He had sworn never to speak of it, not to anyone, but his tongue betrays him in an instant. “Sometimes I think I’ve been here before. In my dreams...I have the strangest dreams.” He pauses, fighting not to say more, and into that pause comes the young man’s quiet answer. “Dreams of this place. Not this cell—a proper chamber, with a proper bed, and servants, and no shackles. But a prison just the same.”

Staring into the witch's cup, I feel something loosening inside myself, a knot I hadn’t known resided in my chest. I nod as though drowsing, despite feeling in some ways strangely alert, aware of minute details: the snap and hiss of the driftwood fire; the whuffle and scuff of gull feet scrabbling on the windowsill; the heavy presence of Katte’s broken body. Almost, I think I can hear the knitting of my friend’s fractured skull, the remaking of her rent skin.