Chapter 1
Liana
The witch was on the move.
Footsteps creaked down the hallway, and I tensed as a thin shaft of light spread beneath the doorframe. She paused outside the door, a looming presence that sent an icy shiver down my back. I held my breath, not making a sound, for fear she would enter. A long moment passed before I heard her footsteps resume and disappear deeper into the house.
The light vanished with her, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to hold onto the faint glow in my mind. But it didn’t last. It never did.
Waves of dry heat flooded the vents inside our room, and the scent of woodsmoke clung to my clothes—a constant due to the roaring hearth the witch never let die down. Somewhere in the dark, my brother shifted his lanky frame, scuffing the dirty floor.
“Do you have any requests?” he asked.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat and opened my eyes. “The one father used to sing to us before bedtime when we were kids.”
Hendrik sighed. “You always pick that one.”
“It’s my favorite.”
“Mine too,” he said, his tone laced with the longing of our shared memory.
He cleared his throat and whistled the familiar tune. The haunting notes hung in the air, grounding me in the pitch-black cell. Soon, the tight ache in my chest loosened, and my thoughts wandered to happier times. They felt like a lifetime ago. Before the money ran out, followed quickly by the food. Before our father left to find work in the mines and never returned.
We were forced out of our home, Hendrik barely sixteen. I had just turned fifteen. The streets didn’t welcome us. After all, we were simply another pair of impoverished teenagers, scrambling for scraps among gaunt faces that looked just like ours.
For a while, we made it work. Hendrik picked up odd jobs where he could, and I sold what was left of our meager belongings on the street. But when Hendrik injured his leg in an accident and could no longer work, we became desperate.
That was when I met her.
“Hendrik?”
The whistling stopped.
I pressed my face against the metal bars of our cell, feeling the warm rust scrape my skin. “How many days?”
“One day, Liana. Only one day until we’re free.”
“We’ll escape tomorrow then,” I said, releasing the bars to sit cross-legged on the floor. My brother always made the same promise, but this time, I believed it might be true.
I had a plan.
Hendrik restarted his tune, and I relaxed to the pleasant sound. Reaching into my pocket, I closed my fingers around a small peppermint candy. My pockets were full of hardened bars of sugar, courtesy of the witch. The sweet mints were laced with something that made time blur, and tonight, we wouldn’t be eating them.
There was only one way to escape. The witch always delivered our food before dawn. We’d wake up groggy to a bowl of cold gruel and a hunk of crusty bread sitting against the wall. Yesterday, I watched her leave the key in the lock while she placed our meal.
We needed that key.
It was risky, but it was our only chance. Once she realized we had stopped eating her candies, there was no telling what she’d do, and I was afraid she’d separate us.
Even without the mints, the heat made me drowsy. I lay down on the rough floorboards to wait. There was always so much time to think. To wonder why we were here. To dream about being anywhere else.
I must have dozed off, because I awoke when the cell door whined on its rusty hinge. Peeking through half-closed eyes, I kept my breathing even, feigning the deep sleep the witch expected. She placed a lantern on the floor and lowered a tray of food to the ground. My body coiled with tension as she turned her back. I started to count, ready to spring for the door with the key still inserted in the lock.
One…two…thr—
The witch tilted her head as if she could hear my intentions. I went still, my heart racing, as she moved closer. Light from the lantern illuminated her craggy face. Her eyes were two chips of coal set above harsh cheekbones.
What was she doing? Did she know I planned to escape?
