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Jon knows many things, but he does not know how long he’s been trapped in the tower.
He knows there are two-hundred-and-seven stone steps arranged in the spiral staircase that leads to his door. He knows on the fifty-fifth one, there is a crack that can be a tripping hazard, if he’s not careful. (He has a tendency to read while he walks.)
He knows his keeper is not kind, even if he pretends to be. He knows the impossibly immense library he has access to is not a gift, but a labyrinthine and tempting poison, one that will make him into whatever monster his keeper wishes for him to be.
He knows his keeper’s name is Elias, or at least, he calls himself Elias.
He knows Elias is the one who enchanted him, who made it so he can’t leave this place without another soul, hand in hand.
He knows he will never be free.
He knows knowing will not save him from his fate.
***
He knows the dreams he has of a knight coming to rescue him are just that: dreams.
Elias is always in a mood the days after those dreams. Not fearful, but his smile is a little sharper, his grip on Jon’s shoulder a little tighter.
So Jon is surprised when today, the night after one such dream, Elias greets him with the usual aplomb and says he won’t return for a couple of days. This used to worry him; he has no memory before the tower, but at some point, he thinks-slash-hopes, he must have been a normal person that required food and water. Now, he sustains himself only off of the dark tales Elias keeps in the tower’s corridors. A dragon eating a princess. A fire consuming a village. A great and beautiful queen falling ill, her sickness spreading to all of the crops and rivers as she clings desperately to her crown.
“Where are you going?” Jon asks.
Elias smiles coyly, revealing nothing. “Planning a party without me?”
“Yes, me and The Admiral, we love our ragers,” Jon says with acidity.
The cat lets out a long, mrow as if to state his utter disinterest in any kind of social affair.
“Very funny. In all seriousness, I need to go see Lord Lukas. A storm is brewing.” Elias laughs lightly, like he’s just said something funny.
Lukas. That name makes Jon’s blood run cold. He remembered Naomi Herne’s statement well. She was a commoner, a smith’s daughter, who’d fallen in love with a Lukas. When she’d described the aftermath of his death, a loneliness more acute and brittle than anything Jon had ever felt in the tower coursed through him. “Right. I’ll be here.”
Elias nodded, turned his back, and began to exit, but he lingered in the doorway. “Oh, and Jon?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t talk to strangers.”
Before Jon could puzzle out how he was meant to respond to that — it wasn’t like he got a lot of visitors in his secluded witch’s tower in the middle of nowhere — Elias was gone.
***
“Stupid bloody forest. Stupid bloody witch.”
Tim’s starting to think he may actually be the stupid one.
He’d heard there was a witch’s tower out here, and thinks maybe it’s the witch that’d killed Danny all those years ago.
Of course, now he’s been in the woods for days, and he doesn’t know which way was up or down.
He’s beginning to suspect he’s maaaaybe walked into a witch’s trap and now he’ll be stuck in a dark forest forever. Is it magic? It must be magic, he’s seen that same tree ten times.
He’s about ten minutes away from taking out his anger on the nearest tree, when he sees it: the tower. A hodgepodge of finely laid gray stone that comes to an ugly crown at the top, and a door with a sigil of a golden eye on its front.
Instinctually, Tim takes out a knife and carves an “X” through it. Not because he doesn’t like being watched — he does — but because he wants to send a message.
By the time he’s atop the stairs, he’s winded, but the adrenaline is still coursing through him.
Revenge, finally.
He opens the door.
***
The man wears a dark green traveller’s cloak, leather armor peeking out from under it. He’s no knight — certainly not the hero of one of Jon’s dreams, but he’s pretty, in a striking way. Pretty, not handsome.
Don’t talk to strangers, Elias’ words echo, and Jon grits his teeth, wondering if this is all some kind of test. Even if it is, Jon will spring it.
“You’re the witch?” The man demands, running a hand through his sweat-slicked hair — had he run up the stairs?
“I…suppose you could say that, yes. Why do you ask?”
Before Jon knew what was happening, the man’s on top of him, a hunting knife’s tip at his throat.
Jon yells out in protest, struggling with the stronger man for the handle, but it’s no use.
He barely has any time left before he remembers how to defend himself. The questions, yes, the questions. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Jon doesn’t think he’s ever been in a fight before, though he can’t be sure. This guy most certainly has.
“Timothy Stoker. I’m a witch hunter. And I’m here to kill the witch who killed my brother,” he answers, practically spitting venom.
“Who’s your brother?” Jon asks.
“Daniel Stoker. Obviously.” The man’s aggression seems curbed, for a moment, and he gives Jon some breathing room with the knife. “Looks just like me, except, well, he was younger, obviously.”
“If I’d killed your identical twin, wouldn’t I have recognized you? Not just greeted you politely?” Jon bit out. Nicely was probably pushing it, but the point stood.
“…Shit.” The man — Timothy Stoker, apparently — scrambled off of him. Jon got up, eyeing the man warily, before surveying the mess he’d made. The table had gone sideways in their struggle, letters and papers all about, and The Admiral’s in the doorway now, eyeing the two of them curiously.
“You’re telling me there are multiple witches out here?” Tim asks, like an idiot.
Jon wonders if Elias had been the one to kill Tim’s brother — this Danny. If they could use that to form some kind of alliance. “Yes. So why don’t you tell me what happened to your brother, and maybe I can help you?”
“Why would you help me?”
“Because a witch trapped me here, and you’re going to help me escape.”
So Tim told Jon everything. From his brother’s habit of wandering into the woods too late at night, to the castle garden he was never meant to be inside, to the skin rended from flesh. Internally, Jon breathes a sigh of relief, though his nerves also flare. That was not Elias. Elias’ magic works subtly, like a shiver running down your spine. Jon doesn’t want to know, specifically, what horrors Elias has done (what horrors Jon has helped him do, more likely.) At the same time, if they don’t have a mutual enemy, maybe Tim wouldn’t see a reason to keep their bargain.
Luckily, the statement did remind him of something he’d read before… “I know the witch you’re after,” Jon says, suddenly bolting up. He scours the floor for the book he wants, grabs the documents pertaining to that awful witch he’s never had a name for, but has always reviled.
They pore over the documents together. Minutes turn to hours. It is midnight when they find something like a true name.
Jon knows it is right. It’s what they need.
Tim is asleep.
Nikola.
He lets Tim rest. In part, because it has been so long since another living creature slept near him, and he misses what it was like to need sleep.
In the morning, he tells Tim about his new target. Jon looks at him, a question in his eyes: Does he still intend to free him?
Jon knows he won’t have another chance like this.
Elias keeps this place under ruthless lock and key, but in some perfect storm of fate, Tim apparently wandered right in. Which meant maybe they could wander out.
Jon can see Tim considering the betrayal. It is not a good thing, to make an enemy of a witch, especially not one as powerful and petty as Elias. Jon is a stranger who Tim owes no loyalty.
But Tim offers Jon a hand, and he takes it.
Jon thinks he might spontaneously combust when he crosses through the tower’s threshold, but that proves untrue.
The slashed-out eye on the door bores into his back, and he doesn’t care. It is worth it, for this. For springy grass between his feet, for real ground instead of stone.
He’s no longer some voyeur, forced only to learn secondhand.
He’s part of the world now.
“So what’s your plan now?” Jon asked.
“I’m going to go kill a witch. Actually, this time,” Tim answers with a smirk.
“You can’t come at Nikola like you just came at me,” Jon informs him. He’s oddly invested in this stranger who’d happened to break his curse. He’s no knight in shining armor, but still. “You won’t make it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Tim says with a stubborn set to his jaw. Even Jon, who’s admittedly rusty on social cues, can tell he doesn’t mean it. “What about you? What’s your big plan? Going to go find some lovely ladies or gents to spend your first evening of freedom with?”
“No,” Jon answers, letting the disgust show on his face. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought that far, honestly. I kind of figured I’d be trapped here until Elias decided he was done with me.”
Jon’s spent the past years fantasizing about the rescue, not the aftermath. It’s an uncomfortable realization.
“Maybe he has,” Tim said, and Jon prays otherwise. “Let’s make a deal,” Tim continues.
“Another?”
“I get my killing done, and we meet up and have a celebratory drink.” Tim’s smile is electric, nearly contagious, though Jon does a good job at keeping his face appropriately sour. He has the kind of brazen confidence that you could bottle up and sell at a potion store, the kind that makes you want to be around it more.
“…Alright,” Jon says. He supposes he doesn’t hate the idea. And it wasn’t really like he had many friends, unless you counted The Admiral.
“My familiar will come with you,” Jon continues, more comfortable with the logistics than the feelings. The Admiral shifts, taking on a raven’s form, soft black wings with blue and magenta undertones in the light. The Admiral obediently hops onto Tim’s shoulder.
Tim stares at him with a suspicion for a minute, then pats it on the head, suddenly comfortable.
“Send him back to me once you’ve slain the witch. He’ll know how to find me. And then we can…celebrate.” Or, we’ll both be oh-so-very dead because of the wrath of the world’s most powerful witches.
“You’re weird, you know that? I’ve got questions for you when I see you again. Good travels, witch.”
“Any travels are good travels to me now,” Jon replies, and Tim begins to walk off. North, his mind supplies, though he has no reason to know it.
“Tim?” Jon asks, and the hunter doesn’t pause to listen. “Don’t die.”
“Not planning on it,” comes his cocky voice in return. Jon knows he’s just met a madman. But maybe he’s mad enough for this all to work.
Maybe they’ll get their drink.