My mind scrambled to bridge the time gap from the schloss to here, but only an herb-soaked fog stood out. I’d survived the emotional wreckage of my visit with Anouk. With the memory came the pang of loss again. How had Anouk worded it? “I finally saw a way out.” A way out of Oma’s wish so she would be free to ask me for one.

Why? Why did she need a wish so badly? If only she’d told me.

Another windmill blade passed the window and I pulled myself back to the present. Someone must have found me in the shrubbery. But who? I wasn’t in chains, so it likely wasn’t a militair.

The room was packed full with stacks of books, timepieces, ropes, maps . . .

Maps.

I hurried to the pile of rolled and folded parchments, catching glimpses of forests and rivers and webbed sketches of the canals. Could there be a map to the Well of Talents in here? I’d hardly unfolded a single one when tousled black hair popped into view through the floor. I snatched my hands away from my snooping.

I barely caught sight of a young boy’s face before he disappeared back down the stairs with a holler. “She’s awake!”

“Runt.” A low female voice. “That’s not something one shouts to an entire house. You’ll embarrass the lady.” The boy mumbled something. “I’ll go up,” the woman said.

“Let me,” a man interrupted.

Not about to be a caged creature awaiting the spectators, I scrambled from the window and made it halfway down the spiral stairs to meet my host. An ascending body blocked my way. A barefoot young man’s body.

He pulled up short and we stood at an impasse for one startled moment before he backpedaled. He knocked his hip against the railing in his haste, mumbling words like, “Apologies . . . foolish of me . . .”

I recognized his face, though from where I couldn’t recall. It stirred a pleasant feeling in my chest. Hopefully that meant these people hadn’t captured me for the reward on my head.

The stairs deposited me into an open eating room of sorts—one part stove and one part pantry and one part seating. The boy, the man, and the woman stood in a bunch near the window, each side-eyeing the other until the woman stepped forward.

“Welcome to Windmill Cottage. Please have a seat.” She wore wool trousers with mud-stained knees and a cloth to hold her hair back. A working woman. It made me feel better about the mud stains on my own calfskin trousers. I sat at the table.

The boy—Runt?—slipped onto a stool in the shadows across the room, nearly disappearing from sight and notice. The young man leaned against the stair railing, but the woman sat across from me.

“My name is Diantha, and this is my son, Bastiaan.”