She wasn’t even sure where she was now. Endla wasn’t that large; she’d be able to orient herself soon enough. But Sage was probably wondering what had happened to her, and skipping out on Watcher duty was arguably as bad as singing without permission.

“Damn it!” she swore, turning to leave.

Leelo froze.

The cottage was so well hidden that she never would have seen it if she hadn’t come face-to-face with it. In fact, cottage was too generous a word for what was little more than a hut, buried under branches and leaves, with no visible chimney. A grown man would barely be able to stand up inside, and it was clearly only big enough for one room. She glanced around, the starling forgotten, and approached the hut.

The little door swung open with a groan, the hinges rusty with disuse. There were two small windows, both so dirty that hardly any light filtered through the glass. Leelo noticed a candle stump on a small table and lit it with one of the matches she always carried on Watcher duty. At night, this place would be nearly pitch-black, but it was small enough that she could make out the pile of blankets in one corner, along with a crooked stack of books, in the candlelight.

Was this where Pieter spent the entire winter? Leelo wondered. If so, it was a miracle he hadn’t frozen to death. Without a fire, no number of blankets would be enough to stay warm. Unless you were with another person, she thought, and blushed so hard she looked around to make sure there were no witnesses.

The image of Pieter running from Isola’s house came back to her again. How were they brazen enough to bring him into her house? Unless Rosalie did know, like Mrs. Harding had said.

No, she thought, extinguishing the candle and stepping back out of the cottage. It was clear from the way Rosalie had beaten Pieter from her house that she hadn’t known before that. Otherwise she would have sent him on his way sooner, surely. She closed the door and tried to block out the memory of Pieter falling into the lake, his last desperate cry for help, and Isola’s screams.

She found the trail a minute later and shrieked when she ran headlong into Sage.

“Where have you been?” Sage was angry, but it was the anger of being abandoned on Watcher duty, not from their argument before. “Our shift started half an hour ago!”

Leelo glanced around and was relieved she couldn’t spot the cottage from here. “I just needed time to think, and I got a little disoriented. I’m really sorry.” And without waiting for a response, she hurried down the trail, away from Isola’s hideout.

Chapter Fourteen