Hansel Müller had hunted witches for twenty years, and he still could not name the one who mattered. He sat in a countryside alehouse with a mug in his fist, telling the story he always told. The candy house. The oven. His sister shoving the witch inside. Three commoners leaned over their ale and listened, grinning at the parts where he grinned. They did not see what he wanted from them. He wanted the coven that trained her. That coven was the whole reason he still carried knives. Kill one witch, and you only cut a branch. He wanted the root. But the witch burned eighteen years ago, and dead women teach nothing. He had no name, no mark, no trail. He drank instead. Gretel came in without knocking the mud off her boots. She was younger than him and twice as hard to read. She said nothing to the commoners. She set a charred wooden box on the table beside his mug. "Drink later," she said. The three commoners went quiet. One stood and left his ale half full. Hansel knew that quiet. People felt the cold come off his sister the way they felt it off a well. "What is it," he said. "The candy house. I went back." She opened the box. Inside lay a scrap of cloth, scorched brown at one edge. A mark was stitched into it. Three crossed thorns inside a ring. Hansel put down the mug. "You went to the candy house. Alone." "It was faster." She tapped the cloth. "This was under the hearthstone. She hid it. Hunters burned the body and never dug." He picked up the scrap. The thorns meant nothing to him. But they meant something to someone. Twenty years, and here was the first thread that led past the oven. "A coven mark," he said. "Yes." Gretel sat. "She was trained. This is who trained her." Hansel turned the cloth in the firelight. His hands were steady now. The ale forgotten. "You know whose mark this is." "No." She held his eyes. "But the Order might. Kwame keeps the old records." That soured him. Going to Kwame meant going to the castle. It meant the court, the Queen, the whole clean world that kept witch hunters at arm's length until a witch got close to the throne. Hansel liked the alehouse better. He liked the parts of his life that asked nothing of him. But the thorns were in his hand. He had wanted a lead for twenty years. Now he had one, and it pointed straight at a door he did not want to open. He folded the cloth and stood. "Then we ride to Kwame," he said. "Tonight." Gretel was already at the door. The commoners watched them go and said nothing. The mug sat full on the table behind them.

They never reached their horses. Hansel and Gretel stepped out of the alehouse into the night, the charred cloth folded in his fist. Two riders waited in the lane. Lantern light caught their armor. Each wore a red cape and a rose-crested shield across the chest. Royal guards. Hansel knew the crest. It belonged to the Queen. The nearer guard held out a sealed letter. "Hansel and Gretel Müller. By order of Queen Snow White." His voice came flat through the helm. "You are summoned to Rosenfeld Castle. Tonight." Hansel took the letter but did not open it. A door down the lane cracked open. He saw three commoners peer out, the same ones who had listened to his story over ale. Two children stopped their game in the mud to stare at the knights. The whole lane had gone still. People watched witch hunters get summoned by the crown, and they remembered it. "We were already riding to the castle," Hansel said. He kept his voice easy. "Save your ink." "The summons is not for the archive," the guard said. "It is for the Queen." That stopped him. He broke the seal and read. The words were short. The Queen knew about the cloth. She wanted Gretel before the court. Hansel looked at Gretel. "She named you. By name." Gretel read it over his shoulder. Her face did not move. "Then she already knows what we found." That was the problem. Hansel had wanted Kwame's old records. He had wanted to slip into the archive, dig up the coven's mark, and leave before anyone asked his name. Quiet work. Now the Queen herself had reached down and pulled them into the open. There was no quiet left. "We could ride the other way," he said. He meant it half as a joke. "No," Gretel said. "The records are locked. Only the court opens them. She is the court." She folded the letter and handed it back to him. "She wants what we want. The coven." Hansel hated how clean her logic was. He had spent twenty years staying clear of the throne. The court kept hunters at arm's length until a witch got close to the crown. Now one had. He did not know which one. But the Queen did not summon hunters over nothing. "If we go in," he said, "we don't come back out as nobodies. They'll know our faces." "They already do." Gretel nodded at the guards. "We ride." The guards turned their horses. Hansel swung into his saddle and tucked the cloth against his chest. The lane watched them leave. The alehouse door swung shut behind them. They rode through the dark until the castle rose up ahead, black against the sky. Torches burned along the wall. Two tall doors stood at the top of the steps, shut and waiting. Hansel stopped his horse at the foot of them. He had his lead now. He had no way back out. "Here," Gretel said, and dismounted.