Otto stares at Liesel, expecting more. But when she leans away from the fire at her feet definitively, he looks at me in question.
“The Well is a place?” Otto frowns in confusion. I’d told him about the Well, but in the abstract—not as a place where his sister could go.
But Hilde can’t be there. I didn’t send her there.
Did I?
The lapping of the river a few paces behind us is almost deafening as I stare at the side of my cousin’s face in the afternoon sun.
“Liesel,” I start, “what are you talking about?”
She whips a glare at Otto, misreading my hesitation. “You don’t have to pretend, Fritzi. He’s one of them, and they know everything about us now because of Dieter.” She pauses, noticeably flinches. “Almost everything.”
Otto frowns and shakes his head. “Where is my sister? Is she—”
Liesel leans forward, teeth baring, and I think I should intervene, but I’m at a loss, missing something in what she’s saying, my body gone to ice and stone. “The Well. In the Black Forest. The place where all good witches draw their power. The place your kommandant is trying to destroy.”
I grab Liesel’s arm. “What are you talking about?”
She turns her fury on me. But somehow, it’s still directed at Otto, and it’s breaking my heart.
“That’s why Dieter wanted me,” she hisses. “He wanted me to divine a way for him to break through the barrier of the Well.”
My shock is too potent. It warps into horror and back again, and my stomach burns with nausea.
Because the Well, the coven in the Black Forest, is protected with wards even more powerful than the ones Mama put around Birresborn. Wards meant to let good witches in and keep bad witches out.
Only unlike Birresborn, there is no stupid, naive witch waiting inside the Well to drop the wards for him. He’d need a different way in if he wanted to go.
That’s what he wants? To access the Well?
Why?
My shocked horror clashes sharply with the ever-present wall of my grief. I choke on it, rocking toward Liesel; I catch Otto’s sudden spike of awareness, the way he twitches as if to lean toward me, but I’m fixed wholly on my cousin, on memories surging and biting.
Liesel’s bottom lip trembles, and she drops her gaze to the small fire. Her fingers curl over the crackling orange and gold flames. “He forced me to look for ways to break the Well’s wards. And I—I almost did. I would’ve broken, Fritzi. But I pretended the fire only told me where it’s located in the Forest, that Abnoba wouldn’t explain how exactly the wards work or how he could break them. It was enough to make him stop.” Her voice pinches, and tears drop down into the fire. “I just wanted to make him stop.”
I pull Liesel against me, burying my face in her hair. She smells of cinder and burning, a baked-in heat that she carries always.
Has she realized that I’m to blame? Has she realized that she helped me bring Dieter to Birresborn?
And because I refused to take the bonding potion he brought. Because I didn’t let him use my powers and bleed me dry.
He was forced to abduct Liesel, to get her to ask the flames for another way to complete his goal.
“Liesel,” I whisper, swallowing against my closing throat. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I let him get you. I’m sorry I led him to us.” I hiccup, a gag warping my voice, and I pinch my eyes against a rush of tears. “I’m sorry for everything.”
She wriggles against me and digs her fingers into my arm, squeezing hard. But she doesn’t speak. It’s too big, I know; it’s all too much, this day, this week, this month.
In a flash, she shoves away from me and glares at Otto. “But why is his sister in the Well?”
Otto looks at me, the same question on his face. “The Well is in the Black Forest?” he clarifies.
My tears freeze on my cheeks. He glances at them, back up at me, and I see his hands flex where they have gone lax on his knees.
I press the heel of my palm to my forehead, and on a deep breath, I explain one of the greatest secrets of my people. How the goddesses blessed a coven of witches to protect the source of all our magic and hid it deep in the Black Forest. How witches have run there over the past years to escape the hexenjägers, but the journey is perilous, to cross so much of the Empire, but some have risked it, if only for the safety it offers.
And that had been my sole focus when I’d stumbled onto Hilde’s cottage. Finding Liesel, getting us to the Well. To safety.
That was the spell I cast on Hilde.
Protection.
“You sent my sister to the Black Forest,” Otto says when I’ve finished.
I can’t look at him. My eyes are on the forest’s undergrowth, the flame still burning at Liesel’s feet, kept alive by her grip on the magic. It warms this small clearing, but I don’t think I’d feel any cold even if there was no fire.
“And that’s where Fritzi and I are going too,” Liesel tells him, drawing her chin up defiantly. She looks at me. “That’s where Abnoba says we’ll be safe.”
“Abnoba? You keep mentioning her,” Otto questions.
I finally meet his eyes.
There’s no blame waiting for me there. No accusation. Just concern, patience, and somehow, that’s worse, that he’s able to still see us as somehow on equal footing after everything I’ve done.
Numb, I shrug. “Abnoba, the Crone. One of our goddesses. The protector of the wilds and life. Perchta, the Mother, is the overseer of rules and traditions. Holda, the Maid, is the goddess of death and winter. Abnoba blessed Liesel—she’s been watching over her all her life.”
Otto’s brows go up. Which part is surprising—that our goddesses speak to some of us? Or that we have more than one?
Liesel tugs on my sleeve. “Dieter can’t get us in the Well. She told me to come there. Without me or a connection to the Well, he’ll never figure out how to get past the wards. They were set up by the goddesses themselves.”
“He is connected to magic,” Otto presses. “We saw what he can do.”
“I told you, he isn’t like me,” I say. “He’s a witch, yes; but he severed his connection from the Well. The magic he uses instead is corrupting: wild magic. There is no one who oversees it, no one who controls it, so it allows him to do anything he wants. But to access it, he has to feed it evil acts.”
Or bond with another wild magic witch, and use her like a tapped keg he can refill and drain, refill and drain.
I shiver, pushing away the image.
“Evil like burning people?” Otto guesses. “So your brother is still a powerful witch, but his magic comes from an uncontrolled source that he can only access by slaughter. And my sister is currently in a hidden sanctuary in the Black Forest controlled by goddess-blessed witches who protect your source of magic.”
Liesel puckers her lips. “He’s not as dumb as he seems.”
“But even if we’re safe in the Well,” I say, “Dieter will still be out in the world, wreaking horrors on innocents. When we reach the Well, we have to hope they’re able to help us stop him. Somehow. This is so much worse than him just being murderous.” Dread shakes through me, that there even is something worse than the murder of innocents.
“His magic explains why he pushed for the mass burning.” Otto rubs his wrist, works his way up his forearm, massaging the muscles stiff from rowing. “He was going to use all the deaths to charge him with enough magic to break that barrier, with Liesel’s help.”
“Magic has been wrong lately,” I say. “Because he’s attacking the Well’s barrier. But,” I twist to Liesel. “Why did Dieter want you to get him into the Well? What does he want with it?”
Liesel brushes her palms on her soiled skirts. “He kept saying he’ll get more. That little tricks like my pyroaugury would be child’s play after.” She looks up at me, tears brimming her eyes, and my guilt turns into a beast of teeth and claws at how exhausted she is. We haven’t rested, she’s barely touched the rations I laid out for her, and here I am, forcing her to relive what he did to her.
But she sits up straighter, her gaze boring into my soul. “He’s not just trying to break the wards that protect the Well. He’s trying to break the Well. He has wild magic, but if he has access to all magic without needing to be connected to the Well…”
There will be no limits on what he can do, no requirements of sacrifice or evil acts or rules. He’ll have all the magic in the world. He’s already started trying to break the wards from here, but nothing of what he’s done so far has brought them down or even really hurt them.
My chest goes cold, matching the frigid wind that drifts past us, fluffing the hair around Liesel’s face. “The forest folk will be willing to help us, then, if they know that that is his intent,” I say, barely feeling the words.
Liesel shrugs, her eyes fluttering in a slow, tired blink. “I tried to figure out what all he knows, but—”
“No—you’ve told us enough,” I cut her off. “Rest now.”
I help her lie down on a cloak I spread out, and I pull the edges around her, tucking her in as tightly as I can. The fire stays burning next to her, casting orange and gold against her face, and her eyes are shut almost instantly, lips parted in a small O. Her hand is clasped under her chin in a fist, and I see the edge of something sticking out of her fingers—pine needles. The little animal Otto had carved.
My chest twists, aching.
I remember when she was a babe, how she’d slept like this in my Aunt Catrin’s arms. Holding a toy. Innocent, soft.
Tears sting my eyes again, and I sniff, hard, looking up into the wind to dry them.
“Our paths align, at least,” Otto says softly. “We can make for the Black Forest. Using the rivers, we can reach the town of Baden-Baden. It borders the forest.”
I hang silent for a long moment. Wondering what conversation we would have if our paths did not align, if his sister was elsewhere, but Liesel and I still needed to get to the Black Forest. To the Well that Dieter is trying to break into, to corrupt.
“I’m going to get more firewood,” I say. It’s a lie—Liesel’s fire will burn now without added fuel. Otto doesn’t know that.
I shove to my feet and push into the forest, trying not to move too frantically, but the moment I’m far enough away from the makeshift campsite, I run. I only get a few paces before I realize how utterly stupid that is; I need to stay close, should any jägers pop up, should Liesel awaken with nightmares and only Otto is there to comfort her. But I need—I need to be away, to run, to move, to—to—
I drop against a tree, and all the sobs I’ve fought down, all the grief that’s been waiting patiently in my gut to destroy me, finally comes out.
Sobs rupture up my throat and shake through my limbs, and it’s all I can do to keep my feet. My mind plays over and over the image of Aunt Catrin holding Liesel in her arms as a babe, that one innocent memory breaking me when nothing else has been able to. But it’s gone now, Aunt Catrin, Liesel’s innocence—it’s all gone, because of me. Because of my brother. Because I was a fool, a love-blinded fool who thought Dieter had been banished for something simple and childish, not for wild magic, not for—
A twig cracks behind me.
I whirl, hands up, body immediately going alert.
But it’s only Otto. Palms out flat toward me, eyes wide in apology.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says.
I grunt frustration and scrub at the tears I know he saw. “You should’ve stayed with Liesel. I’ll be back soon.”
“After you gather firewood for the fire that hasn’t needed fuel once.”
My hands go stiff, rubbing at my cheeks, and that stiffness surges down my body.
Otto takes a step closer to me. I fold my arms, jaw set and eyes still hot.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.
I laugh. It’s hollow. “You have no idea what is or isn’t my fault.”
“I know your brother. And I know his madness is nothing you can control.”
“But it is.” My voice croaks, drags against my tongue until I swear I can taste blood. “Because I let him in. I let down the wards that protected my coven. I let him into Birresborn. Me. I did that. I’m the reason—” I gag on a sob, and then I’m falling apart anew, sobs ripping me in half, half again. “I’m the reason they’re dead. He killed them all. Because I let him in and refused him.”
“Refused him?”
It all pours out. Words I can’t stop now, they’re free. “He came to Birresborn to get me. He wants me to bond with him. That potion I told you about. The one that can connect a witch to another person—two witches bonded, though? Two witches who use wild magic, bonded by that potion—he’d have all the power he needs. He’d use my body like an extra store of magic, and he’s so powerful I’d be unable to stop him.”
“But you have to take the bonding potion willingly.”
“Yes.”
“So there is no fear of that happening.” He says it simply. Like that’s the only thing that mattered, and it’s taken care of, so we’re fine.
I frown at him, head cocked. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I let him into my home. I betrayed my coven. All of this happened because of me.”
I expect Otto to leave. He knows now. He’ll walk away.
“Did you know what he’d do?” he asks quietly. “Did you know what he wanted before he came?”
I swallow once, twice, trying to force my agony back down again, but it’s awake now, and it’s demanding I crumble.
Hands over my face, back against a tree, I manage to shake my head. “No. I thought—I thought he’d just come home. I missed him. I didn’t know what he’d become. But I should have known. I should have stopped it—”
It takes me a full breath to realize Otto’s holding me now.
I feel the warmth of his body. The rush and grind of his exhale. The solidness of those arms, wrapped around me, pressing me into him, and it makes my whole body jerk to a pause.
“It’s not your fault, Fritzi,” he tells me again, more certain now. “His actions are not on you. It is not your fault.”
He just says that. Over and over. And I’m crying again, sobbing into the cave of his arms, letting him hold me in this frigid forest, on the run for our lives, as if we have time to indulge in my grief right now. But he strokes my hair and murmurs reassurances—It’s not your fault; your family would forgive you; you’re safe now, Fritzi—and I have to believe I’m dreaming.
When I find my breath, tears ebbing just enough, that’s what I say. Or demand, my tone low and surprisingly angry. “How are you real?”
Otto stills, hand in my hair. I push back to look up at him, knowing I’m well beyond a mess now, but he smiles at me, a confused tilt.
“You’re all contradictions,” I say, hands fisted in his shirt. “You were, until recently, an honorable hexenjäger. And now you’re a man who’s comforting a woman he should be furious with, at the very least, if not disgusted by—”
He shakes his head, hands on my elbows. “Why on earth would I be furious or disgusted by you?”
“Because of what I’ve done! To my coven. To you. To your sister. All the trouble I’ve made for you—”
“And I’ve made no trouble for you? Arresting you. Throwing you into my house fort without explanation. Dragging you into my escape plan. Arresting you again.”
“Only because I messed up your original plan to start!”
“By rightfully helping who you thought was an innocent woman being accosted by hexenjägers.”
“Don’t try to rationalize my sins.”
Otto waves at his face. “Catholic.”
Unexpectedly, it yanks a laugh out of me. That laugh bubbles up more, until his smile breaks into a matching laugh, and we really must be dreaming, or at least exhausted beyond all reason to find even a small bit of joy in this forest.
He coaxes me back to the clearing with Liesel, still asleep next to her fire, and we sit in companionable silence while she sleeps and the flames crackle. My tears are dried on my face and neck, but I feel the stretch of my laughter too.
We won’t be able to stay here for long. Just enough to take the edge off of Liesel’s discomfort.
But for this moment, in the aftermath of my breakdown, I focus on the feel of that resonant laughter. Not on the hollowness of my grief coiling back up, going dormant, ever waiting, ever living.
Otto and I trade off rowing the next day, interspersing our stints with letting the current drift us on. My arms burn and sweat slicks my underclothes to my skin by the time the sun slips beyond the horizon, throwing the river into pitch blackness, all light from above choked by a heavy barrage of clouds.
I shift my feet on the floor of the boat, trying not to bump beside Liesel, who has settled into sleep again. It won’t be as comfortable as sleeping on the shore, but how many nights can we afford to stop? We won’t be able to go like this forever, but for now, we’ll push, just a little.
I can make out enough in the dark to see that Otto immediately hands me the waterskin and a chunk of hard cheese. I take them, my arm feeling like it’s gone to jelly, and it’s all I can manage to shove the food into my mouth.
“I’ll do the first watch,” he whispers. “I’ll wake you after a few hours.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll go first.”
“Fritzi.”
“I don’t trust you to actually wake me up when it’s time to switch.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I think you’ll let me sleep as long as I like because of your stubborn male pride, and then you’ll just suffer being sleepless tomorrow. So I’ll take the first watch, and I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”
There’s a pause. Then a rumble of his frustrated sigh.
“Verdammt, Fritzi, could you just—” He stops, and he takes a long, settling breath. “Please don’t fight me. Sleep first. I’ll wake you up. I promise.”
If we could see each other beyond shapes in the dark, we’d be glaring.
I sigh dramatically. “I’ll let you win this one.”
I swear I can hear his eyes roll. “Whatever gets you to sleep.”
“Gute Nacht, jäger.” He grins at my teasing tone. I hold the oars out to him to be tucked on his side of the boat, since Liesel has taken up mine. “Here.”
He finds my arm in the dark, his rough fingers tightening around my elbow, and something twists deep beneath my belly button.
His touch relaxes. Works its way up to my hand, increment by increment. He clasps his fingers around mine, and I feel the heat of his exhale on my wrist.
Maid, Mother, and Crone, I’m just handing him oars; this is not in any way exciting—
And yet my core is twisted and tight and I can’t breathe.
“Gute Nacht, hexe.” There’s a smile in his voice as he takes the oars from me.
Schiesse. This trip will kill me.
I settle into the boat as best I can, my stomach fluttering, curling into myself the same way Liesel still is, using my arm as a pillow and knees to my chest.
It’s only thanks to being racked with exhaustion—and hopeful that I will be less distracted once I’ve actually slept—that I’m able to even entertain the idea of sleep. The moment my eyes close, the sway of the boat wraps around my mind, and I slip deep into darkness—down, down…
The forest around Birresborn is burning. Every tree, every leaf, every blade of grass. I spin, but I cannot think of how to stop it; what spell can I use? What can—
Me. Use me. Stop relying on these limitations.
The voice comes from behind me.
I will not turn around. I will not. Smoke thickens, delves into my lungs, and I cough, tears springing to my eyes.
“Do you hear the voice, too, Fritzichen? You do, don’t you?”
In front of me, Dieter materializes out of the smoke.
Use me! the voice begs.
I’m trapped. Dieter, the voice; both terrify me to my soul; both leave me grasping for what to do as the forest continues to burn, burn, burn.
Dieter takes a step closer. “You think you escaped me? Go ahead and run, meine Schwester. I don’t need to chase you. I know where you are going. I know what you will try to do. I know everything, because we’re the same, don’t you see? We’re the same, and before the end, you’ll beg for my help.” He grins. “Or for my mercy. Either way, you will beg.”
My mouth opens, but I can’t speak—the smoke is too thick, the air choked with ash and the stench of fire, and I’m vibrating with fear, the look in Dieter’s eyes.
This is a dream. I know it is. Wake up, wake up—
I stumble, frantic, turn away from him, try to run—
But the voice. The voice that was behind me. It’s the tree again, the tree I dreamed about days ago, branches stretching high into the sky. It alone doesn’t burn, limbs bare in winter’s fallowness, and it towers over me in such a shock of presence that I go to my knees. Is it the Origin Tree? Why is it speaking with the voice of wild magic?
He lies to you, the voice says. The branches pulse, quaking. He lies. You are not the same.
And you will save us all.