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It was a good decision. I was weak and didn’t know how much longer I could push my magic. I’d never pushed my magic to its limit. I’d heard stories of other half-witches dying from doing so. I was only a half-witch and as often as if felt like my magic was an endless pool, I knew it wasn’t. It drained me physically to use it and was made more difficult by my lack of blood and head injury, making me woozy.
At some point in the night, I awoke. It was pitch black. My head and limbs were heavy but my first action was to reach out with my magic. In focusing so intently on one location for hours the previous day, it now seemed easy to find the same place again.
At first, progress was minuscule, only dust and tiny specs of rubble I could hear falling but couldn’t see. At some critical point, the large stone cracked loudly. I stopped at the sound. Holding my breath, waiting for some kind of repercussion. The painful cries had lessened during the night and I pictured a guard charging in to investigate the sound.
Remy’s quiet snoring had stopped at the sound of the stone cracking.
When several minutes of no guard bursting into the cell passed, I exhaled.
I reached out and shook Remy’s knee. He startled only slightly.
“I think it’s about to break,” I whispered.
He got up slowly and made his way to the corner; looking up into the dark, I didn’t think he could actually see anything.
“I worry it will make a great loud noise when it falls,” I told him.
“I’ll catch it if I can. If I can’t, and the guards come, we’ll play dumb. Act like we’re just as surprised as they are. Can’t believe the shoddy workmanship of the Vouna castle,” he whispered back.
“Okay,” I agreed and continued with my magic.
There was another loud crack and I paused again. We both waited, the shadow of Remy watching the stone carefully.
“Oof.” He stumbled back, having caught a falling chunk of stone and bent down, placing the stone in the corner. “That’s it going now,” he said.
It didn’t take much before more chunks of stone began to fall. They ranged from fist-sized to head-size. I was surprised by how Remy managed to anticipate and catch each falling chunk, creating a pile in the corner of the cell.
“I think it’s big enough to get through,” he told me.
He climbed carefully onto the stone pile he had created and reached up, grabbing the edges of the opening and pulling himself up. It didn’t seem to take him much effort and I scrambled to my feet to follow as his legs disappeared through the jagged hole in the stone.
His face appeared in the opening as I looked up and his hands reached down towards me.
He grabbed hold of my wrists and I copied his hold. He pulled me up and I was unsettled when my feet left the ground as he slowly pulled me up and into what I assumed was a servant corridor.
I was right about the windows; they lined the narrow corridor.
Remy stood and looked out the windows.
“Are you charmed or something?” he asked, turning to me. I stood myself and walked to the windows. We were a floor from the ground. The windows looked out onto an internal courtyard that appeared to be cut deeper into the mountain the castle was carved into than the bailey courtyard.
“We could lower ourselves and jump,” I said, feeling a sudden surge of hopefulness.
“And over there.” He pointed against the glass to a stepped archway leading from the courtyard. “That leads to the main bailey, I’m sure. We’d still have the problem of getting past the gatehouse.”
“One step at a time. First, let’s get outside,” I replied.
“Every great plan that could end in death needs an optimist,” he said smiling. He seemed as excited and hopeful as I was.
The windows were old, with small panes, and didn’t open.
“We’ll need to break them,” I said.
Remy began pulling off the thick knit sweater he wore. “This will quiet the noise. I’ll break these panes and snap the frames. Need to be quiet and move fast,” he said, holding his sweater against a pane and striking it with his opposite elbow. There was a muted thud and the glass shattered, falling outside.
I looked up and down the corridor anxiously as he repeated the process before wrapping the sweater around the frames that held shards of glass and twisting and snapping the old wood.
“You first,” he said, shaking out his sweater and placing it over the ledge.
