“Fœra!”I scream, sweeping both arms out and away, encompassing the men. The red line of magic stuns them hard and, as dominos, they fall one by one into a heap on the floor. Prone. Disarmed. Useless for at least the next twelve hours. Still, to be safe, I add an extra layer of protection.“Ómegin. Rata.”
Sofie helps me deliver the spell to each of the men.
“You’re going to destroy that recording, aren’t you?” I ask, finally allowing myself to smile, while checking the back of my head for yet another goose egg and a never-healing cut.
“Yes. Wouldn’t want a little thing like that hanging around for the wrong person to find.”
“Good—itwasa really nice touch.”
She waggles her eyebrows. “I thought so too.” Then, she tips her head to another closet—this one larger than my little holding pen—something meant for actual storage.
Sofie pulls a key from her belt, and the lock releases with a quick tug. And there, inside, gagged and bound in just the way I was, are Will and Agnata. Their eyes are huge at the sight of us. I pull up Will right away, slipping him off the chair, releasing his gag, then his hands.
Agnata waits patiently for her turn, smiling beyond her gag, clearly expecting Sofie to begin untying her any moment.
Instead, after Will is free of his binds, the three of us simply turn to Agnata and watch the realization creep across the angles of her face. Sofie cocks her head and shoots us a satisfied smirk. “Now, what should we do with her?”
30
Runa
WILL PULLS THE GAG DOWN, PLACES HIS HANDS ON HISknees, and sinks to eye level with Agnata. “What the hell were you thinking, selling us out?”
Sofie doesn’t give her a chance to answer. “She was thinking she’d get a pretty penny, that’s what. How much was it?”
Agnata’s lips snap shut.
“Worth more than all our years together, then?” Sofie spits, eyes flashing. “More than my life?”
Agnata’s desperation grows as we drag her and her chair out of the closet and into the warehouse proper. The girl’s eyes bounce from the guards piled on the floor to the ashes, to the glass littered and sparkling in the remaining sodium lamps.
There, massive, looming, and flammable, are the U-boats, lined up as Will put it, “like pigs for slaughter.”
“I—Sofie, you’ve got this all wrong. Please. Please, listen!”
Sofie doesn’t respond except to disarm Agnata of her gemstone.
“I met with them, yes, but it was only to help get information for our plan. It was—”
“Agnata, save it,” I say, temper flaring enough that I might as well be spelling purple flames straight from my nostrils. “We know they let you go from the castle only so that you could supply specific details about our plan. We heard you talking to the guard last night outside the safe house.”
I say “we,” and this was part of what Will, Sofie, and I discussed in the middle of the night, once we spelled Agnata to make sure she was in a very deep sleep. “You were planning to let them attack as penance for your role in the plot against the U-boats. They’d get Sofie and myself for the king’s murder, they’d get Will on the U-boats, and you’d get your freedom and a cut of the sale.”
All the color in her face drains. “I did say all that. I did. But it was just because they needed to hear it.” She turns to Sofie. “You know how they are—they’re relentless. And they escorted me to Katrine’s, so I couldn’t get out of reporting back.”
Will rubs his brow, and even my head falls to my hands. We’ve been compromised. Our safe house is no longer safe. And neither is Katrine. How could we have missed it? Yes,we’ve been focused on the spells, but last night? Last night a guard was mere feet from our haven. I raise my face and stare at this traitor. We were so fixated on countering her efforts, the guard became a distant memory.
Sofie looks as if she’s swallowed glass. The komtesse moves like a woman possessed, busting open a retrieved rucksack and cocking a pistol sitting on top. My pistol, to be exact.
“I—I...” Agnata tries to fight against her binds, the meat at her wrists bulging against her restraints.
“Tell me now, are they going after Katrine? Do they have her? Yes or no?”
Agnata bursts into tears, her head shaking. “No, no, no! They don’t know about her! Please! You have to believe me! Don’t shoot.”
Sofie’s eyes swing to Will’s and then to mine, but she doesn’t stow the gun. It stays pointed at the girl—her friend, her handmaiden—as she looks to us to tell her what to do.
“We don’t have time for any more of this,” Will says calmly. “Your father will be here to inspect the boats in less than an hour. We can’t risk talking about this anymore.”
