He rose first and I watched lazily as he pulled eggs from his bag inside, and brought them out to peel and share.

"So what happened in Pheonic?" I asked as we ate and he seemed to age in front of me,

"The building burned. The children were… given peace. The woman you sent home was quick to say you must have perished with them, but when the fire died and all the bodies were of just children…"

He looked more like he couldn't say any more rather than he was unsure I could hear more.

"Did they say I was a witch after all?"

"Worse."

"There is such a thing?"

"They said you were mad and took away any hope of them having their children again."

I appreciated his honesty but I still had to sit up; I felt sick. He moved to press his back against mine and kiss my shoulder.

"I'm sorry." He whispered.

"Don't be." I replied half-heartedly. "Do you know of anywhere can I go?"

"You could stay here."

"It's too run down. I won't last winter even with the blankets."

"Then I'll fix it; I'll make it so you don't need to leave." He rested his chin on my shoulder and stroked my arm.

"Why would I stay? Once you go, there's nothing here for me."

His arm reached for my thigh, "Maybe I won't go."

It was sweet but I knew, "Yes you will."

He pulled me against his chest and kissed my cheek, "I can't hunt witches forever and I've no intention to get killed by a witch."

"You say that but I doubt you could stay still this isolated. Maybe in one of the cities?"

"Would you come with me?"

"Why would you want me with you?"

"To settle down and live a normal life like everybody else."

I was suddenly cold. "What if… I mean what you told me… What if we've been touched too deeply but all the dark magic? What if it follows you when you've been so close to it for so long? Or what if it draws people like us to it?"

"Is that what you really think?"

"Most of the time." I was almost inaudible as I leaned off of him.

"And the rest of the time?"

"I must not be thinking."

I was rising. Running away, really, without physically running. I held a blanket about me and disappeared to dress inside. The atmosphere between us had palpably shifted and when I was clothed, Hansel stood to disappear into the forest. I wasn't sure what had just happened. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to react or, rather, how I wanted to. So I let him go and wondered if he would ever come back. I felt I should have known he wouldn't stay long – of course I would do something to send him away. I carried on my day as I had been doing since my arrival, plagued by the notion that every noise around me was Hansel's approach to the point that I didn't expect the sounds of his true arrival to be real.

I lay in bed, facing the wall and he slid into bed behind me. He wrapped his arms around me. I held my breath in case it was not he, but death come for me at last.

"I once had a lover," he said quietly, as if we were still having the conversation we had that morning, "and she died fighting the most powerful witch I've ever faced. I wished I'd said more to her," his hand slipped from my shoulder, along my side, to my hip, "done more with her. I wished I'd tried to stay with her."

I didn't know what he was saying or what he wanted me to say back. In between my confusion I was having flash backs to our night.

"Are you awake?"

I nodded, "I'm listening."

He pulled at my shoulder to lean over me and look into my face. "You make me feel like I've learned my lesson. It's been so long since I felt this way – years – and I'm reluctant to just go. I've been all over the world, seen and done things most have never lived to tell. All I want is you."

"Me? Or the woman you had once?"

He tried to kiss me but I looked away and his lips met my cheek. He rubbed my arm and pressed his temple to mine, "You, Bano."

I suddenly felt claustrophobic. His words suffocated me and it took all my will to stay still within his arms. How wonderful it had been at the start of the day and how the sensation changed now! I felt like it was too dangerous to be true.

"I can't stay here, Hansel; if people don't think I'm a witch just for living here by myself, while you chase down the real witches, you'll come home to a pyre and a corpse. Besides, I want a life with lots of people in it: neighbors and friends. I can't have that here."

"Believe me, it's safer here and if you think people treat you like an outsider, imagine the way they treat me." Hansel sighed, lying on his back. I turned to him,

"How do they treat you? I saw only awe and respect."

"You've only seen the places I've been invited to." He grumbled.

"Hansel, I am not normal. Who knows what I'm capable of? As your friend, I can't in good conscience let you throw away the possibility of a normal life on a thing like me."

I rested back onto my side.

"Bano, you're beautiful."

"As is a Venus fly trap."

"Everyone thinks roses are beautiful even with their thorns. Don't you trust me?"

"You're blinded to the truth by your own desires. How do you think witches find work?" My voice grew quieter as I tried to gently push him back to his life. He was about to speak when I interrupted him in my most emotionless tone, "Safe is a state of mind, Hansel. And if the way they treat you is as bad as you say… well I'd just make it worse."

Silence wrapped heavily around us like a snake. When I woke in the morning, he was gone and I wasn't sure if I was happy about that or not. I started to cry for my loss but then I recalled him saying 'All I want is you' and I was filled with the claustrophobia again and his absence was all that could still my terror. I carried on with my day as normally as I could, rotating through those emotions like a spinning top until Gretel, Ben and Edward appeared.

"Where's Hansel?" Ben asked as he approached me where I stirred a soup by the door, outside. He looked disappointed to see me alone.

"I thought he was with you." I replied, too wearied to stand in greeting to them. I wasn't lying, I figured the only place he would go was to be with his sister and friends.

"He left before we did to come here." Gretel added with visible concern.

"He was here but he wasn't when I woke up today. I assumed he returned to Pheonic."

"I highly doubt that." She sighed looking to Ben significantly.

"Why?" The look between them revealed more than I could translate, but enough to know I was somehow involved.

"Hansel ended up in a fight." Gretel said, her shoulders square and her jaw set in a way that told me she blamed me.

"A fight?" I repeated, looking to Ben for help. He obliged,

"They started rallying to search for you and Hansel snapped. Some of the men were, well, a mess afterwards. Edward separated them and he left without saying anything to us. We had to stay to do damage control."

"And force their coin from their purses." Gretel added disdainfully. At me or at Pheonic was hard to tell.

I sighed. "Then he'll be back, right?"

"He'd better." Gretel decided and took a seat some distance from me, taking a couple of bags of weapons to assess them. Ben remained with me and Edward receded into the forest. We all said little as the sky grew heavier with the oncoming sunset.

"Maybe we could look for him." Ben offered eventually, loud enough for Gretel to hear.

"Hansel won't want to be found." His sister explained across the distance. Despite it, I could discern her glancing at me with anger. I decided the Witch Hunters needed time on their own.

"I need some air." I said and walked aimlessly through the forest to a small clearing, my heart in my throat and my stomach tense with worry that Hansel had got himself into trouble. It wasn't likely but what if he had? What if he needed help? What would Gretel do to me if he never returned? I explored these thoughts as carefully as I could but as soon as they threatened to overwhelm me, I turned them off. I had to.

Ben's voice sounded so far away as it reached me that I hardly recognized my name. It was full of urgency and I raced to the house. He saw me some yards from my destination and jogged ahead to the fight scene between Gretel and Hansel. I followed and wondered what the siblings were fighting about as I watched.

Eventually Hansel stopped and remained on the ground, clearly trying to end the battle.

"Fine!" Gretel barked. "Fucking stay!"

She stormed past me, throwing me a look that suggested she would kill me, into the woods. Edwards turned and followed. Ben looked between them.

"You go to Gretel." I instructed and Ben jogged off, calling Gretel's name. I walked to Hansel, who was now sitting up.

"I hate letting her think she's won." He said.

"I would think you should hate fighting with her."

"Then there's that." He said as I pulled him up by the hand.

"What were you fighting about?"

"I want to stay here with you."

"I don't want to –"

"Look, it won't kill you to stay here with me for a time."

He wasn't wrong. I ground my jaw. His persistence was both flattering and infuriating. "Go on."

"I've got two options in life; witch hunting and a normal life. I've hunted witches for so long that I can safely say I've done my fair share of fighting. I haven't even tried to be normal, or even resented not being normal. But I can imagine me moving on from here and you getting on with your life in different directions and I still I prefer the scenario where I'm here and you're here, even if it doesn't last a season. This way I can keep you out of trouble."

"You can't just stop witch hunting; people need you." I tried.

"Don't you need me?"

"I need insomnia and purse full of gold! Not protecting."

"I disagree." He boomed and made for the little house.

"What the hell am I missing, Hansel?" I called after him. "I am nothing. I have nothing. Save for scars and nightmares, that is."

"You didn't see your broken body!" He barked, taking me by surprise.

"What do you mean? I was whole when we first met-"

"I saw those scars when they were wounds – I saw you!" he shouted, pointing at me. "And you were pale, and I thought you were dead, there were things crawling out of your skin! And my heart dropped! I didn't know it until then; I didn't know losing you was like losing her; but I don't know if I would have been the same if you were dead."

I was dumbstruck with fear. And I was ashamed for not just accepting everything he offered because, who on earth was going to willingly and lovingly give me more? What was I supposed to say though? He looked at me, beseeching me to speak with his eyes but I had no words. What did people do in this situation? He came towards me and looked like he might grip my shoulders but he hesitated and added, "Why doesn't it matter to you that I care?" It did! But who was I to be cared for? He could have so much more without the burdens I carried – how did I tell him that though? He was looking defeated now, "Jesus after everything I've been through I've got cold, but you… You're something else."

And he was gone. And I wasn't entirely sure what had happened. I sat on the ground. They were better off without me. So far all I'd done was kill a village's worth of children and come between the world's greatest witch hunters. I was a poison and the more I thought, the more twisted I became. Staying still only made me sink deeper into the abyss of my mind. So I moved. I tidied. I packed some morsels of food and a change of clothes. Then I started walking.

I knew of one place I could rest near the water, and then the witch hunters could be Bano-less once again and figure things out free of my poisonous presence.

I barely slept and as soon as it was light enough to see the way I carried on, further from the house, just trying to walk the most difficult paths to keep my mind on my footing and not on Hansel and the last things he had said to me, or all of the things I now realized I could have said back.