the up-and-down of her neck muscles making her skin redden under the blade’s edge. They say silver hurts witches.
Good.
“Where is she?” My voice is harsh, hurried. I think I hear movement from behind me. The other hexenjägers are waking up.
“Who?” The witch has the audacity to look confused.
I spit out a curse at her. “My sister.”
“Your…?” The rest of her words die as I lean harder against her throat. A thin red line of blood sprouts under the dagger.
It would be so easy to kill her.
And I would be praised for it. Lauded as the hero who single-handedly killed a witch that blasted a whole hexenjäger unit with magic.
But I need Hilde.
“Yes, my sister, you witch.” I grind my knees down, not caring at the way the girl cringes in pain. “What did you do to her?”
“You were trying to arrest your own sister?” she gasps out in utter disdain.
I ignore the question. She kicks her legs at me, as if she could buck me off her, but I’m far stronger than her and, what’s more, I don’t care in the least how much I hurt her in return. Not as long as she answers me.
“I protected her,” the girl grinds out when I lean in harder. Her words come as little pants—she cannot breathe with my weight bearing down on her chest. “From monsters like you.”
Before I can ask her what the hell that means, Bertram bursts through the garden, racing toward me. “Kapitän!” he shouts. “Kapitän Ernst!”
I toss a glare over my shoulder. The blundering fool has crushed all my sister’s cabbages in his attempt to rush to my aid.
The witch beneath me squirms, thinking that I may be distracted enough for her to escape. I almost laugh at her feeble attempt. In one swift motion, I push myself off her, my hand pressing into her clavicle so that she’s blinded by pain. Before she can move, I yank her to her feet, grabbing one slender wrist in my hand and twisting her arm. She cries out as I pin her there, her arm wrenched so solidly that if she tries to flee, it would take only a little pressure from me to dislocate her shoulder.
“Get the irons,” I order Bertram.
“What are you going to do,” the girl says in a hollow voice, “burn me?” She speaks as if she doesn’t care, but I see the sweat that breaks out on her forehead, the flash in her eyes. “Did you pack a brand to label me a dämon too?”
She’s seen a burning before. The thought comes unbidden to my mind, and I push it away. The branding of witches is something new, something the kommandant devised only a few months ago. If this witch has seen the consequences of black magic, she should have known not to perform it in front of an entire verdammt hexenjäger unit.
Through the cottage’s broken door, I can see the other men finally struggling up. Bertram is shouting for aid—there’s clinking iron from the chains, a wooden thump as the cage door on the cart is banged open in front of the cottage.
Meow.
I almost stumble on the cat. A ginger cat, winding its way through my legs.
“Get away, Rose,” I order. Only my sister would bother to name a mouser, but she has a soft spot for the thing.
The witch mouths the cat’s name. Rose. Her pink lips form a perfect little circle, like she’s surprised at the sweetness of it. Rose rubs her head against the witch’s ankle, and my stomach turns, remembering the legends of how witches turn cats into familiars. Has this hexe somehow corrupted my sister’s innocent pet?
“You will tell me where my sister is,” I say, my voice a low whisper.
“Why?” the witch snaps back at me. “So you can burn her, too?”
The other men are approaching now. Bertram has the iron shackles in his hands. I cannot say much, not with them so close.
“You’re not going to burn, hexe,” I whisper, my voice liquid.
Her eyes widen.
“But you’ll wish you had by the time I’m done with you.”