The prison wagon sways, occasionally hitting a rut in the road that sends my body thumping against the wall, the iron manacles on my wrists shifting, smelling of old metal and rust. The jägers aren’t going particularly fast, and I wonder if it’s because the lead one thinks they’ll stumble across his sister.
Maybe we will.
But I’m hoping she got away. She probably saw the smoke from my spell—I still have no idea why it exploded; maybe there was something hidden growing among those herbs?—took the opportunity, and bolted into the forest. Now that the hexenjägers are gone, she has to be back at her cottage, picking up the remains of her trashed home.
While I’m serving out her fate.
Guilt seizes me. Guilt and fear and bone-shaking dread.
No. I won’t think about that. I won’t think about how I set out to save Liesel only to end up exactly like her.
My head falls back against the wall, a defeated sigh whimpering out of me.
Everything about the past few days has rapidly spiraled into the worst case scenario, so perfectly and with such lethal precision that I’d think I’m cursed if I didn’t know the truth.
It isn’t a curse.
It’s me.
My own actions have come to demand reparation. My own past has come to poison my future.
I force a brittle laugh. Schiesse, being stuck in this damp, dark box does nothing but seep exhaustion into my brain. I’d been surviving the past day and night on action only, moving forward, drowning in my mission to save Liesel. But here, now, the abyss of grief is waiting for me, the yawning stretch of everything I’ve been outrunning finally tripping my heels.
It’s good, though. I’ll gladly fall into this self-deprecating nothingness if it means distracting myself from the fact that I’m a prisoner of the hexenjägers. That I’m on my way to Trier, bound for an even worse fate than my coven.
A tremble rocks through me. My throat grates, a scream or a sob bubbling to life. No, no, no—I will not give these jägers the satisfaction of falling apart. I’m not in a Trier prison yet, am I? So all isn’t lost, and it’s at least a half day’s trip still, and they’ll likely have to camp for the night, or at least stop to relieve the horses. Once they do, the moment they let me out of this box—they’ll have to, won’t they?—I’ll act. Run. Fight them. Steal a pistol. They took my empty potion vials but left my coat and hat, so I can easily hide and survive in the forest, no matter how cold it drops. Anything to get away.
Liesel is counting on me.
And I will not let her down. Not again.
The wagon heaves to the side, throwing me bodily off the seat, my manacled wrists making it impossible to catch myself. I land on the rough wood floor with a tumbling crash, pain forcing a cry from my lips.
But the wagon stops.
I stay on the floor, staring at the barred window at the top of the doors. Sure enough, footsteps sound outside. Gruff voices.
“There’s a campsite a few paces off the road,” says the kapitän. The hexenjäger whose knees I can still feel on my shoulders, a line of blood now dry on my neck from his blade. “Scout it. We’ll stay here tonight. And you three, span out. Hilde Ernst may yet be in these woods. She couldn’t have crossed the river—if she ran off in the chaos and smoke this hexe made, she could be somewhere nearby. It’s a long shot, but worth it.”
“Kapitän, what about…” The voice peters off. Then, quietly, he adds, “The witch?”
I cut a gruesome smile. That’s fear in the young jäger’s voice. It bolsters me like a rope tossed into a long, jagged chasm.
“Scared, are you, Johann?” someone else teases. “Should we leave you on guard, then?”
A pause. “If that is my duty.” But Maid, Mother, and Crone, he sounds petrified.
I heave my shoulder into the side of the wagon, rocking the whole structure, which earns a satisfying chirp of terror from Johann and a scrambled muttering of prayer.
One of the other jägers laughs.
Another thunders his fist on the side of the wagon. “Quiet in there!” The kapitän.
“I didn’t actually make any noise,” I cut back. If I wasn’t so exhausted, so hungry, so downright strained with grief, I’d be able to think more rationally. But right now, the only thing keeping me at all level is the sound of disgusted irritation the kapitän emits.
“I will stay on guard,” he says to his men. “The rest of you, go.”
There’s a resounding chorus of “Ja, Kapitän!” before feet trudge off, stomping from the road into the tangled undergrowth.
The moment I know we’re alone, I leap up and kick the door. “Are you going to let me out?”
No response.
I wrap my fingers around the bars—I can’t stand up straight in this wagon, so to look out the window, I have to crouch a bit—and see the kapitän with his back to me.
His arms are folded, his spine rod-straight, a spotlessly clean black cloak slung over his broad shoulders. That cloak, his dark hair, his eyes—he is all shadow, save for the pale wash of his skin, and the presence he gives off is one of utter control. He looks like he was formed from a cast iron mold of what the perfect hexenjäger should be.
Fury roils in my gut. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
Nothing.
I yank on the bars. “You can’t keep me in here all night, jäger. Where am I supposed to piss?”
That makes him flinch.
“Oh, did I upset your delicate expectations for how a woman should talk?”
His head shifts toward me, showing him in profile, his mouth in a snarl.
“You aren’t a woman,” he says. “You’re a witch.”
“I’m a person.” He won’t meet my eyes, but I glare at the side of his face. “My name is Friederike—”
He cuts up a hand. “Your name isn’t necessary to our—”
“And my friends, my cousins, the people I love, they call me Fritzi, you absolute arschloch.”
His jaw bulges. I can see my name in his mind. Humanizing me.
Was he part of the brigade that attacked my coven? It was chaos: fighting and frantic spells, and then the cellar, the burning, the smoke—
“Does knowing the names of the people you murder make it harder to condemn them? Good. Should I list the names of the witches you burned nearby? I’ll start with those most recent, in Birresborn,” I say, probing.
He glances at me, away. “I have been traveling. That patrol was Kommandant Kirch. And simple names would not affect any good jäger in their duty.”
Kirch rings through me, a struck bell, a dozen emotions keening high and loud.
“Ah, yes, Kirch, your almighty.”
“He is not the Almighty.”
“No? Oh, that’s right, he reports to the archbishop. Your kommandant, the ever-eager right hand of that walking plague you dare call a holy man. Tell me truly, is it the archbishop’s face you jägers see when you close your eyes in prayer? Or merely when you close your eyes for other pursuits?”
His face turns purple. “Weigh your words carefully, hexe. I will not stand for blasphemy.”
“Speaking of—how is the kommandant? Back in Trier?” I’m toeing a dangerous line, but I have to know. Did he get Liesel back to Trier? Or is she still rolling through the countryside, like I am? Is she close by, even—maybe this caravan is due to reunite with Kommandant Kirch’s?
The kapitän doesn’t respond. The muscles in his face bunch tight, the tendons in his neck flare, and he works his lips in a scowl that doesn’t feel like the typical hexenjäger hatred for my kind—it runs deeper. It feels almost personal.
“Are you mad at me?” I guess. “Grumpy that I’m getting under your skin, or that I didn’t let you arrest your own sister? Having yourself a good pout, are you?”
The kapitän whips around to face me and takes a single step closer to the wagon. I don’t miss the way he glances at the woods, checking that we’re still alone.
“You have no idea what you’ve stepped into,” he spits at me. “Years of planning, and—”
“You have no idea what an absolute disease you are,” I throw back. “The world would be better without your presence. Think about that, jäger—if you died, no one would mourn you, and the land would rejoice.”
“And who would mourn you?”
My lips part, but the answer is raw and recent: no one.
He can see he’s hit something. He doesn’t smile, though; no reveling in his verbal victory.
He studies me. Narrow, cold brown eyes. Eyes that have watched a hundred people burn. Eyes that saw his sister fight.
There is nothing in him, a blankness that sends a shudder down my body.
Hatred, I can handle. Power-hungry dominance, I expect.
But this indifference? He looks like he could stab me in the heart and leave me for dead on the road without a second thought.
Which begs the question—
“Why didn’t you kill me?” I ask, staying back from the window, in the shadows of the wagon.
He may not have been at Birresborn, but he’s no better than the men who were.
Some of the tension in his brow smooths out. “Why did you use magic in a room filled with hexenjägers?”
“Do you ever answer a question straight?”
“You are not worthy of answers, hexe.”
“Fritzi. Maid, Mother—” I drop my chin to my chest. “Talking to you is like speaking to a wall.”
I think we’re done, so I turn to sit again.
But the kapitän makes a gruff hum in his throat. “What spell did you use on my sister?”
I go rigid. My lip curls, and I press back against the window, letting him see my anger, my determination. “Protection. Enough to let her get away.”
“That’s the thing I can’t place,” he says, lips tight. “My sister would not have fled.”
“From her crazed brother trying to arrest her? You’re right, she should have embraced you with open arms.”
The kapitän’s eyes narrow. He shakes his head like I’m simple, like I’m the one refusing to give him straight answers.
Footsteps draw closer; the other hexenjägers back from scouting.
“Why do you care if your sister got away?” I spit at him. He doesn’t look at me now, waiting at attention for his men to rejoin him on the road. “You still got a witch to bring back to Trier.”
Something about his posture changes. I can’t tell what it is; is he standing straighter? Is his anger returning?
Whatever it is, it makes me flinch again when he throws me one last glare.
There’s calculation in his cold eyes now. A thought playing out that I can only guess at.
I hear his words come back: You’re not going to burn, hexe. But you’ll wish you had by the time I’m done with you.
I feel suddenly like I should beg for my life. Like he has a pistol aimed at me, and I have only seconds to live.
But I clamp my mouth shut and scowl at him, fuming, drawing on the swell of anger his presence stokes.
I will not fear him.
“Kapitän? The site is clear,” one of the jägers says.
“Good.” He turns away from me. “Set up camp.”
He takes a few steps off into the forest before he adds, “Bring the witch.”
Relief sweeps through me, but it’s short-lived.
The wagon door opens. I stare out at two hexenjägers, their faces brittle mixes of fear and disgust, only to realize that while the wagon kept me in, it also kept them out.
And now, if I don’t manage to escape, I’ll have to spend a whole night in a hexenjäger camp, relying on their disgust to override any other impulses they may have.
One of the hexenjägers reaches in to seize the chain between my manacles. He yanks me hard, and I go careening out of the wagon, slamming to my knees on the dirt road, a cry bursting unbidden out of me.
The other hexenjägers laugh. Something breaks in them, tension evaporating for one terrifying second—I see the change in their eyes. Their fear is now aggression.
A jäger grabs a rough handful of my blond curls where they peek out beneath my hat and wrenches my head back. I whimper—I can’t help it, can’t stop it, my body reacting to this change viscerally.
If they don’t fear me.
If they aren’t repulsed by me.
I have no way to protect myself.
Terror is cold and consuming and splays through my chest in a sharp wave.
“Bertram! Stand down!” The kapitän’s shout thunders over the road.
I gasp an inhale, wincing at the way Bertram’s hand twists in my hair.
The men go stiff. They eye Bertram and take a noticeable step back.
The kapitän squares himself directly in front of me. His glare is fixed to Bertram’s grip on my hair, his cheeks stained red.
“No one,” he sweeps that glare across his men, “is to touch the witch. Understood?”
A pause, then the men sullenly agree.
Bertram drops his grip on me. “It’s just a witch, Kapitän. We’ve had our fun with others.”
The men shift, uneasy. Their fear is returning, and I can practically hear their thoughts.
Others, yes. But others never used magic.
However brave these hexenjägers think they are, they haven’t dealt with real magic. A few of the older ones likely encountered real witches in the early days, but the first victims of the witch hunts were mostly true witches—now, after years of my people burning or fleeing to the Black Forest, the only victims that remain are innocents who are no more magical than the hexenjägers who condemn them.
My panic starts to ease, the tense muscles in my chest releasing slowly. I can see their unease creeping over them like frost over frozen ground.
The kapitän’s glare flashes to Bertram. “This witch is tainted with evil. It is a prisoner of Kommandant Kirch, and I will not have any of my men falling prey to its guiles. Understood?” He takes a threatening step toward Bertram, a silent reminder of how tall he is in comparison, the sheer weight of his presence.
“No one is to touch the witch,” he repeats. “Understood?”
“Aye, Kapitän!” the men say in unison.
Bertram bows his head. “Aye, Kapitän.”
The kapitän juts his chin at me. “Now secure the hexe,” he commands and stomps off.
The campsite is little more than a clearing with a charred pit for a fire. The hexenjägers set to work efficiently, putting out bedrolls, gathering wood, stoking flames to life. Soon, the clearing is a sole orb of warmth against the encroaching dark and chill of night.
And I’m lashed to a tree at the edge of the clearing, hands above my head, just far enough from the fire that every stray wind makes me shiver. But I’m sitting, at least, and I’m not in the direct line of sight of any of the jägers, so as they start dividing evening chores—doling out rations, tending the horses, organizing a watch—I take stock of my surroundings.
The manacles are looped to the tree via rope—easy enough to get through, if I can find something sharp. I can just make out bumps of vegetation on my left, but the firelight doesn’t reach—are there herbs I can use? Likely just grass. But there are plenty of rocks on this flattened space, and one is bound to be sharp enough to saw through the rope.
How will I grab one? If I can bend, maybe I can use my foot to flick one up and catch it…
Four of the hexenjägers are centered around the fire, eating, passing a sheepskin, and bellowing the type of laughter that comes with camaraderie. The kapitän is off talking with the three hexenjägers who were searching the area for Hilde. They didn’t find anything, and I smile. At least that innocent woman is safe.
One of the jägers by the fire jostles the shoulder of another who can’t be older than fifteen. “Johann—the witch looks hungry. Why don’t you feed it, eh?”
Ah, the scared one.
Johann’s face pales. But he picks up a bowl and extends it for another to ladle in stew.
His arm is shaking. He spills some of the stew, and the men roar laughter.
“Schiesse, Johann, how green are you?” Bertram roughs his hair. “Barely off your mother’s breast!”
More laughter. Johann’s face reddens, but he stands, dutifully, and his eyes flash up to mine.
He balks.
“It isn’t that,” he says to the men, fighting for composure. “I’ve never—it’s powerful. Isn’t it? I’ve never seen magic like that.”
There’s a wash of silence through the men. Despite their banter, I see Johann’s terror in all of them, briefly, and I can’t stop my feral grin.
Their fear is holding.
Good. I trust their fear more than I trust their kapitän’s order.
They’re all trying not to look at me and failing. When I bare my teeth at one, he crosses himself.
The kapitän chooses that moment to stomp into the firelight. He takes the sheepskin from one of his men and the bowl of stew from Johann. If he’s aware of their tension, their conversation, he doesn’t show it.
“First watch, take your stations. The rest of you, sleep. We have an early start tomorrow.”
No one argues, and they disperse. I clock where the two on patrol go—one to the north, one to the south, and they’ll likely walk in a slow rotation until they’re relieved. But there’ll be enough space between them to slip through. I can even wait until Johann is on watch and use his fear to my advantage.
I just have to get out of this verdammt rope. Even manacled, I’ll be able to run away.
I look up at it, shifting for a better view—
When a shadow slashes over me.
“You won’t escape.”
Slowly, I shift to frown at the kapitän, but he’s backlit by the fire. I can’t see his face.
A blink, and I see Mama. Standing over the cellar hatch. Her face in shadows.
My pulse surges into a gallop, and I fist my frigid hands.
“Your sister won’t be the only woman running free from you today,” I snap.
His shoulders go rigid. “She did not run. You did something to her. And you will tell me what, exactly, you did.”
“Verpiss dich, jäger,” I say in as sweet a voice as I can manage.
I shouldn’t antagonize him. I should be doing everything I can to be small and forgettable and unthreatening.
But my quickened pulse courses hatred into every part of my body, and I can barely see through the swell of rage. I want to lash out at him, kick him in the groin; I want to spit in his face, tear his eyes with my fingers.
He drops into a squat before me. I scramble back, pressing myself to the tree, and all that anger sharpens into cold, relentless fear.
The kapitän tips his head, surveying my position: huddled against the tree, eyes wide, legs pulled up against my stomach.
“No one will touch you,” he tells me. “We are not brutes.”
“No, you just burn people alive. Far more civilized.”
He holds out something to me. The bowl of stew. The sheepskin.
“You’re hungry,” he says.
I’m so tempted to tell him to piss off again, but I bite my lip and shake my manacled hands in response.
“And you’ll only feed me if I tell you where your sister is?” I ask. “Because that is definitely the behavior of someone who is not a brute—”
He sets the sheepskin down and lifts the spoon out of the bowl.
He’s not really going to—
He is.
The kapitän holds the spoon to my lips.
I stare at him, stunned.
“Don’t let stubbornness make you stupid,” he tells me. “Eat.”
“It would be mighty inconvenient if your prisoner passed out from hunger before you could properly torture her, wouldn’t it?”
His jaw bulges. He bumps the spoon against my lips. “Eat,” he repeats, his tone of command so second nature that it sounds well-worn.
The stew is something crude and easy, road rations mixed with melted snow, but the scent drives my stomach to rumbling. I’ve only eaten bits and pieces while traveling from Birresborn, and if I’m going to make any progress tonight, I’ll need my strength.
I part my lips and take the proffered bite.
“There,” he says. “Is that so hard?”
Oh, I will kick him the moment I’ve had my fill.
I still can’t see his face in the dark, the fire at his back. He drops into silence as he feeds me, just dips the spoon back into the bowl and lifts bite after bite, nothing in his movements saying he’s impatient that I’m eating slowly or that he’s offended having to feed me at all. It’s so in contrast with the bitter, angry man he’s been that I can’t help shrinking from him, my eyes dropping, each bite I take now feeling like he’s won something, like I’ve conceded to him.
“You’re wrong,” he whispers to the dark.
I don’t answer.
“I have never burned someone alive.”
I can’t help myself—my snort of derision is more like a snarl. He would lie about the thing he must be proudest of? There’s a trick here.
He opens his mouth as if to speak, but then seems to decide it’s pointless. He turns to pick up the sheepskin and offers it to me.
I tip my head back and beer slides into my throat. It’s hoppy and rich and immediately warms my whole body, which is a problem—exhaustion creeps up over me again. My ever-present companion. But I blink furiously and sit up straighter, willingly myself to alertness.
The kapitän pushes the cork back into the sheepskin. “You can sleep. I told you, no one will touch you.”
I laugh. It’s bitter and sharp. “Forgive me for not thinking your word has any bearing whatsoever, jäger.”
He holds a beat. “You’re not going to escape either.”
I refuse to look at him, glowering at my lap. “Just leave me alone.”
His nearness is disorienting. Is that why he fed me? So I’d be full and too tired to run? My arms shake, and I do look up now, only to scowl.
Maid, Mother, and Crone, I’ve never hated someone as much as I hate this one man.
“Leave me alone,” I say when he lingers.
He stands. I think he’s going to walk away, but he just tosses the now empty sheepskin and bowl toward the fire. Then he pulls a length of rope from a satchel at his waist and knots one end to my wrist.
“The manacles aren’t enough?” I snap.
Silently—the Three save me, this man barely speaks—he unwinds the rope and loops the other end to his wrist.
We’re connected now.
Any move I make in the night, he’ll feel. Unless I can somehow saw through this rope without waking him. How heavy a sleeper is he? Maybe—
“I’m a very light sleeper,” he says at the look on my face. “And until you tell me what I need to know, you’re under my command.”
I can’t stand it anymore; I rear back and thrash out to kick him, but he sidesteps it easily, and when he does, his face catches in the firelight.
He isn’t smiling. Not laughing at my feeble act of rebellion.
He looks…in pain.
The kapitän drops to the ground next to me—out of kicking distance—and positions his back against a tree. He folds his arms over his chest, pulling taut the rope between us, and closes his eyes.
I yank on the rope, hoping to make him tip over, but it barely fazes him.
The Three help me, I want to scream. I want to attack him. I need to expel this fury, because if I don’t, I’ll realize it isn’t fury at all.
It’s fear.
I won’t escape tonight.
Which means tomorrow, I’ll be taken into Trier as a prisoner, and any chance I had at freeing Liesel will be lost.
The fire sizzles down to embers, casting the area in a hazy orange glow. It’s that softness that pushes tears down my cheeks. I can’t stop them; I can’t even wipe them away, helplessness urging more, careening my grief out of control.
My mother died yesterday.
I haven’t let myself feel it. Not truly. And I grind my teeth against it now, begging myself not to think about it, not yet; I’ll mourn, but not yet—
I sob there in the darkness, fighting to keep my gasps quiet.
Maid, Mother, and Crone, the prayer comes unbidden, and it aches now knowing they won’t hear me. That I’m well and truly alone.
Are you, though?
Go away, I push at the voice. Not now. Please. Just leave me alone.
I’ve come this far and not given into wild magic. What makes the voice think I ever will, if I haven’t by now?
There is no response.