“Numb’s not so bad.”
“Yeah,” Alois calls back, shooting me a wicked look I don’t trust. “It’s not so bad atall.”
My stomach twists.Got it. Don’t get hit.
“Game’s over when you mark twelve of us, or when you can no longer move.” Brigitta smirks. “Well, ‘warrior?’” She somehow makes the word sound like a mockery. “Are you ready to be truly worthy of Holda?”
Holda? No. I could care less what a goddess thinks of me.
But I’ll be damned to any hell that exists before I let Fritzi down.
Brigitta raises a horn to her lips. “The hunt starts when I sound the horn.”
“I thought this was a battle, not a hunt,” I say, already staggering back.
Brigitta towers over me, her lips curled into a sardonic snarl. “Every battle is a hunt until you figure out how to fight back.”
Skokse,I think as I dash through the underbrush, using the scantgrace Brigitta allowed for me to make the first move. I skulk through the trees, already hearing the horn signaling that the hunt is on.
I need my horse. Skokse is the closest thing I have to an ally in this battle, and if I’m mounted, I can be faster. I can have a chance.
I circle back. In my time here at the Well, I’ve gotten a feel for the place, both in the trees with Fritzi and on the ground with my sister, Hilde, who has been embraced by the coven despite not having magic herself.
Hilde. There’s an idea. She might help me to hide.
I shake away the thought as soon as it forms in my head. First, she is my sister, not a soldier. Second, I don’t want to hide. I want to win.
Another blow of a hunting horn. Louder this time.
“Skokse,” I remind myself, cutting through a copse of saplings toward the stables.
I break out into a run, not caring about stealth.
An arrow whizzes by, close enough that the fletching stings my skin.
“Hey!” I shout, spinning around to see Alois on the wooden fence near the animal pen, giving me a mocking salute.
“If it hits you, I promise to heal you!” he calls, already knocking another arrow.
“If!” I shout back, zigging over the worn grass where the horses graze. “I thought you were supposed to use the spell satchels?”
“Oh, I’m just having a bit of fun!” Alois laughs.
Another arrow flies, missing me by a whisper.
I pause long enough to point behind him. “Hi, Cornelia!”
Alois spins around, already squaring his shoulders and tilting his head to show off. I laugh so loud that I blow the ruse; he aims another arrow at me with lightning speed, letting it fly just as I reach the barn and throw myself into the stable, eyes frantic. I have seconds at most. There. Last stall. Skokse’s head, black as night, dark eyes watching as I race to her.
“Help me out?” I gasp, throwing open her stall door.
Skokse’s steps are heavy thuds as she strides forward. She has no saddle, but I kick a bucket over to use as a step and grab her withers, swinging my leg over her side. Before I have a chance to give her a command, Alois and three others of the guard burst into the far side of the stable, and Skokse pivots, kicking dirt and hay as she darts toward the other side. I lean low over my horse’s back, clinging to her as more arrows land with thunks into the wooden wall, and Skokse leaps over the low, wide door.
A burst of green and blue as we enter the meadow. I straighten on Skokse, then nudge her with my right foot, circling her back around the stables to the other door. As I’d hoped, Alois and his three fellow guards are racing down the long, wide stretch of barn in the direction of Skokse’s stall. Behind them now, I get one of the witches in the back with a red marker. She shouts and cranes her head, cursing as she steps to the side. Out of the game.
I throw another—missing the witch I’d aimed for, but thankfully hitting Alois right in the face, a giant stain of red powder sliding over his cheek.
“Just a bit of fun,” I say, and Alois snorts in appreciation.
