Wherefore art thou witch?

.

Ada is staring out the window. It's one of her favorite past times, the one she finds herself returning to over and over again. Of course, it's one of the only past times one can have, locked in a small, barren room with a cot, desk, toilet area, and fucking window, but she likes to have her little hobbies.

In about an hour, she'll start her second hobby–flushing the toilet over and over and over just to hear something in the concrete and steel room.

Exciting times.

It's a Tuesday according to the long list of scratch marks on the window pane. She keeps track in sevens, over and over, seven tally marks in seven rows. Sometimes, when they take her out for recreational time, she comes back to find her hard work painted over, smoothed over, sanded out. Erased. On those days she gets a warning and a little less supper.

No one trusts witches with too many sevens. She'd love to tell them how they're looking for the wrong number with her–not that type of witch–but that would involve talking. Talking used to be her favorite hobby, even over flushing the toilet, but she'd given it all up for him.

She's given up a lot of things for him. Willingly, even. She can feel the curse under her skin bubbling with each little thing, roiling and pushing, desperate to get out. She's already fed it her name, her voice, that little hiccup at the end of her laugh, and a few other bits and bobs from her own personality. Personalities are easy to re-grow, easy to fit around broken parts of her heart. She doesn't need them.

She thinks that's why it's taken so long for the curse to be ready. Everything she's given it is replaceable. She's already calling herself Ada despite having fed it a name already, desperate to hold onto some form of identity within these four walls. It's another thing she could sacrifice, but she already knows that's not what the curse really wants.

It's taken Ada two years of this–sitting and staring and flushing–to get the timing right. Her final sacrifice will be nothing without the right circumstances. The right phase of the moon.

The right visitor.

It wouldn't have taken so long if she were in a normal prison. A human one with guards all up and down the halls, minds open and easy to influence with the spare bit of sugar they give her for her coffee. Hell, it would have taken her mere hours if they'd put her out in the yard to exercise, bare earth under her bare feet. She misses the feel of the earth, rumbling through her soles. It's been a long two years without her oldest companion.

The waiting is almost over.

Ada doesn't turn when the door opens. The scent of magic fills the room, spicy and a little tart. It's not a human mage's smell, not one of the undead, not one of the moon's sons or daughters.

The fair folk have been running this little private prison for centuries. They've, unfortunately, gotten rather good at it. Ada discovered that the first two times she tried to escape, tried to attack, tried to sneak away.

No one gets out of underhill if the fae forbid it, not even the ones carried in kicking and screaming. He hadn't been able to trick her into walking in of her own free will. It'd been the only hitch in his plan, her unwillingness to trap herself here, and it's the only reason why her plan is going to work.

"Miss?"

At last, she turns. The curse is practically salivating under her skin, teeth forming and disappearing under her bones, but she knows her guard won't be able to sense it. She'd sacrificed her sense of taste for secrecy, a trade well done even if everything she ate was now as bland as her cement walls.