I gape at Philomena, her cheeks pinking in her righteousness.
Cornelia glares at Philomena too. “You cannot force them to participate,” she whispers, aghast.
Rochus, though, is livid.
For the first time, his facade cracks, and he takes a surging step toward me. Liesel shrinks, and he notices her with a wince of regret, but the moment he looks up at me again, he’s seething.
“You are ignorant of our ways,” he says. “Of our customs. So you will be forgiven your outburst and your accusations. If you—”
“I didn’t ask for your forgiveness,” I cut him off. “I’m only ignorant because of your choices. You chose to abandon us. And you are currently choosing to abandon everyone else again. I will tell you right now—this champion will not be part of it.”
Rochus draws back for a moment. “That is why the goddesses sent us not one witch to possibly take the bonding potion. But two.”
Liesel looks up at Rochus. “I won’t help you abandon everyone either.”
“You are young, child,” he tries. “You do not understand—”
He reaches for her. He will touch her, and I start to dive forward, but Liesel’s lip curls, and all of the candles lit in this room flare brighter in a surge that makes Rochus jerk back.
“I do understand,” she tells him in a tone like a void. “I understand more than you. Hiding up here. Judging us. I was locked in a closet. Did you see that? I was tortured. You had the power to intervene, and you didn’t.”
Rochus swallows, his throat working.
Philomena holds out her arms. “We saw, child. We saw, and we—”
“Abnoba is ashamed of you, I think,” Liesel says. “She’s ashamed. That’s why she sent me and Fritzi. To stop you. We came here for help, to stop Dieter, and you’re just hiding. You’re not even trying. You’re following your own rules so rigidly you’ve forgotten who those rules are even supposed to protect!”
“It is Abnoba’s will that we make the barrier impassable,” Rochus counters.
“She told you to do this?” Liesel’s face breaks, a flash of agony.
The silence that follows is brief but weighted. Liesel’s face is screwed up in concentration, and before I can interject, she shakes her head. “Abnoba is saying she let it be your decision. Not hers.”
She takes my hand, her palm is scorching hot, the only other testament to her capped rage. It’s offset by the way she trembles, the hollow exhaustion on her face, and my heart breaks.
“There are other ways to stop my brother,” I tell the room. “In the morning. For now, my cousin and I have been traveling for a very long time. I think we could use some food. Maybe a bath. So far we haven’t exactly been wowed by forest folk hospitality.”
Cornelia steps around the chairs. “Of course. Follow me.” She gives a withering look at Rochus and Philomena, and as she crosses to the door, Brigitta rejoins us and swings it open.
The four of us slip back outside, into the now blinding white light of the high, high sky, and as the door shuts behind us, I hear Rochus and Philomena hissing in low whispers at each other.
Something crashes to the floor, shatters.
Cornelia turns to me on the landing of the meeting room. Her eyes are all appraisal, but she bows her head solemnly. “I am sorry. You were ambushed. I told them it was wrong to rush you into it, but they feared exactly what happened—that you would reject their plan.”
“And you reject it too.”
Cornelia smiles. She motions at the flurry of activity below us, below the tree canopy. The forest folk poised everywhere, furiously working to strengthen the invisible barrier that Dieter has weakened.
“We’ve waited too long to act,” she whispers. “And now, all we have remaining are drastic options that are just as harmful as the problem.”
Liesel yawns so big that she staggers into me, barely covering her wide mouth with her hand.
Cornelia smiles down at her. “Come. You have done more than enough for today.”
“Have we?” My stomach tugs. Dieter was on our heels in the Black Forest. If he’s so close, and the barrier is so weak—
I spoke with confidence about giving us time to rest, but that was only in defense of Liesel; now, what options do we really have?
We came here expecting sanctuary, at the very least. But if all the forest folk have to offer is a cowardly retreat, then this will end just as I’ve begun to fear it will: with me facing my brother, alone. His terror is my burden to bear.
Otto won’t let me do that though. He’ll be there with me, his life at risk just the same.
My chest cramps, and I want to collapse right here, on the doorstep of this supposed haven, and sleep away the bad dreams.
Cornelia’s smile softens. “Follow me.”
Liesel stumbles a step forward, and Brigitta sweeps in, offering to lift her. Liesel agrees instantly, and I watch her eyelids droop shut the moment she’s in Brigitta’s arms.
We start back down through the trees, and as we near that bridge again, I eye Cornelia. There are about a thousand questions I want to ask.
But she looks at me, her copper hair even more fiery in the daylight, and there’s a watery sheen over her pale eyes now.
“Thank you,” she tells me. “I know it has not been the smoothest introduction to the reality of our world. I know you lost far too much to get here. But I am grateful for your presence.”
“When I leave”—when, not if—“to face Dieter. To stop him. Will you come with me? Back out into the world?”
Part of me growls that it’s too big a thing to ask.
But this society should bear some of this with me. That way I am not alone in bearing the blame for what happened to my coven.
So I ask it, and wait.
Cornelia hesitates. Her eyes drift around us, to the bridges and houses and tree-built structures. People move through them, going about their days. Some stop, stare, whisper to each other.
“Yes,” she says, half to herself.
My shoulders stiffen. “…Yes?”
“It is what I have been pushing Rochus and Philomena to do. To leave here, to face this head-on. They have been terrified of the threats facing our kind for so long that we have been forbidden from leaving the Well, and that fear has clouded their judgment entirely. So, yes, champion,” she says with a smile at me, “when you leave here to face your brother, I can tell you that there are plenty who would willingly join you against him. We have been held back too long, and I—” She sucks in a breath. Holds it. “I have allowed us to be held back.”
A weight lifts from my chest. A weight and a sigh and a flutter of bottomless grief.
Honestly, the most uplifting part is seeing her take on some of the responsibility. So it isn’t just me under this, me feeling the guilt.
“That would upset Rochus and Philomena,” I guess.
Cornelia nods.
I swallow, eyeing the path we’ve taken, the way stretching back to that meeting room.
“Something has been building for a long, long while,” Cornelia continues. “Even before my time as priestess. The goddesses have not said, maybe cannot say. But there is—”
“Cannot?”
“They are bound by the rules of their sisters and of the Well. There are limitations, even for goddesses, to keep magic pure.”
Frustration itches my throat. “More and more it feels like purity is just a cover for control.”
Cornelia’s head twitches toward me. I glance up at her, expecting to see derision, scorn—
But she’s smiling. “I think we’ll get along just fine, Friederike Kirch.”
“Fritzi. Please.”
“Fritzi.” Cornelia’s grin pulses wider.
She sweeps her hand out and points to a series of houses built into a lower portion of the tree we’re descending. Brigitta is walking toward one, and another woman is there already, wearing a maid’s apron, her hair pulled up in a work kerchief. She takes Liesel from Brigitta, and the two quietly slip into a house.
“You can have these rooms to rest. We’ll have food sent,” Cornelia says. “That man you traveled with—he will stay with his sister?”
My mouth dips open. “I…suppose so.” He’ll want to spend time with Hilde. But the thought of not sleeping in the same place as him, of not being near him when every moment has been spent in his atmosphere for weeks, knocks hollowly in my chest.
Cornelia nods. “If you like, there is a section of bathing pools at the bottom of this—”
I squeal, startling Cornelia so she jumps and laughs.
“Just down the bottom of this tree,” she explains. “Each one is secluded and has the supplies you’ll need. I’ll have new garments sent to you. And tomorrow morning—” She hesitates. “Tomorrow. I’ll come fetch you myself. And we’ll talk strategy for facing Dieter.”
“Thank you.” I clasp her arm. “Truly. Thank you.”
Cornelia lays her hand over mine and squeezes my fingers. “No, Fritzi.” There’s a depth in her eyes that still speaks of things unsaid, decisions yet to be made. How we’ll face my brother. How we’ll stop him, and the hexenjägers, and fix the injustices weighing us down. But there is hope in her, too, and I dare to let myself believe in it, that maybe I’ve found an ally in all this uncertainty. “Thank you.”
I make sure Liesel is settled—fast asleep in a cozy little bed piled high with quilts—and then I waste no time flying down the stairs to the bathing pools.
It isn’t hard to find the area Cornelia mentioned. A narrow river meanders between the trees, with a series of offshoots blocked by thick oak dividers. A few have towels or robes tossed over them, presumably occupied; I walk until I find one that looks free.
It’s so quiet here. Even with the hundreds of people I know are high above me in the tree houses, and those I can see peppered around, bespelling the barrier, silence reigns thick and relentless, that swollen quiet of a still glen or a spring morning. Is it part of the magic here?
It’s peaceful. Deliriously so.
And that peace feels like a warning.
Dieter is just beyond this border, trying to figure out how to break his way in here to corrupt the Origin Tree with wild magic. Without me bonded to him, without Liesel to give him answers, he’ll use more sacrifices to fuel his powers—but is that even right? What is wild magic, if it is connected to ours, if Holda wants me to use it?
What do you want? I ask Holda as I work my way to the bathing pool. The oak dividers are massive, folding one alongside another like a series of doors mended together, each pane etched with an image of a tree. The tree, I realize, the one from my dreams. The Origin Tree.
There is much I cannot tell you, Fritzi, Holda says. You heard why.
What Cornelia said, I guess. You are kept from telling me by the rules you and your sisters exist by. So all this secrecy is because you’re trying to tell me something, but you’re prevented from saying it. You tried to get Dieter to figure it out too.
Yes. No pretense. No delay.
And your sisters, I start, hesitation seizing me, they disagree with whatever it is you want me to see. They don’t want you to tell me. That’s why this secret was bound in magic.
Again, no delay. Yes.
I sigh, rubbing my forehead, feeling the dirt there. I can’t deal with all of this right now, not now. After a bath, I’ll find Otto and talk this through with him. Or just kiss him senseless, and—
I step around the last divider to see a small, dark pool fed by the river, surrounded by smooth stones large enough to lie on, the break in the trees letting sunlight pour in, warming the space.
Otto is in this pool.
Every thought in my brain fuzzes into echoing silence.
He’s naked, waist-deep next to the largest river stone, bent forward. His face, hair, and neck are covered in some kind of lathered soap he works from a bar in one hand. A breath, and he plunges beneath the surface, then pops up again, the muscles down his torso and across his back flexing and shining in the water.
I make what has to be the most horrifically unflattering noise that has ever come out of my mouth. Something like a whimper, like a scream, like a strangled giggle.
He whips around, water spraying.
And sees me.
A blush starts in his cheekbones and flows down his neck, beneath the curled brown hair across the contours of his chest, his flexed arms, the smooth V that feeds down his hips and deep beneath the water.
I’m staring. And it’s been silent between us for so long that Otto smiles slowly, wading a step closer. It raises him up, not quite that high, but the level of the water is lapping dangerously low now, and my internal thoughts are an incoherent jumble of panicked shrieking and desperate whines.
“You’re all right?” he asks, dragging the soap through the water, leaving a trail of bubbles.
Always the first question. Making sure I’m fine.
The Three save me, he is not helping my chaos.
So I don’t fight it.
After everything that’s happened. Everything we’ve been through. We’re here, safe for the time being, and I will take full advantage of this moment.
Because it might be our last.
Whatever tomorrow brings, it will drag us into stopping the hexenjägers and fighting my brother and his madness. Whether that involves all parts of the Well is yet to be seen. Tomorrow might even involve fighting Rochus and Philomena first.
The immensity of these possibilities and the weight of their outcomes has all of my insides cramping tight, seizing up the way Perchta grabbed ahold of my muscles.
My eyes fall from Otto’s, severity descending over me in a wave of startling clarity, and I let my cloak drop to the forest floor behind me.
I kick off my boots, peel off my stockings.
Otto watches me, his eyes getting progressively wider.
“I met with the presumed priest and priestesses of the Well,” I tell him matter-of-factly. My fingers shake a little as I undo the laces on my kirtle, and I lift it up, peel it off, leaving only my shift. It’s stained up the hem and has been absolutely beaten with use, so I know the material is thin now, nearly translucent, some of it still wet from my earlier falls into the river. “They wanted Liesel and me to help them make the Well’s barrier impassable. So Dieter would be given free rein to wreak horrors unchecked with wild magic in the world.”
Otto staggers, the water rippling around him. “You—you refused them, I take it?”
“Of course.” I drop the kirtle to the ground on a bed of moss by the river stones, and I can see the way Otto’s breathing increases. The muscles along his abs clench tighter, and I track a bead of water that drips from his hair down his skin.
“How did they respond?” he asks, his eyes going black as he fights to stay focused on the conversation.
I pause for a moment, toying with the thin material against my stomach, a too-raw sensation from Otto’s eyes on me, demanding I feel this, feel him.
“I don’t want to talk about them now,” I manage, voice quiet.
“What do you want to—”
I pull my shift up, off, and let it fall, standing naked on the bank of the pool.
The blush that stains Otto’s cheeks is the single sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
His jaw clamps, bulging by his ears, and his grip on the bar of soap tightens so much, so suddenly that it shoots out of his hand and sinks into the water with a heavy kerplunk.
I laugh. The effervescence of the giggles takes me, and I cup my face, unable to stop it.
Otto grins, still blushing furiously, but there’s intent in his eyes now, something awakened, something feral.
He reaches up for me. “Liebste. Get in this pool.”
I plant a hand on my hip and fix him with my most defiant look. But my attention has whittled down to his eyes on my body. His focus here, and there, drifting lower.
“How does it usually go,” I start, throat thickening, “when you try to tell me what to do, jäger? Besides, we need another bar of soap.”
“I’ll find it later, hexe,” he growls. The tendons in his neck stretch, restraint fraying, and I’m all but floating with the contrasting needs to obey him and tease him more. “Get. In.”
“Are you sure? I think I saw more soap back by the—”
He surges to the edge of the pool, plants one hand on the bank’s smooth stones, and heaves himself up to grab for me. My giggles sharpen into a squeal as his powerful grip wraps around my forearm, and he hauls me bodily into the dark silken water of the pool.