I grab Jochen’s arm.
He tenses beneath my fingers as the screaming of a hundred midmorning bells overlaps across the city, yanking the murmurs in this prison to utter silence. All of us are away from the left edge of the cell; it is obvious that we are grouped together, and we are one mass, one breath held, one cluster of equal parts dread and hope.
The bells cease.
Silence hangs dense and choking, and I lick my dry lips.
The floor is still intact.
No. My chest buckles. No, no—Dieter caught on to our plan. He has Otto, he has Otto the same place he has Liesel, and he’ll destroy them both—
“Calm,” Jochen whispers to me. “Calm, Fräulein—”
I am shaking where I hold him, shaking because eyes are turning to me now in growing distrust. This woman came into their cell, the sister of the kommandant, and she lied, didn’t she? She led everyone to believe in salvation, but there will be no salvation, no escape.
A few of their accusation-heated gazes pin on me in funnels of violence. These people have nothing to lose now, and I gave them false hope.
How many minutes have passed since the bells stopped? Five? Ten?
Footsteps bound up the hall along with gruff laughing, a barked command.
“Begin manacling them,” a jäger out of sight orders. He’s coming closer; they all are, keys rattling to unlock our cell. “It’s time to get these—”
The floor blasts upward with a shuddering, percussive explosion.
Screams tear through the crowd, and where we were pressed together already, bodies shove closer, scrambling for cover as rocks and pebbles and debris erupt in a clouded spray.
My ears ring, eyes blurred with soot and the air clouded with dust, but I shove into the crowd without hesitation.
“GO!” I bellow, voice tearing with my own fear, and bodies are frantic to obey.
The crowd heaves, and I vaguely see shapes writhing over newly displaced stones, angling for the hole in the floor leading down into thick, inky darkness.
I turn to Jochen, dust coating his skin in a fine film. He leans on me, and the two of us begin climbing over the hazards and rubble, some of it shifting threateningly beneath our weight.
Outside the cell and the prison, voices shout. I could take one of the protection potions and throw my body as a barricade between these people and the coming jägers, and hope that magic is still as unpredictably potent as it was in Otto’s house fort and when I protected his sister. But nothing I do could help as much as the fog of chalky dust that blankets the room; the jägers can’t see the hole in the floor, the prisoners pouring out to safety. They don’t know exactly what is happening, merely that something exploded.
We climb down, desperation making us unsteady. I feel a sharp rock cut into my shin, but I push on, holding tight to Jochen as we leave the cold swell of the ruined prison chamber and plummet into the aqueduct’s shadows.
Water splashes in all directions beneath the patter of running steps, but otherwise, it is silent, fear wrapping everyone in a blanket of focus. No one cries, no one screams, just the rush of panting breaths.
“Leave,” I tell Jochen, wiping dust off my face, the taste of it bitter on my lips. “Leave—I have to go elsewhere.”
“Danke, Fräulein Hexe,” he says, and before my body can even feel the shock of his words—he knew? He knows what I am, what I really am—he’s gone, the slush and stumble of his hobbled gait taking him off down the tunnel.
People still clamber down the rubble, and now I can hear hexenjägers shouting above.
“Stop! Halt! Hexen escaping—”
I shiver, arms around myself, and duck to the side, out of the way of the remaining prisoners.
Otto was due to light the fuse on the explosion, then run. He should be at our meeting place now; the routes he had me memorize took everyone out of the city, but the intersection where we’re to find each other is the only route that goes toward the Porta Nigra. A risk, but there’s no way we’d find each other in the chaos of dozens of people rushing through tunnels.
What will he say when I tell him that I’m not leaving?
I promised to help him find his sister. But no one could find her better than Liesel; he’ll have to understand that.
He still doesn’t know what Dieter really is, does he? the voice whispers.
I shake my head, too disoriented in the blackness, my ears still ringing, my chest permanently tight with worry. Not now. Just get to Otto. If he won’t stay to help, I’ll find Liesel on my own.
I spin in the dark, feel for a wall, and hold there. I’m facing…east? I think? It’s all disorienting down here. But the Porta Nigra route should lie ahead, then two lefts, a right, another left—
I take a step forward.
Turn! the voice shouts. Turn around, Fritzi!
I stop, cold.
It’s never…yelled before. And it sounded panicked? Afraid?
Numb, I turn. I turn because I am sleepless and sick with worry and being told what to do, where to go, with even this modicum of authority has my body moving of its own accord.
My fingers scramble for the pocket in the slit through my skirt, and I yank out a protection potion. Wild magic will not get me—I down the potion, the earthy, metallic taste a small comfort in the darkness. What will a feeble protection spell do against wild magic, though?
I wait for it to laugh at me. For it to wax on about how I can’t hope to fight it.
But it’s silent now, which is even more unnerving. Did the protection potion cast it away?
I take another step, heart hammering, lungs burning, all sight deadened but sound coming in muffled bursts so I’m not even sure this is the right way, or if back was better; why am I following the voice, why am I listening to it still—
I reach a turn. If this is the correct way, then I need to go left.
I walk. Each step I take draws me farther from the sloshing of feet in water, the shouting of hexenjägers. Are they in the tunnels yet?
I start running. In the dark. Hands out in front of me. All of my faith in the protection spell coursing through my veins.
Instinct seizes me, and I come up short, palms going flat on a wall.
Turn.
I run; my body stops moments before another wall. On I go, wholly given over to my basest of abilities, sightless and senseless and driven by manic terror—
When I stop this time, it’s different. A pause only.
Ahead of me, an arm’s length away, I hear a rush of breath that I recognize. A quick, shuddering exhale in the lightless nothingness.
Then, “Fritzi?”
I dive forward.
My arms lock around his neck, and Otto makes a startled cry that pings off the stones.
“Verdammt, Fritzi! I wasn’t sure if it was you!”
“Sorry, sorry—”
“Warn me before you tackle me in the dark, schiesse.”
“Next time, I’ll be sure to.”
“Good, I—next time?”
I drop my face into the curve of his neck, my racing heart thundering to stillness against the wall of muscle that is his chest. In the vast, sweeping place of senselessness that these tunnels create, I’m consumed by the smell of him, the feel of him, a quick respite.
I realize then that I hadn’t thought I’d see him again. And I’d been terrified by that idea.
Which is just maddeningly annoying.
I don’t release him, but I smack his arm. “You were late. ‘The midmorning bells, Fritzi,’” I badly mimic his voice. “‘Remember, the midmorning bells—we move on which bells? The midmorning—’”
He curses again, but he tightens his hold on me, lifting me off the floor. “I know, I know. I’m sorry—I was held up.” He pauses, and I feel the hitch in his chest, a quick gulp of breath. Held up by what? “You’re all right, though? Everyone escaped?”
“Yes, they’re all on their way out. The explosion worked perfectly.” It rocks through me, again, how well planned this breakout was, how brilliantly Otto brought all this together.
He saved the lives of a hundred people in the span of five minutes.
“And you’re all right?” he repeats, giving me a gentle squeeze.
I go rigid. When he feels the change, his grip intensifies, and a part of me melts entirely.
Eyes shutting, I keep my face pressed to his neck. “I can’t leave without Liesel.”
“I know.” His hand splays flat on my lower back, his thumb moving so slightly against the wool of my cloak that I could be imagining it. “I know where she is.”
That makes me draw back. I can’t see his face, but I can feel the feather of his exhale from his parted lips, the warmth emanating off his skin.
“You saw her? Where? Is she alive?”
“She’s alive. I—”
“Where? Where does he have her?” I wiggle against him, trying to get out of his arms, but he doesn’t relent, and I give him an exasperated look he can’t see. “I have to get her. I don’t expect you to help—”
“Fritzi,” he says in that tone like iron, the one that demands obedience so instinctively that I do stop struggling against him, only to roll my eyes at myself and flush in the dark. “Do you really think I’d save a hundred people only to leave a child behind?”
“I lied to you. About who Dieter is.” What he is.
Otto finally sets me on the tunnel floor, but his hands move to my hips, and his fingers curl into me, binding me in front of him. The imposing force of his presence, even in the dark, coupled with the tugging command in his tone has me grappling for purchase with a handful of his tunic, trying desperately to pull myself together.
“I’ll hear the full story after we save your cousin,” he says. “But right now, we need to move. She’s in the kommandant’s office in the Porta Nigra. The headquarters were already fairly empty this morning; the explosion should draw all jägers to the basilica. We have a window now, and we have to use it.”
I don’t know why I’m challenging him about helping me. I just want another moment in the dark, another second to pause.
But Liesel doesn’t have another moment, another second.
I feel through the vials in my pouch to find the one I need and press it into his palm. “For protection,” I say. “If you’re willing.”
He doesn’t hesitate. I hear it uncork. A beat later, he presses the empty vial back into my hand.
Maybe the Three are watching over me still. If they brought him to me.
Heart in my throat, I twist so I’m holding his hand. “Take me to her.”