Sensations come to me in bursts.
Footsteps. Dozens of them, hundreds, maybe.
Horse hooves.
Shouting.
A voice, one I recognize, distantly, fuzzily, but it’s enough to guide me forward, out of the darkness—
Pain ricochets through me, and I cry out, recoiling into that darkness, the sweetness of its relief.
Fritzi—you have to wake up. You have to wake up, now!
No, no, I can’t—it hurts, I can’t—
“Fritzi!”
That voice again. Otto.
I rear back, spine hitting something rounded, jagged. My wrists tug, the skin scrubbed raw, and I’m only vaguely aware of my arms behind me, chained around a pole.
Not a pole.
A stake.
My nose stings, and that is what drives me fully awake, the jarring shock of smoke billowing into my lungs, acidic and as rough as sand. I cough—that iron muzzle holds my mouth still, and the cough turns into a gag as smoke drives into my throat, coats my tongue in ash.
“Fritzi!” Otto’s voice is closer, frantic. Weapons clash now, swords on swords, pistols firing—who is fighting? The hexenjägers, the forest folk?
My eyes peel open, but there is only smoke, great billowing sheets of it, so thick I briefly wonder if I’m already dead. There’s so much—my eyes fall, and I see the pile of kindling beneath my bare feet, flames licking all around the edges, eating up the snow-damp wood and puffing screens of gray into the air.
I cough again, gag again, and yank against the manacles. My heart stutters, so used to panic now that I’ve gone numb, and I just pull again, pulling, desperate, frantic—
My whole body goes still.
I severed from the Well.
What does it mean? I ask Holda. What can I do?
Her response is swift. A gust of cool air, a surge of light from the orange-gold sunset sky.
Anything, Friederike. Anything.
The only pause I have is in knowing that once I do this, Dieter will realize he never needed sacrifices to gain his power. It was the only gruesome cap on his mania we had—in a way, I understand the limitations that the goddesses sought to impose.
When I face him, it will be all of him, unscrupulous, versus all of me, broken and terrified.
I focus on the manacles. Can I just will them to break?
A sharp cry pierces the air. A shout, a plea. Bodies shove, and through a break in the smoke, I see townspeople, townspeople fighting the forest folk, and my mind rattles with confusion.
Within them, shoving through the crowd, is Otto.
His gaze collides with mine.
I sob, relief so potent I can feel its warmth in the pit of my stomach
He barrels forward, but townsfolk swarm him, beating him back; he tries not to fight, but they swing axes at him, butcher knives, whatever weapons they could find. Blades cut through the air, aimed at his neck, his side—
Otto—I try to scream for him. It’s muffled and warped, but my throat tears over it.
Something pulses out of me. Soft and cool and…and green.
From the cracks between the cobblestones, thin plants begin to sprout. They launch up, narrow green stalks with vibrant yellow flowers, all wrong for this season, for this temperature, for this speed, but they grow and grow, surrounding Otto in a ring that stretches up to his shoulders, growing, towering—
Rue. Rue like in the protection potion he took so long ago, in Trier; rue that we bought in the Christkindlmarkt.
Otto falls out of a defensive stance and flashes a look at me, questions ripe in his dark eyes.
The rue had been to protect him. To aid him.
But the townsfolk around him go stiff. Their weapons freeze in midair.
As one, they look down, at their hands, their feet, and then back up, and suddenly they are shaking, weeping, some falling to their knees.
The potency of the magic ripples out to them, and they are purged of Dieter’s touch.
The wind shifts; smoke clogs the air, bursts embers at me, and I flinch away, losing sight of the townsfolk, of Otto.
I did that. Didn’t I?
I freed them from the spell Dieter placed on them.
Yes, says Holda. Yes, Fritzi.
When I sob now, it is in desperate hope, despite the fire crawling ever closer, billowing on the wind. The only thing stopping it from raging unchecked is the dampness of the wood, but the smoke gathers on that, and every breath now is choked more and more. I will suffocate long before I burn.
Strength. I need strength.
I tried to will the manacles to snap on their own, but my affinity is, has always been plants. And with wild magic now, I am not limited by rules, but my talents still lie where they always have—if I want to escape, if I want to harness all the powers of wild magic to fight back, I need to play to my strengths.
Cedar. A tree that gives strength. I can grow one—if I can control it now, if I can will it to help me, its branches will be strong enough to snap these manacles.
I imagine the tree, its size, its shape, the smell, woodsy and wet in a forest, the size, imposing and massive and commanding.
Behind me, the ground trembles.
The kindling at my feet shifts, and I stumble over it, sticks rolling away, the stones groaning far below.
I throw a glance over my shoulder and see a tree sprouting up against the stake, its young limbs stretching for me, reaching for the manacles. I push more of myself into it, tears racing down my face as I watch it climb, driven by me, just me; all this time, we were capable of this? All this time—
The tree goes from a healthy auburn to a sickly muted gray.
The whole of it shrivels, a puff of decay launching off as it wilts and falls.
“Ah, Fritzichen. Whatever are you doing?”
I whirl around, but he’s nowhere near me, not that I can see—all is smoke only, gray and darkening, and I cough, wheezing, breaths like knives stabbing me inside, the brands aching outside.
“Did you find a way to sever from the Well?” Dieter coos.
But there’s a heaviness in his voice. A twist of something dark that his control is usually too riveted to show, and it washes over me, a frigid charge of terror.
“But how are you using magic?” he presses. “You fed it no evil acts. You did not pay the sacrifice of blood it demands. Oh, my pretty sister. My pretty, clever sister. What have you discovered?”
No, no—this was what I feared. That he would realize that all the sacrifices he made, all the burnings, weren’t even needed. He could access the whole of wild magic from the start. On his own. All the people he’s burned to fuel his magic—he only thought they bolstered his power because we were all told that that was the way.
We were lied to, misled, and he’s seeing that now.
“Oh, Fritzichen!” he purrs. “You are useful, aren’t you? How long have you known the extent of the Well’s lies, hm? How long have you kept this from me?”
The brand on my stomach flares with pain. Something within it seizes, the twisted, ruined flesh, and I scream, that muffled wail that slivers cracks in my throat.
“Naughty, naughty Fritzichen,” says Dieter’s disembodied voice, and this time, there is nothing controlled about it. He’s livid.
I yank on the manacles and eye the tree, but it is dead, and when I focus again, I’m too frantic, the magic slipping through my fingers, bucking—
“Fritzi!”
My head whips around.
And there is Otto. Bolting over the crackling kindling, elbow thrown over his mouth against the smoke. He climbs the wood, scrambling higher, boots singeing in the embers, the hem of his cloak catching, sparking. He rips it off and fights up, up, and then his hands are on my face, and he’s here, he’s here, and I come apart.
“Liebste, I’m here.” He echoes the thoughts in my head, a promise, his words roughened by the smoke and that coil in his eye, rage barely capped. “What has he done to you? Liebste—”
He touches the gag on my mouth, runs his hands around it to the back. It clicks, then the metal gag falls away, and my jaw screams with being able to close again, every muscle in my mouth feeling bruised.
“Otto,” I sob. “You can’t—you’ll burn—”
I cough, unable to get a full breath, and I see him fighting a cough, too, his eyes going bloodshot in the smoke.
“I’m not leaving you,” he tells me, and he ducks around me to work at the manacles.
The fire edges closer, the smoke thickens.
“Oh, no,” says Dieter. “She does not get to be free.”
The smoke parts.
He’s standing at the base of the pyre, unadulterated rage contorting his face.
“My dear sister lied to me, Kapitän,” he says. “She knew more about this wild magic I harness—and she kept it to herself! While I tried to share with her what I had found. And not only that.” He cocks his head. “How many innocents did you let me burn, Fritzichen? To keep this information to yourself. That all this time, the only source of magic I needed was me.”
That makes him grin. His rage toward me breaks in an undeniable cackle of glee, triumph ripe and vile.
“All this time,” he gasps, staring at his splayed fingers. “All this time. Killing people was pointless. Well—educational. But not necessary. Oh, the goddesses are even more demented than I thought. Look what they made me do! Do you see?” He glares into the sky. “Do you see what you let me do?”
Dieter lifts his hands into the air, closes his eyes in something like reverence, something like awe. He whispers, a spell I can’t hear, words weaving as his fingers flex and strain, the muscles bulging in his neck. He’s using it to focus now only, using the words as a conduit to draw on the power we could always tap into.
“Otto,” I beg. “Otto—hurry—”
His fingers fumble behind me. He curses, slips on the wood, tugs on the irons. “It’s not coming off. Verdammt—I can’t break it! It’s like something’s jammed—”
“He bespelled it,” I gasp. “He bespelled the manacles.”
Dieter’s eyes pop open.
And he pulls.
The street, already a cacophony of noise from the battle, echoes with a thunderous percussion, like an explosion, like a burst.
And I know.
Deep in my heart. In the pit of me. The part no longer connected to the Well, but forever a part of it, magic in my blood.
He’s ripped open a gap in the Well’s barrier.
A look of pure joy floods my brother’s face. He is, in that moment, all giddy happiness in a way that is disgustingly innocent.
Then Dieter staggers as if hit by an invisible force. His eyes, fuming, whip around. “Oh-ho, the forest folk want to fight me now, do they?” He shoves his hands back out, redoubling his effort, his face purpling with strain. “That tree cannot keep you safe. Those goddesses cannot keep you safe. I will break open your magic, and you will cower at my feet!”
The forest folk are resisting his rip in the barrier—but only barely. Their charms and spells work to protect the Well, but Dieter has funneled so much straight to it that it is only a matter of time.
There is wild magic to draw on all around us, but the goddesses still capped most of it in the Origin Tree. And he will get in. He will widen what he has started.
Then he will march into the Well, to the Origin Tree, tap into the massive amount of goddess-blessed power there, and destroy us all.
“Otto,” I gasp his name. “Otto, leave.”
He shifts back around to stand in front of me, my manacles locked fast. I watch his eyes go to Dieter, watch him see the inner struggle my brother is engaged in, and when Otto turns to me, I don’t try to hide the brittle, teary-eyed plea in my eyes. His whole face unravels, emotions rippling in quick succession: fury, disbelief, revulsion, refusal.
“You have to leave,” I tell him, wishing my voice sounded stronger. “You have to live to stop him. He’s breaking through the barrier; he knows he doesn’t need me anymore. Please, just go.”
Otto bends closer, grinding his forehead to mine. “No,” he says with such force that I go silent. “No, verdammt, Friederike Kirch, I’m not leaving you.”
He pulls something out of his bag. My gaze fixes on it, bleary, exhausted.
The smoke is so thick. So consuming.
My eyelids grow heavy, drooping—
“Fritzi!” Otto shakes me, his hand cupping my cheek. “I have the bonding potion. It’s the bonding potion, Fritzi. Share your power with me, and we can defeat Dieter together!”
Is he shouting too loud? Yelling, almost, or maybe the fire is roaring, my heartbeat thudding in my ears.
I eye the bottle in his fingers. “The bonding potion?”
“Hilde and I made it,” his voice lowers, and I manage a look at him, confusion ripe. “When I drink your potion,” he says, shouting again, “you and I will be bonded and share power, right? Then we can defeat him! You drank from it already!”
Behind him, Dieter looks up, briefly pulled from his focus.
His eyes go to the potion in Otto’s hand.
“No. Otto. No. I didn’t—you can’t talk about this!” I shake my head, frantic. Don’t give my brother any other ideas; don’t remind him of things he could do—he has access to enormous amounts of magic now, but he is unpracticed in harnessing everything without focus or spells. He could still increase his power even further through bonding potions. He could still drain me, build himself even stronger. “That doesn’t—that won’t work. That’s not how potions work!”
I would have had to make it for Otto to be able to take it. As it is, it would strip me of all magic, it would kill him.
But he will die either way, standing here with me, burning.
Everyone I love has been taken from me like this. My coven. My mother.
I will not lose him too.
This fate is mine alone. This was meant to happen, wasn’t it? Dieter should have burned me in Birresborn. But I was spared, spared though I didn’t deserve it; and through it, I found Otto, this man who has transformed me in irreversible ways.
Otto lowers the brew to his side. “Fritzi—”
“I love you,” I tell him. It rips from me as the smoke builds, strangles out the air; as the flames roar, encroaching on him, swelling the heat to scorching. “I love you.”
I scream.
The cedar tree behind me floods with life. I give it everything I have, shoving it higher, taller, full—only I angle its branches to arch around me, aiming for Otto.
His eyes widen, briefly leaving my face to catch on the eruption of the tree, but then he gapes at me, horror washing him white.
“No—” The plea is cut off in a startled cry as a branch shoves him back, back, through the smoke, out of the fire.
His body crashes to the cobblestones far from the inferno, far from me.
Right next to Dieter.
Otto still has the potion in his hand. His fingers pop open, and the bottle rolls away, unbroken.
Rolls, rolls—
Until it comes to rest under my brother’s foot.