“I’m good at this,” Croi tells her other self.

Maybe we can get a job as a spell-breaker.

Croi doesn’t see her pack anywhere in the main hall, but it branches off into five smaller rooms, so she still has hope.

“Wait.” Croi doesn’t know when Daithi walked in to find her, but here he is, trying to control her movements.

She raises an eyebrow and says, “No.” She walks until she reaches the closed door to the first room. She looks down at the knob, wondering if it’s locked. It looks harmless, and for that precise reason, she doesn’t trust it.

“Are you attempting to communicate with it?” Daithi comes up behind her.

“Yes, I talk to doorknobs all the time,” Croi replies.

“You must have scintillating conversations,” he replies. Croi angles him a look. The soldier is still wary of her, but that inexplicable hostility has faded somewhat. He catches her look, and his brown cheeks deepen with color. He still won’t apologize, but Croi doesn’t need him to.

“Do you want to try opening it?” She moves aside to give Daithi access to the door. He gives her an amused look but doesn’t refuse.

He puts his hand on the knob and Croi tenses, but it turns easily, without him bursting into flames or being hit by a lightning bolt.

“They weren’t worried about burglars, were they?” Croi says to Daithi’s back as she follows him into the room.

“They were Redcaps,” he replies. Point.

There’s nothing extraordinary in the room. Just a sleeping pallet in the middle with a tankard of some noxious brew beside it. The fear in Croi’s stomach starts to climb her throat. Is the SoulSeed really gone?

The next two doors open to reveal the same malodorous pallet and, once, a pair of pants that neither Daithi nor Croi dare to get close to. By the time they reach the fourth room, Croi is almost sick with anxiety.

There’s magick on the knob of this door, a complex net created from the damaged magick that has been worked on the rest of the caravan. Croi stops Daithi when he reaches for the knob.

Be careful.

“Magick,” Croi says, pointing to the knob, and he brings out a glove made of black wool. He drops it onto the knob, and it sizzles. They wince and watch the magick destroy the glove completely before resettling.

“How do we remove the spell?” she asks.

Daithi thinks for a second, then touches the door instead of the knob. The magick net immediately jumps off the knob to make its way to where Daithi had touched the door, leaving the knob unprotected. Croi turns it and the door swings open. The magick net dissolves with a hiss.

“I didn’t know we could trick magick,” Croi says.

“Neither did I,” Daithi replies, walking into the room. It’s clear that this room belonged to someone more important than the other Redcaps. For one thing, there’s an actual bed covered with luxurious bedding. Which is probably smelly, but Croi isn’t going to check. The room is decorated with wall hangings, and there’s furniture, a chair and a small table beside the bed, both made of pale brown wood. But what commands her interest is the open chest in front of the bed.