Page 26 of Night of the Witch
“Verpiss dich, jäger,” I say in as sweet a voice as I can manage.
I shouldn’t antagonize him. I should be doing everything I can to be small and forgettable and unthreatening.
But my quickened pulse courses hatred into every part of my body, and I can barely see through the swell of rage. I want to lash out at him, kick him in the groin; I want to spit in his face, tear his eyes with my fingers.
He drops into a squat before me. I scramble back, pressing myself to the tree, and all that anger sharpens into cold, relentless fear.
The kapitän tips his head, surveying my position: huddled against the tree, eyes wide, legs pulled up against my stomach.
“No one will touch you,” he tells me. “We are not brutes.”
“No, you just burn people alive. Far more civilized.”
He holds out something to me. The bowl of stew. The sheepskin.
“You’re hungry,” he says.
I’m so tempted to tell him to piss off again, but I bite my lip and shake my manacled hands in response.
“And you’ll only feed me if I tell you where your sister is?” I ask. “Because that is definitely the behavior of someone who is not a brute—”
He sets the sheepskin down and lifts the spoon out of the bowl.
He’s not really going to—
He is.
The kapitän holds the spoon to my lips.
I stare at him, stunned.
“Don’t let stubbornness make you stupid,” he tells me. “Eat.”
“It would be mighty inconvenient if your prisoner passed out from hunger before you could properly torture her, wouldn’t it?”
His jaw bulges. He bumps the spoon against my lips. “Eat,” he repeats, his tone of command so second nature that it sounds well-worn.
The stew is something crude and easy, road rations mixed with melted snow, but the scent drives my stomach to rumbling. I’ve only eaten bits and pieces while traveling from Birresborn, and if I’m going to make any progress tonight, I’ll need my strength.
I part my lips and take the proffered bite.
“There,” he says. “Is that so hard?”
Oh, I willkick himthe moment I’ve had my fill.
I still can’t see his face in the dark, the fire at his back. He drops into silence as he feeds me, just dips the spoon back into the bowl and lifts bite after bite, nothing in his movements saying he’s impatient that I’m eating slowly or that he’s offended having to feed me at all. It’s so in contrast with the bitter, angry man he’s been that I can’t help shrinking from him, my eyes dropping, each bite I take now feeling like he’s won something, like I’ve conceded to him.
“You’re wrong,” he whispers to the dark.
I don’t answer.
“I have never burned someone alive.”
I can’t help myself—my snort of derision is more like a snarl. He would lie about the thing he must be proudest of? There’s a trick here.
He opens his mouth as if to speak, but then seems to decide it’s pointless. He turns to pick up the sheepskin and offers it to me.
I tip my head back and beer slides into my throat. It’s hoppy and rich and immediately warms my whole body, which is a problem—exhaustion creeps up over me again. My ever-present companion. But I blink furiously and sit up straighter, willingly myself to alertness.
