‘Oh no,’ he says, before he so much as opens his eyes.
‘Yep,’ comes Daisy’s voice, from his side. ‘Still in the Citadel, I’m afraid.’
He finally persuades his eyes to open, and instantly regrets the decision. The room is too bright, the décor too starkly white; the sun is in entirely the wrong place. He realises that this hotel room is the highest up he’s ever slept, and neither his mental state nor the magical energy inside him is particularly happy about having spent most of the night so far away from the ground.
Other realisations start coming to him in lumps, blaring through the pain.
He’d gone up on that platform with Morning, in front of all those people. They’d been told who he was, who Daisy was, where they were from… they’d been told about Gretel. And… and they’d sympathised. Even here, in the Citadel. They’d sympathised.
And yet, there’d been all that anger in the crowd, all that fear, still.
And the Hydra… the Hydra…
Oh. Wait.
He closes his eyes again. ‘Did… I…?’
‘Throw up on the front row and yourself, with everybody watching?’ Daisy pats his hand softly. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’
‘And… did I…?’
‘Land in the sick when you fainted? Also yeah, but we cleaned you up best as we could.’
Hansel groans, and brings his hands up to his face. His left eye is tender and bruised, along with his cheekbone. He must have ended up face first in it. He’s fairly certain that the unmistakable acrid, carroty whiff of old vomit is coming from his hair.
‘The innkeeper said once you were awake he’d bring up plenty of hot water for a bath,’ adds Daisy. ‘Morning paid him extra. And we get something called a “continental breakfast” now. Mostly, it’s tea and croissants.’
Hansel opens his eyes again. They find Daisy, a beacon of soothing warmth in a sea of cold, harsh daylight, stuffing pastry into her mouth.
‘I asked them what a continental even is, and apparently Myrsina’s a part of one. Who knew? Also it means we get jam in really, really, really tiny pots. Look.’
The jam pot she shows him is, to be fair, ridiculously small.
He prods at his sore face, trying to summon up some more memories of the night before, preferably ones not involving vomit.
‘What time is it?’ he mumbles after a while.
‘’Bout ten?’
He sits up suddenly, and hurts so much he has to lie back down again. ‘Your baskets…’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that, we can get back to selling them tomorrow. Market’s closed today anyway, for voting.’
Hansel tries sitting up slower this time. ‘That’s today?
Daisy nods, popping open another miniscule pot of jam. ‘They were setting up for it in the inn’s front lobby first thing. Tiny little wooden cubicles.’
‘What, like privies?’
‘Exactly like privies.’
‘Eurgh.’
‘I know.’ Daisy struggles to get an adequate serving of jam out of a pot so tiny that she can barely fit her knife inside. ‘Morning said last night went really well. Not counting – you know. Your incident.’
‘Hmm.’ Hansel frowns, and picks at his smelly hair.
‘She says it’s going to be a close call, but between what we said and what she did, it might have been enough to tip the votes in her favour. All in all, it’s a good job that those visions of yours had us turn up when we did.’
The visions… suddenly, Hansel remembers. The Hydra. It was already there. All that fear. All that anger…
‘Oh no,’ he breathes, trying to get up off the bed. ‘The monster. We might be too late.’
Daisy pushes him down again gently. ‘Nothing’s happened, there’s been no monster, not even sightings of one elsewhere.’
‘But I saw it, Daisy. It spoke to me. I finally understand what it is. The monster isn’t what we thought; it isn’t going to attack the huntsmen. The monster is the huntsmen.’
‘What?’ asks Daisy, spitting pastry flakes.
‘It’s always been here because it’s always been the huntsmen, all our lives,’ Hansel tells her. ‘I could feel it when they took the village, but it’s been getting stronger since. It’s everywhere, here. All around, closing in, like the walls, and last night I felt it on top of me, crushing me… A monster, made out of fear and anger and hatred, and if you cut off its head then even more grow back, more dangerous than before…’
‘The other candidate,’ Daisy breathes. ‘The one who just wants to make everything worse. Those were his supporters in the front row, closest to you. You know, the ones you were sick on? Those ones.’
‘Yes, Daisy.’
‘Do you think,’ Daisy continues, ‘maybe the Mirror’s messages were warning you about him?’
Oh yes, Hansel reminds himself, Daisy still thinks that all of this is coming from the Mirror. He feels his usual pang of guilt at keeping the truth from her, followed as always by the gut-wrench of fear at the danger he’d put her in if he were to tell her the truth, especially here. As usual, he tries to ignore the accompanying sickly, slimy selfish worry – namely, that he simply doesn’t know for certain she would still like him if she knew that he was a witch. He doesn’t know if she would smile at a witch the way she’s smiling at him right now, fond and trusting, cheering the room like a wildflower on a windowsill. Right now, he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to bear her finding out the truth. He never has.
‘Maybe,’ Hansel concedes. ‘Maybe it was all about helping Morning.’
‘Well, if it was, and it worked, then the visions and the horrible feeling should have left you by now,’ Daisy reasons. ‘Have they…?’
Hansel shakes his head. ‘The feeling’s still here. It’s a sort of a thick dread, seeping through the walls like treacle.’
Daisy frowns. ‘Does treacle “seep through walls”?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s what it feels like.’
Daisy ponders this. ‘Maybe if there were cracks in the walls. And a lot of treacle…’
‘Maybe there’s something else we still have to do. Maybe… ugh, do we have to do another speech?’
‘Not allowed,’ Daisy tells him. ‘Not once voting’s started. Even the town criers and madrigal men have to swear off political topics until the polls close. The one in the street below’s mostly been singing about particularly cute dogs he’s seen outside the voting cubicles.’
‘Hmm.’ Hansel tries to think.
‘Apparently, one of the dogs was wearing a little bow,’ Daisy adds.
‘D’awww,’ concedes Hansel.
‘Maybe Morning will know.’
‘Hmm?’
‘If there’s anything else we can do to help her, I mean,’ says Daisy. She shrugs cheerfully. ‘It’s that or sit around waiting for madrigals with updates about the dogs.’
Hansel smiles at her. ‘Good idea. Although I really would quite like to hear more about the dogs.’
The sudden shift in mood at Morning’s HQ just from the night before is palpable at first sight. The building, which only hours ago had been a dark and anonymous warehouse, is now festooned with green bunting. There is even a hastily sketched portrait of Morning in the front window, with the simple caption ‘MORNING!’ written above it in large, green letters. Unlike last night, the front door is open, with people milling in and out, a few in huntsman’s masks, but most without.