Maggie wrote,I know about Prospero. So does Sondre.
Someone watched Ellie have sex with Prospero—and Prosperoknew. She had once been headmaster, so she’d known they had an audience. Was she making a point? Staking a claim?
The wave of betrayal washed over Ellie so intensely that her stomach turned. She dropped her hand to her stomach, pressing against it like she could stop the squirming feeling.
“I feel sick,” Ellie whispered.
“I’m sorry. I understand… when I heard that my son…” Maggie covered her mouth, as if to stop a sob. “I just want to hold him again. He is my only child. I wanted more…”
“There are no children here. At all.” Ellie looked away from Maggie. “I mean, I never wanted them, but…”
“Can you imagine raising a baby here?” Maggie laughed, although it sounded more like a cry. “In this stench?”
She scrawled,The stench is part of something worse. 13 dead witches yesterday.
Ellie realized the meeting with the Congress of Magic was because of that. More secrets. More lies. She just shook her head.
She shoved her binders back into her bag. “Sorry, I just want to tidy up.” She forced a laugh. “I guess I’m not used to guests.”
“Thank you for letting me stay here. I just… I don’t want to be alone.” Maggie stared at her, as if there were other layers in the words. “I’m scared.”
Ellie looked up at her and nodded. They sat in silence for several minutes until a hob popped into the room with a tray of food.
“Headmasher says you need to eat even if you’re having a sad.”
The little man vanished a moment later, and Ellie looked at the food. “I don’t know if I can eat.”
“They brought sandwiches and things we can carry,” Maggie said.
Ellie gaped at her.
“I felt the shield. He did it. No watchers now, Ellie.” Maggie crossed her arms. “If we use magic over there, we’ll be found. He’ll cover for us as long as he can, but he doubts it’ll buy us more than three days… less if Prospero comes looking for you.”
Ellie wrapped her sandwich up and stuffed it in her bag, hoping it wasn’t going to leak all over the binders.
“We can go down the tree. There has to be a border we can find. I know what it looked like when I walked in but—”
“I know where to go and when.” Maggie looked excited, glassy-eyed with it, in fact. “I just need your magic to get us there. Once we’re there, we probably ought to split up.”
“Fuck that.” Ellie went to open her balcony door, only to find it sealed. She closed her eyes, visualized the door being gone. When she opened them, it was exactly as she’d pictured.
“Let’s go.” They stepped through the empty door.
Holding up a hand, Ellie closed her eyes, visualized the door being intact again, and reopened them. The door was back. She gestured to the steps in the tree. “Let’s get out of this place.”
They saw no one at the tree’s base, and in a few moments, they started to run toward the copse of trees that was alongside the path to the village. Maggie directed their route until they came to the gate Sondre had mentioned.
“We wait,” she whispered to Ellie.
Ellie wasn’t sure what they were waiting for, but she trusted that Maggie knew. It occurred to Ellie, though, that there was another option. “I can manifest ropes,” she suggested in Maggie’s ear. “Tie them up.”
Maggie’s eyes widened, but after a moment of obvious contemplation, she nodded.
Ellie stared at the two guards, studying the look of them, the shape, the location. When she’d caught the details, she closed her eyes and pictured them bound and gagged.
“Blindfold,” Maggie whispered loudly.
So Ellie pictured that, too. The guards were incapacitated when Ellie opened her eyes, flopping on the ground like angry caterpillars.
