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Mark snorted and jerked awake, looking around like he’d just arrived on the planet. His dark eyes quickly scanned the scene, and I watched rage take root in his features. He’d never looked more like our father than in that moment.
“Kat, what are ye doing?”
“I’m getting us out of here.”
My brother holds his hands up, palms forward as if he’s the one at knifepoint. “Hanna won’t hurt us,” he says in tones typically reserved for soothing wild mares.
“I most certainly will,” Hanna says brightly. “But please know it’s nothing personal. Quite a compliment, in fact. I’m exceptionally picky about my ingredients.”
Mark’s thick fingers clutched at the bars. “Ingredients?”
“She’s brewing a youth potion, and she means to add us to it,” I explained.
I felt Hanna swallow against the skin of my wrist.
“Oh no,” she said. “Just you.” Her eyes slid to the extreme side to meet mine.
“Me?”
“Well, of course,” she said. “Everyone knows the female of the species is more potent. And with you being from one of the prominent bloodlines and all...”
“Not you, too,” I grumbled.
Maybe Sal had been right. Perhaps they deserved each other.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Hanna said. “I’d have used him if he was all I could get. But now you’re here, I’ll definitely be using you.”
The witch must have breathed too many of her own brew fumes.
“Seems like you might have trouble doing that now,” I said.
“Nay,” she insisted. “I’m only biding my time until you realize you have an arrow pointing at your pretty head. Heightens the suspense. Which makes the brew sweeter still.”
Without releasing my grip, I craned my neck around toward the door. Sure enough, there stood Sal. Somehow even more stunningly lovely by the dim light.
“Let her go, Kat,” Sal said in a voice that brooked no argument.
My heart gave an involuntary squeeze despite the circumstances, and I was most put out to know that I was glad to see her even now.
“And if I refuse?”
“That magic arrow of hers straight through your skull,” Hanna answered for her.
“Magic, you say?” I asked, maintaining eye contact with Sal.
“Aye,” Hanna said. “I’m the one who dipped it in the potion in the first place.
I must have made a noise of dismay because Hanna chuckled. “Oh, you thought she was magic.” She reached behind her to pat my knee through the bars. “Don’t feel bad. So many of the ladies she brings here say the same thing.”
My teeth ground together painfully as white-hot rage rose in my gut. I’d been such a fool, such an idiot, to believe that she saw anything in me that she found unique or different. I was just one in a long line of many lasses that ended in her pointed tongue.
“Kat, let her go,” Sal repeated, her bow creaking as she increased the tension on the arrow’s shaft.
I looked over Hanna’s curly head at my brother, whose pleading eyes beseeched me to comply. Even the cursed felines milling about the bottom of the witch’s skirt had taken up a plaintiff chorus that assailed my sensitive ears like Hell’s own choir. All but one. The small black and orange cat with pumpkin-colored eyes now sat on the windowsill, looking at me fondly.
At that moment, I saw why so many spinsters lived out their days with a beast such as this for company and all other beings at a healthy distance.
I released Hanna and shoved her away from the cage. Resigned to my fate.
