"Now let me make this perfectly clear," Akita declared. "The harness around your shoulders contains multiple extremely powerful lasers, and it's connected to your shackles. I don't know how strong you are, so I don't want to assume you can't break out. But know that if you do, the harness will immediately sever whichever limb you've freed."

"This is unnecessary!" I insisted. "You don't need any of this on me. I'm not trying to do anything wrong!"

Akita sighed. "That's what they all say."

The zeppelin had brought me to the mountains, where I'd been lowered into a dimly lit cave just barely large enough for me. Akita was standing on a balcony at the level of my shoulders, and two more balconies were underneath. My hands were pulled up above me and shackled to the ceiling, and my feet were shackled to the ground. So I couldn't move—at least, not without risking snapping the shackles and losing a limb. I didn't know the extent of my new strength, but I did know that the shackles weren't nearly strong enough to keep me contained on their own.

"So, I've got some questions for you," Akita continued. "What prompted you to grow tonight, and how long have you had this ability?"

"I have no idea," I replied. "This is the first time anything like this has happened."

Akita crossed her arms. "Tell me about the circumstances."

I explained everything I could think of—Étienne, the train, my reluctance about leaving Lucerne. As I explained, Akita bit her tongue and tapped her foot while taking notes.

Once I was done speaking, Akita spoke into a radio. "See if you can find her boyfriend. Étienne Duval. And check in Lucerne for any of her family members. Bring everyone you can find here."

I gasped. "Please don't—they didn't have any part in this!"

Akita scoffed. "You're not in a position to be making demands."

"How am I not?" I pleaded. "You've chained me up in a cave when I haven't done anything wrong!"

"It's not about what you've done," Akita replied coolly. "It's about what you have the power to do."

I cocked my head, confused. "And what is that?"

Akita laughed, and a pair of glowing wings unfurled from her back. She flew up towards my face and looked me dead in the eyes. "Do the math, Evanna. You're thirty meters tall and you weigh six hundred tons. I can think of twelve different ways you could kill me right now if you weren't restrained. You could choose not to kill me, of course, but that's not something you should be able to decide on."

"So what do you have planned for me, then?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Akita shrugged, slowly flapping her wings. "You'll be here for a few days. Maybe a couple weeks, depending on how long it takes us to figure out how your ability works. I'm reaching out to the government, and if you're lucky they might be able to put you to use."

Now I was confused. "You're not part of the government?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Akita cooed, "this is just a passion project of mine."

And it all clicked. The shackles, the zeppelin, the pit exactly my size, the resounding feeling that Akita had been absolutely prepared for exactly this.

"You built all this for the giant from the mountains," I realized.

"Exactly!" Akita replied, diving into a midair soumersault to land gracefully on her feet on the deck with her arms outstretched. She folded her wings and flashed me a smile. "I hadn't anticipated finding a second giant, but capturing you was a fantastic trial run for our plan to bring her down."

"I'm guessing you've tried to capture her before?" I pondered. "This seems like excessive measures to take for a first attempt."

"You're remarkably chatty for a captive," Akita observed. Without another word, she spun on her heel, a door opened, and she walked out.

I'd never been called chatty before. All of Étienne's friends had commented on how quiet I was, and Étienne said it was one of his favorite things about me. I didn't know what it was about Akita that had made me so talkative—perhaps I just didn't know of any other way to get out of this. But talking my way out had failed, which I suppose shouldn't have surprised me given my lack of inexperience in that area.

And so I stood as still as I could, terrified that even the slightest movement could snap the shackles and cut off my arms or legs. On the train I'd torn through metal without even trying, and I couldn't risk having that happen again. It wasn't long before I started getting sore. Standing up straight with my arms in the air wasn't exactly the most comfortable position, and the rock walls of the pit didn't provide any cushioning to lean against.

As far as I saw, there were two possible ways out of this. Firstly, if I'd been able to grow, perhaps I'd also be able to shrink back to human size. So I focused intently on trying to make myself smaller, to stuff all my feelings into a tiny space that could fit inside a human.

…no, this wasn't working. This left the one remaining possibility—to see if I could grow even more, to break out of Akita's harness before it could hurt me. If this worked, I had no idea how big I would become, but at least I wouldn't have to stay stuck in this pit anymore. So I let down all my mental barriers and let unmitigated feelings course through my mind.

But no matter how large my emotions were, I stayed the same size. This wasn't working. I was stuck here, so I might as well try to find a way to pass the time.

The wall in front of me was mirrored, and so I took a moment to examine my reflection. I was decidedly a mess—my hair was tangled around several pieces of broken metal, two small bushes, and my jacket, which apparently hadn't grown with me. My shirt and pants fortunately had grown, but they were a much tighter fit than they'd been when I was human-sized, and they were badly torn and tattered from outgrowing the train and from the gunfire. Since my glasses hadn't grown with me, I couldn't see much more detail.

But I soon realized I was seeing something else. This wasn't a mirror—it was a one-way window, and the lights in the cave were dim enough that I could see through if I carefully focused. There appeared to be several people watching me from behind the glass, and behind them were windows looking out to the night sky.

As I watched, someone who was almost certainly Akita approached the spectators and spoke. I couldn't hear her and without my glasses I certainly couldn't read her lips, but based on their startled reactions I could only assume she'd let them know that I'd noticed them. Moments later, the room was empty.

It took me a few minutes to realize I was wrong. They hadn't been reacting to me noticing them at all. I realized this when I noticed that the cave was shaking, and that rocks were dropping from the ceiling and bouncing off of my forehead and nose. And soon I heard the immediately familiar sound that twenty years before I'd mistaken for fireworks. Countless rockets were shooting across the sky towards the same colossal silhouette that had approached me along the river as I'd cowered on the covered bridge.

The giant was walking towards me again. And despite that I now equalled her in size, I was no less scared now than I had been then. Once again, I was frozen in place, unable to do anything but watch as her head moved in front of the moon, casting darkness over the scene and making it next to impossible for me to see any more of what was happening beyond the glass.

But the darkness didn't last for long. As I began to faintly hear Akita shouting, I saw the giant's hair starting to glow, brighter and brighter until it was even brighter than the moon had been. I could see clearly now—she was standing still, one knee on the ground, ignoring the rockets exploding against her skin. And as her hair billowed around her, her eyes started glowing even brighter—two points of light resembling stars but difficult to look directly at even through the mirror.

I heard Akita's voice yelling to dive for cover.

Everything lit up white.

And five extremely long seconds later, everything went dark.

The entire cave was collapsing around me. Glass and boulders rained down on my head and shoulders. And a pang of dread struck me as I realized that even the rocks surrounding my shackles were falling apart. There was nothing I could do as I was slowly enveloped by the collapsing rubble.

Snap.

The instant the chain to the shackle around my left wrist broke, there was a jolt of searing pain at my shoulder. And suddenly, I felt my entire body coming apart and drifting away, and I was small, so absurdly small, and the boulders crashing down on me were far larger than I was, and my left arm was gone.

I don't remember much of the moments following that—I was fading in and out of consciousness for a little while. I only remember three things: the relief as the boulders were lifted off of me one by one, the warmth of a hand gently closing around me with fingers as large as I was, and the rhythm of the giant's footfalls as she ran across the countryside with me in her hand.