“Release me!” Vasi yelled, her throat raw from screaming. “You have no right to force me . . . Someone, please! Help.”

Baba Yaga strode through the forest, her gnarled body moving fluidly through the thick undergrowth.

Vasi stumbled along, tripping over a tree branch, the bark scraping against her ankles as she tried to keep up. The witch’s pace was brutal, and Vasi’s arm burned with pain as Baba Yaga merely yanked Vasi’s wrist after her fall.

Vasi scrambled back to her feet, fiery anger burning through her heart and she reached for her knife.

No.

“What?” Vasi shrieked, livid with herself, and then, straining against Baba Yaga’s grip, added, “Let go.”

Hours seemed to pass, and Vasi’s voice grew thin and hoarse. Her hope for escaping the witch also ebbed although Vasi tried to convince herself Baba Yaga was somehow lying. She had to be lying. The Phoenix Fire existed; therefore the djinn must exist. Vasi would not be turned away. Failure was not an option. She just needed to figure out how to force Baba Yaga to help.

Once more, Vasi pulled against the witch’s grasp, but for the thousandth time, the witch showed no reaction, no slowing of her pace, no change in her determined expression.

Vasi thought of her knife, the only seemingly viable solution, and reached for it.

Don’t touch your knife if you want to survive.

Vasi let her arm fall to her side. That was the third time the voice had told her not to use her weapon. But time was running out, her struggles in vain, so with no other option, Vasi screeched, “Help me!”

“Silence!” the witch snapped, acknowledging Vasi for the first time since the blackberries.

Shock stunned her, and she tripped and stumbled as she waved her free arm in an attempt to stay upright.

The witch stopped and, turning her head, fixed her firelight gaze on Vasi. Baba Yaga narrowed her eyes as she sniffed, sucking air into her protruding nose. She raised her chin and took a greedy inhalation through her flared nostrils and then glared at Vasi. “You’ve brought men into my woods,” the witch growled. “Are guards after you? What crime have you committed, thief?”

“I told you; I'm not a thief!”

The witch stilled and then roared, “How dare you bring men to my woods?”

Vasi couldn’t hear anything at first, but a moment later, the yapping of dogs was followed by the snapping of underbrush.

“I don’t have time for this, girl,” Baba Yaga said, yanking Vasi close. “I have an appointment at dusk.” The witch gnashed her teeth in the young girl’s face. After a deep breath, the hag bellowed and then threw Vasi into a meadow before spinning to face their pursuers.

Vasi stumbled, trying to catch her balance, but the sudden release and forward momentum sent her sprawling into the grass. Vasi lay panting as she cradled her wrist to her chest and stared up into the cloudless afternoon sky.

“Who dares enter my forest?” the witch snarled, her voice reverberating through the meadow and out into the trees.

Vasi sat up and leaned one way and then another as she angled to see into the tree line. A moment later, three men stepped out of the trees and into the clearing. One of them brandished a broadsword, another a double-sided ax at least four feet in diameter. The third man had a sword strapped to his back, but he held the leashes for a half-dozen snarling hounds pulling at their leather bindings.

The fair-skinned men were practically giants, each a head taller and twice as thick as any man Vasi had seen before. Their broad chests were bare except for one man who wore a shaggy animal-pelt vest. They had black markings on their bulging arms, and angry red scars crisscrossed their faces as if they’d been cut repeatedly and the wounds had festered too long before being attended. Their white-blond hair was twisted into thick ropey locks that hung loose.

As Vasi stared, the scars on their faces disappeared though all else stayed the same. The three men’s eyes widened as they faced down the witch.

“Release the girl! She doesn’t belong to you,” the biggest one growled as he pointed the tip of his broadsword at Baba Yaga. “She is to return with us.”

The witch laughed, a grating, cackling sound that made Vasi’s stomach roil. The man’s hands shook, the sword dipping as the hag gnashed her teeth and said, “Fools! Do you think you have any power here?”

The witch screamed obscenities at the men, and Vasi’s heart thudded in her chest. Forcing her attention away from the witch seemed absurd, for even an idiot would know the witch was brutal and deadly, but one look at the men was enough to confirm they were not here to help. Vasi stared into the darkening Ctyri forest and contemplated escape. If she crawled away while they fought each other, perhaps the men wouldn’t notice; the witch certainly didn’t need Vasi’s help. Vasi shifted onto her knees.

“We—we need to bring her with us,” the man holding the dogs yelled, but the quiver in his voice ruined any attempt at sounding fierce. “She ran away from the Duke of Strasny, and we can’t leave this forest without her. Give her over. We want no trouble.”

Vasi froze with the mention of Lord Baine, her hands and feet tingling with anxiety. She stared at his men, her mouth dry and heart pounding with fear.

“Yeah,” the biggest one said, smacking his sword to the ground. “No one steals the duke’s possessions. He’ll kill you.”

The ax-man added, “He’ll kill all of us.”

The giant with the sword swung his massive weapon in a terrifying display of power and then bellowed at the witch, “Give her over now, and we’ll leave you unharmed.”

Baba Yaga sniffed the air, narrowing her eyes as she breathed. Pointing a gnarled hand at the three men, she curled her lip and spat, “You’ve betrayed the tenants of the Malas. You’re nothing more than slavers now.”

Vasi startled at the name of the northern tribe, but with the mention of slavers, her skin crawled with disgust, the same repulsiveness she always felt in Lord Baine’s presence. Her desperation to escape the men heightened, but when she put weight on her wrist, blinding agony shot up her arm, spotting her vision as her stomach turned. Vasi sobbed, barely holding back the tears as she inched her way across the meadow on three limbs. She couldn’t stay to see the end, and she darted a glance at the others. The witch did not look back, nor did the men seem to notice, and a sliver of hope pushed Vasi onward.

Go back. Stay with the witch.

Stunned, Vasi halted, unable to accept the impossible. Stay with the witch?

Yes.

Why? The idea was absurd.

Because Baba Yaga has what you need.

Vasi sat back in the grass, blinking at the afternoon’s rays. The voice responded as if it had heard Vasi’s thoughts. The voice answered her. She must be going crazy, or perhaps she was hallucinating because of the berries . . . or the stress. But something deep in her soul told her she wasn’t crazy or hallucinating.

“We’re warning you, old woman,” one of the men bellowed, and the dogs’ barking increased. “Give us the girl or we’ll—”

Vasi glanced back, shock driving the air from her lungs. She sucked in a breath and shook her head to clear the hallucination. Because that couldn’t be . . . right.

The enormous man holding the dogs was shorter. Much shorter.

Vasi shook her head again, but the scene remained. The man was buried in the ground all the way up to his calves. The man bellowed and jerked wildly, pulling at the dogs’ leashes. The hounds yelped and barked, tugging against their master. A loud snap was followed by a brief silence, and the animals’ bindings hung no longer attached to beast and master. Tails tucked, the dogs fled into the forest, abandoning the men.

Vasi looked back at the giant and had to drop her gaze.

The man screamed, pushing against the earth that seemed to be swallowing him whole. His arms strained as he tried to free himself, but the earth held him all the way to his thighs. He shouted at his companions in a language Vasi had never heard before, and as if their companion’s cry was a call to battle, the remaining two warriors lifted their swords and ran to his aid.

The biggest man charged four strides toward the witch, his sword held overhead, and then he was gone in the blink of an eye, disappearing into the ground. The earth closed around him like a mouth gobbling up a treat.

The other warrior staggered, slowing his charge, and Vasi watched, her mouth gaping in disbelief.

Time seemed to slow. With his ax still aloft, the man stumbled forward. The grassy meadow split, a small fissure expanding like vibrant-green lips opening into a dark maw that swallowed him into its dark abyss. Just like that, they were both gone. And then again, the ground knitted itself closed.

“You can have the girl!” the third yelled as he sunk deeper. The grassy earth held him all the way to his waist now. His scarred, rough-hewn features were a mask of terror. “Let me go—I’ll—I’ll tell the duke she died in the forest, and he won’t send anyone else in. But if you don’t let me go, he’ll send more men after her. He’s obsessed with his possessions. But . . . I can make him stop. I can make him—” His eyes widened as he stared at the ground and screamed.

Vasi pushed up onto her knees, grotesque curiosity and intriguing terror pulling her attention like a magnet to where the man’s gaze was fixed in wide-eyed horror. What could be worse than being swallowed whole . . . by the ground?

Emerging from the meadow’s carpet, slipping out of the earth as if it was being regurgitated, was a broadsword and fresh pile of bones. Picked-clean. Beside the first pile, a second emerged with an ax, rising from loose dirt that solidified and knit closed as soon as the bones were freed.

Vasi knew what she was seeing, and yet her mind refused to believe it. The men had been eaten, picked clean by the ground. Acid filled Vasi’s mouth, burning her nose, and she retched, emptying her stomach of the berries she’d eaten.

The witch cackled again as the final man slipped into the earth, his screams cutting off abruptly. Baba Yaga’s stringy gray hair whipped around as she spun again to face Vasi.

“You’re still here?” the witch asked as her firelight eyes met Vasi’s blue ones. “Then you’ll be next.”

Vasi scrambled to her feet as the witch bore down. Pathetic resignation stabbed Vasi as she realized she’d now lost any possibility of escaping.

Baba Yaga glanced up at the sky and muttered, “Running out of time.”

This time as the witch hauled Vasi by her arm, Vasi ran so as to not be dragged. Her entire focus became the forest floor as she sprinted alongside the hag, and within minutes, Vasi was too winded to yell. Not that it mattered. Whatever magic Baba Yaga had was stronger than those men, which meant Vasi didn’t have a chance.

The witch slowed her pace, and Vasi panted beside her, sucking in greedy breaths of the cool forest air. Her heart rate slowed, and she noticed the trees thinning ahead. As Vasi and the witch approached the forest’s edge, Vasi saw the sun plunging toward the horizon. Night would fall soon, and being this close to civilization would surely mean capture.

Panic seized her, hot desperation and need, and Vasi sucked in lungfuls of air, preparing to release one final rash and violent plea. With lightning speed, the witch cleared the tree line, dragging Vasi through to an embankment over a familiar country road. Before Vasi could scream, the witch thrust Vasi over the edge. A great gust of wind slammed into her back, propelling her into the air.

And then she was falling.