The terrain grew rockier and more barren as Evelyn, Cat and Oliver navigated the Skeleton Ridge together. The path grew narrower, the cliffs grew taller, the mountains more uninviting, and the entire journey became increasingly more dangerous altogether. Eve could see why traveling that path during nighttime would have been a terrible idea. Even in broad daylight, the girl almost fell off the cliff twice, as Antares skidded over gravel.

The desert was visible in the distance, now. As far as escape routes went, it was either the desert or those narrow ridges the party had just come through. Neither seemed very tempting. They had a plan for breaking in and rescuing Bree, but Eve never got to ask Cat how she was planning on getting away.

Cat stopped riding, and dismounted, as they reached a wide valley with nothing but barren landscape in sight.

“We’re here,” she said.

Eve furrowed her brow, confused. Here? But there was nothing in that place.

She looked at Oliver to see if he knew something about it, but the boy seemed just as confused as she was. He shrugged. The two of them watched as Cat tied Sirius’ reins to a rock in the shade, and walked about a hundred meters forth into the valley. Then she waved for the others to come. Eve shrugged, and walked up to her, leaving Antares in the same place Cat had tied Sirius.

As she got closer, Eve noticed there was some sort of chasm in the ground, running from side to side of the valley. Cat motioned for her to lay low, and so she did, kneeling beside the other girl to look down into the rift.

Stonepit Fortress, as it turned out, had been aptly named. The chasm plunged about fifty meters into the ground, and the fortress had been built inside it, a tall and narrow building that rose from the bottom of the chasm. On either side of the rift was a stone staircase, sculpted into the rock itself, zigzagging all the way to the bottom. Wooden bridges connected the staircase to the fortress at regular intervals. There was nobody in sight.

“That’s weird,” said Cat. “There’s usually at least one or two soldiers guarding these gates.”

“Maybe they went out for breakfast?” Eve suggested, playfully.

Cat rolled her eyes. “No, they didn’t. Something must have happened. Come on, let’s check it out. Pepper?”

Eve took the vial from her pocket, uncorked it, and offered to Cat, who smelled it and sneezed. Eve collected the girl’s clothes and the two of them followed Cat (now as an actual cat) as she scampered down the stairs. There was no railing to hold onto, and falling down that rift would probably mean Certain Death, so they couldn’t go too fast. The group crossed the first wooden bridge, reaching a balcony with a large open gate on the other side. Cat took a few steps in, cautiously looked into both sides of a corridor, then wagged her tail, signaling that it was safe for the others to follow.

The corridor was lined with cells on both sides. Those were all empty. Cat stopped in front of one of the cells, staring, and, as Eve walked up to her, she realized why.

The thick iron bars of the cell had been deformed, pulled apart to allow an opening big enough for a man to walk through. Throughout that corridor, and all others corridors in the lower floors, there were several more cells with exactly the same pattern. And still, no guards of any sort in sight. It was odd.

“What sort of monster could have done this?” Oliver asked, touching the bent iron bars. He was right. Neither Eve nor Cat could imagine that a person would have the strength to do such a thing.

“Where’s everyone?” Eve whispered, unsettled.

“Beats me,” said Oliver. “Do you think the prison was abandoned? Maybe they moved the prisoners to some other location.”

“Maybe? But if that was the case, then I believe we would find the cell doors open, and not... this...” Eve gestured at a particularly deformed set of iron bars. “This looks like a massive jailbreak or something.”

The pair followed Cat down the last set of stairs, reaching the lowest level. As they walked into the corridor there they heard a noise. People talking. Cat signaled for them to wait, and strode forward down the corridor until she stopped in front of a cell. She wagged her tail, for Oliver and Eve to come and see.

What they found were thirty-something soldiers and prison staff crammed into a pair of cells. Iron bars had been ripped off other cells and wrapped into the bent bars of these two cells, making a mesh of iron that looked pretty much inescapable. The three kids stared at the men inside, and they stared back at them, both parties in absolute shock.

“What the heck?” said Oliver, breaking the silence.

“Hey, who are you people?” said one of the guards. “Get us out of here!” said another. Then they started arguing with each other, while trying to convince Oliver and/or Eve to help in some way. For a moment, the two of them just stared, stupefied.

“What do we do?” Oliver asked.

Eve shrugged. She had come to find Bree and break her out, she’d never expected to find a situation like that.

And that’s when they were tackled, thrown on the floor and tied with coarse fiber rope. Blindfolds were wrapped over their eyes. Cat meowed. Eve and Oliver shouted, at least until the two humans were gagged with rags. Eve was lifted off the floor and carried on someone’s shoulder. She still tried to struggle, but it was futile.

The three of them were carried for quite a while. Eve could feel sunlight on her skin, meaning they must have been taken somewhere outside. Their captors, three men and a woman, kept chatting to each other as they went, as if kidnapping two people and a cat was as ordinary a situation as going shopping for groceries. Cat meowed all the way, but those sounds were muffled: she must have been put in a bag.

After twenty minutes of that, Eve and Oliver here unceremoniously dumped on the floor, like potato sacks. There were more voices around them, now. “What’s this?” said one of the new voices.

“Crown spies,” said the man who’d been carrying Evelyn. “We found them in the pit, they were about to set the soldiers free. What shall we do to them?”

“I don’t know, Jayjay,” said another new voice. “They’re children. They don’t look like spies.”

“Then what were they doing in the pit?” said the woman who’d captured Cat. “It’s not exactly a playground down there.”

“Why don’t we ask them?” said yet another man. “Let them speak for themselves.”

Eve felt the gag on her mouth being removed, and she immediately reacted by shouting some offense at her captors. “Let me go, you thugs!” she said, coupled with a few swear words to properly express her indignation.

“State your name and what business you had at the pit,” said the man from before, the one who’d said they should speak for themselves. He must have been some sort of leader of that group.

Eve objected. “Why should I?”

That caused a good amount of laughter around them.

“Pss, Evelyn,” said Oliver, beside her. “I think you should better do as they say.”

Eve sighed. “Fine. Name’s Evelyn Rachel Meyers. I was looking for my sister, Brianna Lake. And the boy beside me is Oliver, he was looking for his father. We were gonna bust the two of them out.”

The man chuckled. “Well, for two kids who were planning to bust someone out of jail, you didn’t get too far without being captured, yourselves.” Another round of laughter. Eve had to fight the urge to respond with some foul words. She hated being looked down upon.

“Boy, you were looking for your father, right?” the man asked Oliver. “Well, what’s his name, then?”

“Jean Marco,” Oliver announced.

The man cleared his throat. “Jean Marco. Does anyone here know a Jean Marco? Was there a Jean Marco in the pit with us? What about a Brianna Lake?”

The people around them started muttering, discussing whether they knew anyone going by those names. Nobody came forward.

“Sorry, kids, we don’t know no Jean Marco or Brianna Lake,” the leader announced. “And surely you don’t expect me to believe the two of you and your cat walked into Stonepit Fortress by mistake, do you?”

“Brianna had to be there!” Evelyn protested. “Cat told me she’d be!”

“The... cat told you that?” the man asked, hesitantly. Eve sighed. She should have known her dimwit captor would never take her seriously. Apparently, now he also thought she was mad.

“It’s not a cat cat,” she explained. “It’s Catherine. She’s human, only she’s cursed into cat shape right now. Why am I even telling you this stuff?”

There was some murmuring going around. One of the groups’ captors, the woman from before, mentioned that she saw three horses tied up on the valley near the fortress, and that nobody else had been seen around those parts except for “the two kids and the cat”. Someone else suggested that they call “madam witch,” whoever that was, to see if these kids were really telling the truth. The leader agreed.

A minute or so later, Eve heard footsteps walking up to her, and a familiar voice called her name.

“Evelyn?”