Page 110 of Witch Undecided
SLOANE
The room we’re in has one window with bars on it, a single exit that’s locked, and no furniture.
The fact we can’t use our magic means there are varga surrounding this building.
“Do you think Cora and Jasper made it?” Poppy asks from her position at the window. “They must have been spit out elsewhere or they’d have been caught by now.”
We entered smack bang into the camp and have since surmised that the rifts must have random drop-off points. We stepped through together and so we came out together. Cora and Jasper came after us. Hopefully they haven’t been spotted.
“You think they’ll find us,” Poppy asks.
“I’m hoping they don’t,” Jessie says. “Or if they do, they have the smarts to get the fuck out of here. You saw the camp. It’s fucking huge and filled with varga. There’s no way out.”
I’m not optimistic about our situation but I refuse to lose hope. All we need is a break in their security, a moment to tear a rift and we’ll be out of here, because now that they know we’re here, searching the camp for the female dire wolves is too dangerous.
Jessie keeps holding up her hands to test her magic, and each time nothing happens her expression darkens more.
“What I don’t understand is why they haven’t killed us already,” Poppy says. “They don’t seem to have a problem with killing people.”
She’s grinding her teeth again, eyes bright with tears over Danny. In usual circumstances I’d never have dragged her onto a mission this soon after a bereavement, but it’s not like we had a choice. We didn’t have a choice after Brie either. We have to keep moving forward. Keep fighting. It’s what we do, what we’ve always done.
“Don’t knock it,” Jessie says. “Maybe they’re not hungry.” Her smile is grim, trying to defuse the tension.
Poppy wipes at her eyes and shakes her head. “You’re a dick.”
They’ve both hit on a point, though. “There’s no reason to keep us alive…” But there’s more. Something that’s been needling at me since we were captured. “There’s also no evident reason to take dire wolf females. They have plenty of their own. You saw, the camp is filled with them.”
“I saw,” Jessie says. “Makes no sense.”
“Shit!” Poppy grips the bars on the window and leans forward, peering out. “I think…Oh shit, it’s Cora.”
“Keep it down!” Jessie orders as she joins her. “Do you want the furries to hear?”
I hurry and join them to see a flash of golden hair in the shadows. The figure moves quickly from hut to hut and my pulse quickens. Is it her? There’s a break in the clouds and a little moonlight lances through. Enough for me to make out the slender, petite form a little better.
It’s her. It’s fucking Cora, but she’s alone. Where the fuck is Jasper?
She’s scoping out the buildings. We need to signal her somehow. Shit. “Hey, Poppy, you got a mirror?”
She frowns at me. “Why would I have a mirror? Are you trying to insinuate that I’m vain?”
Jessie and I arch our brows at her.
She huffs and pulls a compact from her pocket. I take it, flip it open, and angle it out the window, trying to catch the light from the sliver of the moon. A circle of light bounces across the hut opposite ours and Cora freezes. She’s seen it. She turns her head, and her eye whites gleam as I bounce the light off her face.
She sees us.
Gruff voices drift toward us and Cora falls into a crouch, pressing herself into the shadows beside the hut opposite us. I back up, taking Poppy and Jessie with me as two figures pass close to the window. Both are bare-chested with shaggy golden hair.
Long seconds pass, the voices drift off, and I step back to the window, searching the shadows for Cora.
But she’s gone.
There’s a rattling, the sound of the lock being disengaged, and for a moment I think it’s her, that she’s found a way past the varga surrounding our hut, but then the door’s shoved open and a hulking man steps in. His hair is white-gold, eyes like an arctic ocean, and a scar cuts diagonally across his face, pulling his lip up into a perpetual sneer.
“Welcome to Grimsa.” His voice is gravel and glass, pain and torment. “My name is Vax. Answer my questions and you’ll receive a quick, painless death. Thwart me and I’ll feed you to my guards…alive.”
Shit.
