And one time, she stole the silver knife that came with the plates and hid it beneath her pillow.
Semras remained steadfast, all her energy and focus dedicated to a single purpose: finding a way out. She only needed one sympathetic ear, one disloyal soul, one careless mistake.
On the fourth night, she got it.
NooneansweredwhenSemras knocked on the door on the fourth night. The moon had been hanging high in the night sky for hours when she made her move. By her calculation, she expected Maraz’Miri to be on guard duty.
The silence surprised her. Until now, every time she knocked, she’d receive a reaction, either to demand she stop, to ask what she wanted, or to give her a little something to placate her.
This time, there was nothing.
A few more careful knocks confirmed to her that something was afoot. She tried the handle. Still locked—of course.
Semras looked through the keyhole and found no one standing on the other side. Her guard could have simply been out of sight, but after minutes spent listening carefully, she heard neither movement nor breathing. Her pulse picked up with excitement, and she did her best to quell it. False hope would drain what little energy she had left. It had become too precious a commodity to risk so baselessly.
The witch knew nothing about picking locks, but she had something the monster had forgotten to take from her: her sight of the Unseen Arras. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, then opened them again.
In front of her, the lock became an amalgam of pressed threads, as metal always turned into under the pressure of fire. Trying to peek further than its surface level was difficult, but it didn’t matter how long she needed. She had nothing else to do with the time on her hands than to spend it.
At last, her sight pushed through to the interior of the keyhole, and the bolts revealed themselves to her.
It took even more time to bend her bruised fingers into the right shape and grab the keyhole’s threads. Blood seeped from her hands under the strain; her finger bones cracked. Not for the first time, a chilling, numbing wave ripped through her, forcing itself under her skin, pulsating through her entire being to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Concentrated, Semras gently pulled on the keyholes’ threads. Her fingers trembled as she slowly pulled the weft from under the warp and then, carefully, over it to—
The threads slipped from her.
It had all been in vain. She couldn’t weave.
Semras bit her lip to blood, then retrieved the kitchen knife from beneath her pillow. The keyhole was long and thin; perhaps the cutlery would fit in?
She went back to kneel in front of it and slid as much of the knifepoint inside as she could. Her mind scrambled to translate the vision she’d seen in the Arras—the keyhole’s bolts and springs laid bare—into a plan she could follow to pick the locks. The witch had never done anything like that. She had neverneededto. Not with the warps and wefts at her fingertips, not until she could no longer reach for them.
Tongue trapped between her lips, she twisted the knife at different angles, trying to move it into the right position. It didn’t work. But ithadto work. So she tried again.
A soft breeze caressed strands of hair away from her cheeks, then slid down her arms. Once more, the witch angled the knife. Her hand cramped around its handle, unable to hold it efficiently through the restraints of the shackles. Just a bit further, just a little more precision, and …
It clicked.
Had she had any tears left in her, Semras would have cried out of relief.
Instead, she glanced around anxiously, her mind conjuring visions of the monster standing next to her. With how concentrated she’d been, the small door leading to his room could have opened, and she wouldn’t have heard it. He could have caught her in the act.
But he hadn’t.
With a soft, careful push, Semras opened the door and stepped outside her cage for the first time in days.
No one stood behind it; she released a breath of relief. Just as she had hoped, her guard was indeed missing.
Semras walked further into the corridor, abandoning behind the room that once imprisoned her. A soft, refreshing draft blew over her face. It wasn’t yet freedom, but at least it was a step toward it.
Sneaking down the mansion’s corridors, she kept her ears strained for the low chatter of the roaming night staff. Those working in rooms, she avoided easily with careful steps as she passed by them. Others walked through the hallways, and she darted into dark rooms to hide from them.
No one expected a witch to lurk in the shadows, and Semras made it through the second floor and down the first without being caught.
Once she arrived on the landing, the murmur of voices drifted down from the floor she had just left. They sounded close. Too close.
The witch looked left and right for a hiding place. With rising alarm, she noticed light seeping beneath every nearby door. More staff worked on this floor than the last one—nowhere was safe.
