The space between Dieter and I deepens into a vacuum, an echoing tug of absence that I feel as strongly as his rip in the Well’s barrier.
Something is…gone. Like a light flaring on to show that what was once monsters and lurking beasts is now just an empty room.
Otto severed my brother’s connection to magic. All magic.
Dieter is realizing that now, too, and as forest folk pour toward him, he turns on Otto, still on the ground at his feet. The look on Dieter’s face is the most chilling he’s ever shown, violation and malice unrestrained, and seeing it aimed at Otto sculpts everything in me to the finest of points, the sharpest of intentions.
The cedar tree’s branches twist for my manacles, now free of Dieter’s enchantment, even as forest folk guards start scrambling up the flames, fighting to snuff them with waves of their hands and muttered spells. Brigitta is an arm’s length from me, shouting, but I scream and double forward, and the cedar tree snaps the irons like they’re nothing more than another piece of dry kindling.
My hands flare in front of me. I am action only. Instinct pure and stripped.
Vines creep out of the ground, shattering cobblestones, slithering across the town square from the Forest. They come and come at my command, and in a heartbeat, Dieter is knotted up in dozens of thick green snakelike vines that lock his arms to his chest and ensnare his legs and keep him there, immobile, helpless.
He writhes and turns that withering glare onto me. “Friederike!”
I feel Brigitta’s fingers on my arm. I hear the snap and crunch of footsteps on the kindling, smothering the flames easily now that Dieter’s magic isn’t keeping them lit. I hear townspeople wailing in the falling down of his magic, and hexenjägers, too, their weapons clattering from their hands as they are released from my brother’s sway.
The kindling shifts beneath my bare, scorched feet, and my body is still a chaos of pain, but all I see, truly, is my brother.
The vines tighten on him. Tighten.
His fury holds, but his face begins to go red, his lips sputtering, spittle dripping.
I could kill him. So easily. There is no fear in it now, is there? No need to worry about feeding wild magic with a cruel act, because wild magic is only as evil as the intent behind it.
And right now, I embrace that evil, if it means seeing the light go out of his eyes.
“Fritzi! Fritzi—look at me!”
Otto pulls at my face, trying to get me to look at him, but my hands are still outstretched, and Dieter’s eyes are on mine, and if I don’t kill him, if he doesn’t suffer—
“You have him,” Otto says. “He’s done, Fritzi. Stop. You can stop now.”
He’s done, echoes Holda. Look, Fritzi. Look at the hexenjägers.
With effort, I peel my eyes away from my brother.
Around him, forming a haphazard half circle of shaking weapons pointed at Dieter, stand some of his jägers. Many can’t seem to decide whether to gawk at the forest folk or at their kommandant, but the pulse deep in their eyes speaks to revelations unfolding, truth emerging, awe taking root.
Johann is first to step forward. He looks up at me, and I realize the sight I must make, bleeding and burnt and disheveled on a now smoldering pile of kindling, forest folk flanking me, broken manacles dangling from my wrists.
He nods at me, apology heavy in his eyes, and he faces Dieter.
“Kommandant Kirch,” he says, pushing his voice loud. “You are under arrest.” A pause. His throat works. “For the use of witchcraft.”
Two other jägers step forward, one pulling out a pair of manacles, and Brigitta, next to me, makes a choked noise of objection.
“He is our prisoner,” she starts, but I seize her arm.
With my other hand, I reach for Otto. The rush of this victory is quickly catching up with me, and I can feel my legs straining to hold me, the ache from my brands demanding to be the center of my focus. He immediately sweeps in, his arm going behind my back, his grip tight on my upper arm.
I meet my brother’s eyes again. I let him see every bit of my pain, every piece of my fury, as my thoughts roll over themselves.
The forest folk would imprison him. Maybe, eventually, execute him.
But I know what will happen if the hexenjägers take him. I have seen firsthand the reception awaiting an accused witch in a Catholic church, no less one who possessed an entire brigade of jägers and hid his power from them for years.
They will strip him to nothing. And only then will they burn him.
“No,” I say, to Brigitta, to the forest folk who are poised to sweep in to push away the jägers. “Let them have him. He deserves a taste of what he has done to us.”
It’s Cornelia’s gaze I feel on me. She sits astride a massive white horse, and when I look at her, she nods, her brow pinched, understanding resonating.
“Rochus and Philomena will hate this,” says Brigitta. But there’s a gruesome smile in her voice. “All the more reason, then.”
She cuts her head at the forest folk, and they step back, giving the hexenjägers room to approach Dieter.
I let the vines fall from around his body.
The jägers grab him, wrestling him into irons, and he spits and kicks. “Worms! You don’t know what you are doing! You will regret siding against me, you will regret—”
They haul him off into their swelling crowd, a mass of black-cloaked jägers, all solemn, all shocked.
Otto helps me down from the kindling pile. As my toes touch the cool stones of the town square, Johann alone lingers, his face dirt-smeared, blood caked along his neck.
“Kapitän,” he says to Otto and comes to attention. But something in him weakens, a tremble of fear. “We could use you back in Trier. I know the archbishop will dismiss any accusations Dieter made against you, and—”
“My place is here,” Otto says immediately. He looks at the side of my face, back to Johann, to the forest folk spread around the milling jägers. “Besides, I think we will have a need for an intermediary, now that the world has seen who truly lives in the Black Forest.”
Johann’s face pales. That hesitation is reflected tenfold in the jägers behind him.
What has revealing the forest folk done to their already ripe fear of witches and magic? The reason that the goddesses created the Well at all was to help soothe the violent fear that normal people have toward us.
Whatever the repercussions. Whatever the prejudice.
We cannot keep hiding.
No, Holda agrees, and I hear the smile in her voice, teary. Now, thanks to you, we will not.
My chest bucks. Thanks to me?
You are my champion, she says. I have long searched your world, hoping to find one worthy of the task I set forth. I thought that it could be your brother. But no, Friederike—it was always you.
I can’t get air into my lungs. Black spots spray across my vision, and I stagger, leaning into Otto, shutting my eyes for one moment, just one moment of rest.
I will shield your connection to wild magic from the Well, she continues, that you may show witches across this world what strength they have been denied. You will show the forest folk and my sisters that the rules by which we abide are stifling and false. You will reawaken our magic, Friederike Kirch, and save us all.
I only wanted to stop my brother. To get Liesel to safety. And now, to be with Otto—and I have those things.
But it isn’t over.
Holda chose me as her champion.
And I accepted. I’m so tired. Tired from the weight of what is still to come, the fight I know awaits me back at the Well from Rochus and Philomena—tired from the shake in my hands and the ache in my core and the tug that bids me to look into the crowd, to spot my brother once more before he’s gone.
I will never see him again.
But suddenly it feels as though I have not seen him in years, since he left Birresborn, since the version of him I loved faded more and more into a dream.
“We’re done here,” Otto tells Brigitta, Johann.
Gratitude is cooling and sweet. I keep my eyes shut as he lifts me, and my body goes limp in his arms. The bend of my stomach makes me whimper, that brand tugging, but I can heal it now, can’t I? Summon a healing plant. Use wild magic.
My fingers lift, stretch feebly.
“Hey, don’t move. Just rest. I have you, Fritzi,” Otto says into my hair, his lips brushing my forehead. “Cornelia! Can you help with—”
My focus fades out. Drifts into tempting darkness, something warm and velvet and consuming, because Otto has me in his arms, and I am, in spite of everything that looms, safe.
Hazy blue light speckles against my eyelids. Pulses of rose red. Swaths of orange.
I shift, blinking slowly, and a window comes into focus, stained glass pieced together in geometric patterns that catch rays of sunlight and twist them into rainbow riots.
For a beat, I lie staring at the window, trying to orient myself.
This is the room Liesel was given in the Well. The bed beneath me is soft and warm, blankets piled over me, a heavy layer of quilts.
I brace, expecting a swarm of pain in my consciousness—
But none comes.
Slowly, so slowly, I push up onto my elbows.
Someone stirs next to me, and then Liesel’s head pops up from within the blankets. “Fritzi!”
She starts to dive for me, thinks better of it, and sits back on her heels. “Move slowly—Cornelia had her best healers work on you, but you’re still…hurt.”
I look down, one hand coming up to rest on my collarbone, the spot where Dieter branded me highest.
The thin white shift I’m wearing rubs against a scar there, something knotted and wicked, but it doesn’t hurt. Much. An ache lingers, deep inside me, and I feel the same on my stomach, on my thigh.
“They did their best,” Liesel whispers. “Dieter…whatever he did. It was deep.”
I twist to look at her. Her eyes are watery, bloodshot, but she’s clean, and her cheeks are pink.
I open one arm to her.
She doesn’t hesitate. Her little body crashes into mine, and we go back against the bedding, her tears wetting my shoulder, her chest trembling.
I want to reassure her that it’s all right. That he’s gone, far off back to Trier to be tried and executed for the same crimes he forced on us. I want to promise that he’ll suffer for what he did, but as her weeping stills, I can barely speak around the lump in my throat.
“I’m so sorry, Liesel,” is all I manage. “I’m so sorry. For our coven. For our home. For—”
“I’m sorry too.”
I push her away to look into her eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Her lips pull into a soft smile. “Neither do you.”
Silence falls between us. She truly means that?
Can I ever begin to believe it?
“Where is Otto?” I ask, voice rough.
Liesel grins. “Oh, him? Why would you want to see him?”
My lips flatten, barely suppressing a smile, and she rolls her eyes.
“He’s sort of been worried about you. He comes here all the time. It’s really annoying. I told him: this is where girls sleep.”
“How long have I been out?”
“About three days.”
Three—?
My breath catches.
But Liesel squeezes my hand and wriggles out of the bed. I start to follow her, pausing with each movement to readjust to the soreness in my body, but she gets me standing, and I balance on her shoulder, my thin shift fluttering to brush the tops of my feet.
There’s a bandage wrapped around one ankle. A series of bruises shows when I look at my wrist, splayed purple and yellow petals like a wildflower, the final kiss of the manacles that hung me from the ceiling of Dieter’s room and bound me to the stake.
I can’t even begin to think about what the rest of me looks like. I’m on the verge of healing. I’m alive. I should be grateful.
But each motion prods at the remnants of the brands. Scars my brother left on my body. Will I be able to heal them completely with wild magic? How will I try here, in the Well, without drawing fury from Rochus and Philomena—or even Perchta and Abnoba? And what about the barrier Dieter ripped; what has it done to the Well’s magic?
How will I be able to convince everyone here that the Well and the Origin Tree are not only unneeded, but that we should do away with all of our laws and ceremony and embrace wild magic?
How does Holda expect me to fix any of this?
My heart thunders, and I have to pause, hand to my forehead, breathing deep.
Don’t think about that now. Don’t focus on tomorrow.
There is only today. Liesel at my side. My body, healing, repairing.
And Otto, waiting for me.
Liesel hands me a finely woven shawl from a nearby chair, silken soft and brightest blue.
“The council has been in constant meetings,” she tells me as we work our way to the door. “They shout. A lot. But from what anyone will tell me, it’s good. They were mad that Cornelia took guards into Baden-Baden, but the people in the city have been rejoicing over them. There’s a big festival they’ve been having, thanking the forest folk; they’re happy to know that all this magic has been nearby this whole time. Otto said that once you’re better, we can try to go down to see it. It’s like a bedtime story, Fritzi.”
I smile down at her. “It is, isn’t it? Forest folk coming out to be among us.”
Her nose scrunches up in excitement. “I’m going to turn all this into a story, actually. I’ve been working on it! Something we can tell around the fireplace. Do you want to hear it?”
My muscles go stiff. But her eyes are so full of joy that I nod. “I would love to.”
We reach the door, and Liesel opens it. “Not right now, though. Now is for—Otto!”
I jump and scramble to grab the doorframe as her scream rips across the treetop village, the swooping bridges and sturdy branches lit by the canopy-muted afternoon light. Forest folk scattered all around flinch and gape at us; some bellow laughter; others curse and pick up whatever she made them drop.
I fall into giggles, and Liesel shrugs.
“He’s never very far. He told me to let him know the moment you woke up.”
“By screaming at the whole Well?”
She shrugs again. “I took what Brigitta calls creative liberties. Like in the story I’m making—I can change certain things! I can make it different because I want it to be different. It’s my story.”
My grin softens. I smooth a lock of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, Liesel. It is.”
Footsteps pound somewhere over us, a thundering run. My eyes cut up, and I follow the path they take, down a staircase, across a bridge, wrapping around a tree trunk—
Otto sprints into sight, leaping the last few steps. His eyes lock onto mine, and he doesn’t slow, but his face breaks in a wide grin, and he hurries for me, arms extending.
He’s as clean and bright as Liesel, his hair half pulled back into a knot atop his head, a crisp brown tunic belted around his waist, black boots glinting in the light. There’s a bandage peeking out of his sleeve at his wrist and a red cut on his temple, but otherwise, he’s whole, here, alive.
I stumble forward, smiling so wide my face aches, and barely clear the doorway when he swoops in, his arms encasing me gently, testing my limits, my pain tolerance.
“Is this all right?” he asks. “Am I hurting you?”
I squirm against him. “If I’m not fully in your arms in the next two seconds, Otto Ernst—”
He relents, lifting me against him, and I hear the rumble of his chuckle resonate deep in his core. “Demanding, aren’t we?” But there’s palpable relief in his voice.
I let him take my weight, ignoring the sting of the brand on my stomach, the tug of pain from the one on my chest, and just revel in him. The feel of his solidness and the smell of his warmth and the way he rests his mouth on the seam of my shoulder, half kissing the spot, half inhaling me.
Back the way he came, Cornelia appears, flanked by Brigitta and Alois.
“Brigitta!” Liesel cries and races toward her. “I told Fritzi about my story—”
Her voice fades, but I stiffen, knowing why they’ve come. They’ll want to fill me in on what has happened in the meetings, and I do want to know, but I want to pretend, just a little longer. That everything is truly over.
Otto feels my tension, and he tightens his hold on me. “Not yet. Things have waited three days—they can wait a little longer.”
“A little longer? How much longer?” I cut a grin, clinging to the insinuation he might not have even intended.
His chuckle turns into the rumblings of a growl. “Liebste, if I thought your body could at all handle that right now, I would leap from this treehouse and plummet us straight into the bathing pools.”
A thousand jokes are on the tip of my tongue. A hundred ways to torment him, tease him, dissolve into this banter.
But my eyes fix on Cornelia, talking with Liesel, and everything awaiting me rears up again.
He is the single fixed point. The anchor that has quickly become my lifeline.
All I have to give him in return are the raw parts of me.
I push my face to the side of Otto’s head and hold there, a tremor shuddering through my limbs. “There is no healing that can be done to me,” I start, a whisper hung with yearning, “that is more potent than your hands on my body.”
He stumbles, one arm snapping out to steady himself on the wall of the cottage. His jaw bulges beneath my lips, pulse firing against my fingers on his neck, and he dips his mouth to my shoulder again, the bare skin where my shift pulls back.
“You need to rest,” he tells me, tells himself. He doesn’t sound entirely certain, and that dip in his tone funnels every raging thought in me, every twist of fear, into nothing but blissful desire and heat.
Until Cornelia closes the space between us.
I close my eyes.
Otto holds for a beat, waiting for my response, but when I don’t keep pressing him, he sets me on the ground and puts his fingers beneath my chin.
“Fritzi.”
I manage a breath. Steadying, resilient, with him here, with Liesel’s happy giggles tinkering just beyond.
And when I open my eyes, I look up at him with all the strength I can find. “I’m ready to speak to the council.”
I’m not. At all. What will I say? That Holda showed me she made a mistake? That the very positions of power the council has enjoyed are what is stifling our people? That wild magic is actually no different from our magic, except that it’s more powerful—
Otto’s brows bow inward. “Speak to the—what?”
Even Cornelia, who comes up alongside him, frowns at me. “You are in no shape to speak to the council, Friederike.”
I squint at her. “Then why are you here? I’m Holda’s champion. Don’t you need me?”
“Yes, but you did not think I’d put you to work so soon?” Cornelia asks, a laugh of disbelief. “I’m here to see how you are.”
“No business at all.” Otto points a threatening finger at her. “No updates. Not until she’s fully healed.”
“Updates?” I’m still half against him, one of his arms draped around my hips, and I push into his body. “What updates?”
“No. No.” He turns that faint reprimand to me. “Not until you’re better.”
“I will positively lose my mind if you expect me to stay in this cottage without speaking to anyone for days.”
He seems to realize the absurdity of what he’s demanding, but he sighs, and all he says is, “If you’re certain.”
I touch his jaw, my thumb brushing across his full bottom lip. His presence goes from fortifying to infusing. It isn’t merely that he’s here—he’s here for me, and he really does want to shield me from the fear that had built, the heaviness of these responsibilities.
An anchor. A protective wall. A soft place to fall.
This man has me utterly enraptured. How could I not be?
“Thank you for watching out for me,” I tell him, and my words are buoyant with how I feel the weight lifting under his protection. “How did I come to deserve you?”
“Oh, watching out for you is quite literally his calling,” says Cornelia with a grin.
I eye her. Otto flushes suddenly, pink spotting on his cheeks, and my gaze goes sly.
“What’s going on?” I press.
Cornelia winks. “I’ll let him explain. But I am glad to see you are up—take your time, champion. I do not want you back until you are healed.”
I reach for her, lips parting.
I should tell her what Holda showed me. She deserves to know, so we can strategize together, share this responsibility again—
But Cornelia gives my arm a quick squeeze. “Later, champion.”
And so I trust in that. Later. That we will have a later, that she will be waiting there to bear these burdens with me.
Cornelia heads back to the steps, where Liesel is talking animatedly with Brigitta and Alois.
I look back up at Otto. “What was she talking about?”
His hand moves against my spine, the ridges concaved to perfectly fit his fingers.
“The council has agreed to begin the bonding ceremonies again. Starting with us,” he tells me, and his head slants down to me, breath bathing my face from his unspooling smile. “I’m your warrior, Friederike Kirch. If you will have me.”
My breath hitches.
After everything, the idea of taking a bonding potion comes with an expected jerk of hesitation.
But it’s immediately soothed by the way his eyes dip through mine, full of such openness, such eager, unabashed desire that I’m breathless in the storm of him. And even though others are nearby, the force of his presence once again consumes me, and all the world falls away so there is only him, only me, only the sudden, vital texture of his lips as I arch up to meet him.
“Yes,” I whisper into him, getting dizzy on his taste. “Yes, I will have you.” But I pause, draw back. “Do you know what that means, being linked to me? What you’ll be pulled into—this struggle with forest folk and goddesses? This isn’t your fight anymore.”
Otto cradles the back of my head, an amused smile playing across his face before I can even begin to entertain that he has any doubts about this.
“Oh, Liebste, you realize this is all just a formality, right? I have been thoroughly bewitched by you from the moment I found out that you ate all the rations in my house fort.”
I reel back.
“That—that was when you fell in love with me?”
He grins.
“Of all the things that happened between us,” I stammer, “I cannot believe that that is the memory you chose… The Three save me, jäger.”
“What?”
“There are so many better things you could have said!” But I’m echoing his grin, I can’t help it, my body going to giddy bubbles in his arms. “Like when you held me after my nightmare?”
“Yes?”
“That was so much more romantic than rations.”
“Well, when you say it like that—”
“Or in the Christkindlmarkt, or any of those times on the rowboat, or—”
He silences me with his mouth, half a kiss, half a wide smile.
“Take what I give you, hexe,” he says, jerking my body closer. “And what I give you is all of me, bound forever to you. I am yours.”
A kiss.
“I am yours.”
Another, deeper, lingering.
“I am yours.”
I relent to his ministrations. It is both taking and giving to let him have this victory, and I know I will one day have my own, and on that day, we will find out whose triumph is sweeter, who is best brought to their knees before the other.
But for now, I surrender to him.
It is a promise.
It is a beginning.