The warding spells that Mama kept around Birresborn started a few paces outside the village and lapped the town in a circle. She was famed among other covens for her warding abilities.
It was why we lasted so long, when other covens fell or ran to the Black Forest.
It was why we alone still stood so close to Trier.
I went with her every full moon and helped her reinforce them; I knew the wards as well as I knew her face.
So all I had to do was sneak out while she was asleep the morning of my eighteenth birthday.
Our small kitchen was still flour-dusted from her cooking frenzy—the finished schupfnudeln sat in a bowl under a towel, ready to be fried the next day; the Gaisburger Marsch was still simmering low over smoldering coals; there was even half a bottle of the sweet apfelwein left on the table, only because Mama forbade me from drinking all of it in one sitting.
I pulled a cloak around my shoulders, slipped past the table illuminated by the haze of almost dawn, and slinked outside.
The path to the warding wall led just down from our cottage. My heart twisted, anticipatory joy, anxiety, dread, everything all at once. This was a good thing, what I was doing. I was reuniting my mother and her son. It was just the sort of act Mama encouraged all in our coven to do. Good deeds fed the Well; bad deeds fed wild magic. So much goodness—healing a broken relationship, returning love lost—would make the Well overflow.
And maybe it was for myself a little too. To see my brother again.
I reached a small bundle of trees at the edge of the forest around Birresborn, and I jogged up to the tallest one. A mighty yew.
The moment I drew near, a shadow peeled off from a tree farther into the forest.
Dieter uncovered a lantern, casting yellow light onto his face, and grinned at me. It was a grin I couldn’t help but return, as if this was just some dumb prank we were pulling on Mama like when we were younger.
He’d smiled at me like that when we’d snuck into Mama’s room and read the book on wild magic. Mischief and fun and an air of Trust me, Fritzichen—have I ever let you down before?
Breathless, I fumbled for the potion to lower the warding spell. The way Mama cast it, no witch could pass unless they were a part of our coven.
Dieter hadn’t been a part of our coven for five years.
My chest ached, being this close to him after so long without him and not even knowing why. All I knew was that a week before Dieter’s eighteenth birthday, Mama and the elder witches had a meeting. Their shouts had carried through the whole village.
“He’s a threat, Astrid! You are blinded by your maternal love when you should be thinking like our leader. Perchta spoke to you. You must heed the Mother goddess.”
The next day, Dieter was gone.
Mama said that the coven had voted to banish him and that was all I needed to know. I had sobbed for weeks. Did he even know he’d done something wrong—and could I do something similar without being aware of it?
When I’d confessed these fears, Mama had wrapped me in her arms and kissed my forehead. “No, mein Schatz. They will never take you from me. I promise.”
That hadn’t answered my question. Why had she allowed Dieter to be taken from her, but she’d fight for me?
The years passed, and our coven moved on—but I hadn’t, and I knew Mama hadn’t either. She ached for Dieter. She never spoke of him, but she grew solemn on his birthday or whenever we found one of his belongings. His affinity had been in healing, in the body, wounds, and blood—whenever someone fell injured or sick, Mama would take it upon herself to heal them now, as if trying to prove that we did not need my brother’s gifts.
I missed him too. I’d been nearly thirteen when they’d cast him out—I’d idolized him, my fearless, quick-witted brother.
And after five years without him, just shy of my eighteenth birthday, I’d asked my little cousin, Liesel, to track him—her affinity in pyromancy let her find anything, anyone, by reading flames. She’d thought the whole thing great fun, this secret between us.
I got a message to him. He wrote back.
This meeting at dawn on my birthday was arranged. He’d said he was eager to come home and make things right with Mama. He’d said he missed me more than I could believe.
Surely enough time had passed that he had atoned for whatever had made the coven banish him. Any threat he once posed had long passed.
I shook the potion over the warding spell line as he smiled at me now. “Are you ready?”
“You have no idea,” Dieter said with a wink.
The potion crackled and hissed as it poured through the air, disintegrating the invisible line Mama wove with her own hands. I felt the moment it snapped—a wash of electricity, like lightning striking nearby, and then—
Then—
What was that?
My shoulders tensed, brow furrowing, all the muscles in my body straining against an unspoken threat. Like there were eyes on me I couldn’t see, instincts flaring in a wordless warning that something, something, was wrong.
“The ward should be down now,” I said anyway, still smiling, but it was stiff. “Want to try?”
Dieter took a tentative step forward, then another. No great seizure of pain grabbed him, and after a moment of standing in the middle of the warding wall, he gave me a relieved smirk.
“Good job, Fritzichen.”
I threw my arms around my brother.
He was so much taller than I remembered. More rugged, worn by his time away, and I wanted to ask him all about it, every moment he’d been gone. Where had he been? What was the world outside Birresborn like—I went with Mama occasionally to nearby towns for markets, but beyond that, far beyond—
Dieter hugged me back with one arm and spun us in a circle. A bag at his waist bumped against my thigh, and he set me down quickly, but not before I felt a shudder run through him, some errant twitch of repressed eagerness. He’d get like that sometimes when we were younger, so fixated on a goal that his whole body would shudder and shake with need.
“Fritzichen,” he said, one hand on my arm, the other reaching into his bag. “You don’t know how I’ve dreamt of this day.”
I smiled. It felt forced, and I couldn’t figure out why. “Me too—”
“No.” His voice was a hard drop, his fingers spasming on my arm.
He held up what he’d drawn out of his bag: a bottle, typically used to store beer.
My frown was question enough. The wild excitement in his eyes didn’t let any words form on my tongue.
“You have to drink this,” he told me. He pressed the bottle to my chest.
I didn’t take it. “What? Why? Dieter—”
“Fritzichen.” Another hard snap, his tone bouncing from eager to unarguable in a heartbeat. “Together, we’ll save the world. The voice has told you, hasn’t it? It’s what we’re meant for.”
My body went cold. A pond freezing slowly in mid-winter, the edges first, then the middle, all of it crystallizing one particle at a time.
“Sever from the Well. Take this bonding potion,” he said, eyes glinting in his lantern’s light. “Bond with me. Together, we’ll be the most unstoppable force of wild magic the world has ever seen.”
Too many things were rushing up on me. Too many realizations. His words, his mania, wild magic, the voice—all of it was coalescing, and I couldn’t breathe.
That sensation of a threat, an unseen danger, grew and grew, my body shaking with building unease.
And I knew its source now.
It was in front of me.
“It’s our destiny, Fritzichen, sweet Fritzichen.” Dieter released my arm to tuck a curl behind my ear. “You and I. We’ll join our magic and dismantle this whole corrupt system. We’ll burn it all down.”
The bottle sloshed where he pushed it against me again. Still, I didn’t take it, my hands numb at my sides.
My focus caught on the forest behind him.
The trees were moving. Or, no—not the trees.
Soldiers.
Soldiers in the forest, marching toward us, toward Birresborn.
“Dieter.” His name left my lips in a burst of air. “What is—what are you doing? Who did you bring?”
Dieter touched my cheek. “You have to start by severing from the Well. Say the spell. On this day and from this hour,” he started with a singsong lilt. “I sever here the Well’s one power—”
The spell to sever the connection to the Origin Tree and its Well, to open a witch up to wild magic.
“You remember it, don’t you, Fritzichen?” Dieter tipped his head. “Have you said it yet? No. Mama would’ve thrown you out too. Dear, perfect, obedient little sister. But it’s time to not be so obedient anymore, yes? Time to be naughty now. Sever from the Well. Take the—”
“You broke your connection to the Well?” My mind was a chaos of realizations, and I fixated on this one. “Mama—she knew?”
Dieter breaking his connection to the Well had never been a possibility. It was such an unforgivable, irredeemable thing for a witch to do, dangerous and harrowing, and it would destroy him—he wouldn’t have severed from the Well. He wouldn’t have chosen wild magic.
That was why he was banished?
He wanted me to do it too. He wanted me to take a bonding potion he’d made—he’d brewed one? It was so dangerous to make, it could kill me and cut off his magic entirely if he’d made it wrong. He wasn’t adept at potions. How could he trust it?
I couldn’t trust it. Not from him. Not that look in his eyes, the desperate, hungry gleam of a man on the edge. He would connect with my magic and drain me dry.
It was absurd. No one made bonding potions anymore. It was too dangerous; all of this was too dangerous; it didn’t make sense—
“No,” I managed, throat like sand. “No, Dieter. What have you done?”
His face fell. Instantly. Fragile hope and manic need to a flat, dull fury.
“Oh, Fritzichen,” he moaned. “Don’t make me do it this way. You have to take the potion willingly, you see. It doesn’t work if I force you. Make the better choice, sister.”
“No—Dieter, I don’t understand—”
He lunged to grab my arm again. I dove to the side, narrowly missing him, my pulse rocking through my veins as the soldiers drew closer. I could see their uniforms in the moonlight—they were hexenjägers.
Dieter wore their badge and uniform. I hadn’t noticed, under his cloak—
He reached for me again, and I took off running back for Birresborn.
“There’s no escape, Fritzichen!” he shouted after me. “You let me in! Together, you and I—this is our fate!”
Dieter stares at me, the bars between us, but oh, far more than that separates us now.
When he smiles, I have to fist my hands beneath my cloak, every bit of my focus on staying upright, on not collapsing in a mess of sobs and questions at his feet.
“Fritzichen,” Dieter says, his voice airy with relief and excitement, all of it so pure that I can barely see him through his insanity. “I heard you were in the city, but I had feared you would do something rash. I did not believe you were capable of going quietly.”
He doesn’t let me respond.
Dieter snaps his head to look at Otto. I don’t have the strength to move, even to follow his gaze, but I can feel Otto’s eyes on me, the heat of his attention.
He will give us away if he keeps looking at me like that.
My thoughts are disconnected, a thing outside myself, as my brother makes a satisfied grunt.
“Good work, Kapitän,” he says. “Where did you catch her?”
There is a pause. An almost indiscernible hitch in Otto’s throat.
“In the slums, sir,” he manages. A swallow, and he regains himself, his voice leveling—he really is skilled at deception, when he needs to be. “Just within the walls of the city.”
“Trying to flee Trier, were you?” Dieter turns back to me, but my eyes have fallen to the floor.
The cobblestones are covered in molded hay and excrement, yet I see people huddling all across them, this space packed with convicted witches. Will we even be able to move enough away from the far spot on the floor to avoid the explosion?
Wouldn’t that just be great: Otto and I do all of this, then inadvertently blow up these prisoners rather than save them. Myself included.
My head drops back, an exhausted, self-deprecating smile tugging across my face.
“What is humorous?” my brother asks, and there is the slightest twinge of annoyance in his voice.
How far has the corruption of wild magic taken him? Five years wallowing in it. Is there any part of who he really is left?
I will not speak to him. I have nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn’t destroy me, and I cannot be destroyed, not now.
But—
Liesel.
She isn’t here.
Do I dare show that desire? Do I let him see that he still has that piece to play against me?
My eyes find his lazily, and I can feel the tears gathering, all sensations dulled by how impossible this situation still is.
My brother killed our coven. He burned our mother.
Because of me.
Because I helped him.
Because I didn’t know what he’d become.
“Where is she?” I whisper. “What have you done with Liesel?”
His face doesn’t change, not really. But something in his eyes, an emptiness in the pale blue depths, makes my chest buck with renewed panic.
I’d become distracted with preparations for the prison escape. I’d smothered my fear for Liesel under action, blissful, ignorant action, but now, I see a hundred possibilities play across my brother’s face.
He could have done anything to her.
He’d spent his years in Birresborn studying healing—how to reknit wounds, how to soothe aches. But he’d always been more interested in the cause, hadn’t he? Asking Mama how much blood a person could lose before they died. Wondering which organs were necessary, which could be removed. Questions that had seemed a part of his studies at the time, but are now so horrifying my stomach fills with lead.
I know—I know—he has Liesel alive. And suddenly, that is the worst possible outcome for her.
Dieter steps back with a renewed grin, all teeth. I teeter after him, one hand going to my chest, trying to smash my heart back together, but I’m falling, falling—
“Well done,” he says again. His cruel smile slides to Otto. “You have earned the honor coming to you tomorrow.”
Honor? But I can’t breathe, each gasp too short, my stomach cramping, lungs burning.
Otto bows his head to Dieter. He looks at me, and he risks both of our lives in the way he lets his eyes soften, pleading.
I feel the memory of his arms around me.
The rush and swirl of his inhale beneath my ear, a fortifying breath as he held me in the house fort.
I manage a choked breath. In, steady, out. Another.
“Your sister, sir?” Otto asks. When he looks back at Dieter, his face is hardened again.
My brother beams. “Indeed. Did you think yourself the only hexenjäger cursed with a traitorous family?” Dieter slaps a hand on Otto’s shoulder in camaraderie, but I see Otto’s lip curl, just a flash. “Your sister will similarly be brought to justice, Kapitän, once we find her. And have no fear—we will find her.” Dieter glances at me, and I know those words were meant to spike fear into my heart. He knows Liesel’s skills. “For now, we rejoice in our great diocese being soon purged of yet another witch.”
“Praise God,” Otto intones, but it’s hollow.
“Praise God, indeed,” Dieter says, and it sounds even more fake, a mockery, and I wonder how he has led them all to believe that he follows this doctrine, that he has given himself over to the Catholic god.
His eyes glitter with an evolved childhood mischief, one now fixed on madness and greed.
Dieter smiles at me one last time. I am stone.
“I will see you soon, Fritzichen,” he coos. “We’ll have a nice bonfire for you. And we’ll see if you scream when I brand you—Mama didn’t. But you know that, don’t you?”
I do. Intimately.
Bile crawls up my throat, and I fight not to touch the spot between my breasts, where he branded her, where he’ll brand me.
Except he won’t. I’ll escape long before he gets the chance to.
Dieter walks off, taking Otto’s arm and pulling him along.
Terror floods my limbs, pins me even more immovably in place at the sight of my brother holding on to Otto. But he has been at Dieter’s side for years. He knows how conniving my brother is, how deranged. I have to believe he’s capable of outplaying him, and that this plan will work.
But Otto doesn’t know that my brother is a witch. That Dieter draws his power from wild magic. That the head of the hexenjägers came from the very power that they root out and burn.
Because I didn’t tell him. Because I did to him what Mama did to me, let him go into this with incomplete information.
What have I done?
A hand touches my elbow. “Fräulein?”
A shriveled old man stands next to me, a head shorter than me, his sagging skin speckled with age spots and pox scars. His mouth stretches in a prodding smile, showing gaps for missing teeth.
“Come,” he says. “Sit. We will make room.”
He bats his hand, but already people are adjusting, shifting to make a space for me on the soiled cobblestones like I’m some welcome guest at their home.
That breaks the tears down my cheeks. I dig the heel of one palm into my eye, fighting to remember the sensation of Otto holding me, showing me how to breathe.
Does he regret helping me now that he knows what information I kept from him? Does he hate me as much as I hate myself?
“Come now, Fräulein,” the old man coaxes. “All is not grim. We are innocent, hm? Innocence shall prevail.”
Will you let it prevail? the voice demands. Or will you continue to ignore what I can do for you?
Stop, I tell the voice. Leave me alone.
I have seen what giving in to wild magic has done to my brother.
Nothing, nothing, will make me follow his path.
Leave me alone, I say it again, only this time to the agony in my heart, the grief that ever seeks to make me collapse. Leave me alone.
I have work to do.
I force my eyes open, tears still wet on my cheeks. I may have failed Otto by not telling him all my secrets, but I will not fail these people, this one chance at stopping my brother’s horror.
There are no hexenjägers outside the bars, all relegated to their stations around the basilica now that I’ve been locked safely away.
My eyes turn to the old man, blazing suddenly, and the concern on his face twitches into surprise.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “All is not grim. Not now that you have me.”