I blink at the bars after the kapitän jumps back down.
I can save you, if you obey me.
A threat like that isn’t unexpected from a hexenjäger.
I’ve heard stories from witches who passed through Birresborn, most just looking for a safe place, others on the run to the Black Forest after most of their coven was lost. All would grow quiet when the visitors told their tales. Where they had come from. What they had escaped. Even the children, huddled at their parents’ legs, weren’t sent away from the gruesome realities; we all had to listen, because we all could feel the overhanging threat.
This could be you. This could happen to any of us.
Listen, and take heed.
And so I know exactly what hexenjägers do to us. Even to those who aren’t witches, who found Birresborn by accident, not knowing they’d stumbled into a coven—Mama let them in anyway, and we sent them off with supplies and full bellies. The stories were all the same.
Hexenjägers who came with irons and scowls.
Hexenjägers who didn’t wait for a trial, who killed or burned their victims on the spot.
Hexenjägers who slipped into houses with “early warnings” of an arrest and promises that they could make it go away if they were granted certain…favors. Give me one night, they said, and you’ll live.
Each story was more heart-wrenching than the last, painting a picture of a world beset by power-hungry men all high on their claims of righteousness and purity.
So I have no illusions about the kapitän’s threat. That’s what it is: a threat.
But what of the earnestness on his face? The fear in his eyes?
I dig my fingertips into my temples and rub in slow circles. I’m sleepless, that’s all. It happened so quickly; I misread his expression. Earnestness could easily be eagerness. Fear could easily be mania.
The door to the prison wagon bursts open. Bone-deep exhaustion has numbed me, and I come up to a crouch before the hexenjägers have to reach in for me.
Outside, I see we’re in ruins of some sort, long ago remains of the Romans who were the first colonizers of these lands. The first to look at my people and deem us little more than fodder. My eyes cast over the rocks and rubble, the wall of Trier running beyond the length of this space, and my numbness settles deeper.
The kapitän is sending the bulk of his men back up the road, leaving only himself and two others with me. One is the boy who even now won’t meet my eyes, Johann.
The other is Bertram.
He grabs the chain between my hands, his eyes all disgust as he sizes me up in the harsh, cold sunlight. “Let’s get her locked up. I need a pint.”
Johann moans his agreement. It’s the kapitän who hesitates, something gruesome and dark on his face, before he turns without a word.
I don’t know what I expected. For them to lead me straight into a prison? For there to be a set of stairs that would take us up and over the wall of Trier? But when Bertram pulls me toward a small arched entrance set directly in the sheared stone beneath the wall, I seize up.
A tunnel. A tunnel under the city.
Is this how they bring in all the witches, or have they planned something special for me?
My brain rattles with information—the old Roman aqueducts, just more verdammt ruins—but panic has my heels dropping into the dirt, my arms trying and failing to rip back and out of the hexenjäger’s grasp.
Bertram growls at me. “Go ahead and try to flee,” he snaps as he yanks me forward. “I’ll take pleasure in running you through.”
He shifts his hip, drawing my attention to the sword strapped there, but my panic doesn’t calm, and we walk closer, closer, closer to that tunnel entrance. It’s all darkness, a small door of nothingness, and I can’t convince my lungs to draw breath.
I’m hit with the iron-tinged sensation that once I go into that tunnel, I’ll never come back out again, and of all the horrors I’ve endured the past days, this looms over me, swallowing me whole.
What do you fear in the dark, Fritzi? You know how to escape. You’ve known all along.
A cry bursts out of me. I’m desperate, on edge; this is the exact sort of situation where the voice could get to me, I know it could.
I could give in. So easily.
I could escape. Save Liesel. Save myself.
Just say the spell. Start the words. This can all be over.
Others in my coven knew the words too. We had a communal building to store our most sacred texts, spells passed generation to generation on scrolls and rare bound books; but there were a few writings that Mama kept under lock and key in her room and forbade us from reading.
So of course we did.
It became a dare from the oldest cousin You’re not scared to see what it says, are you?—until a group of us needed to prove our bravery.
We snuck into my mother’s room in the cottage, a group of insolent cousins and friends, giggling the whole while, not knowing what we were truly set on finding. We’d heard the worst stories about our goddesses already, tales whispered around dying flames late at night to make us behave: Perchta will come in your sleep! The Mother knows all you’ve done. If you’ve been naughty, she’ll slice open your belly and stuff you full of straw!
But this was no story. No fable meant to scare and instill obedience.
It was a spell.
I remember the words, flowing in thin, curling script across the parchment, on a page labeled Wild Magic.
Below the spell, it spoke of the balance Mama drilled into my head. How witches must put good into the world, because our Well of magic builds with good deeds; the more we do, the more magic our coven has to draw on.
That was why Perchta, the Mother, was so absolute in her rules and traditions. Why Abnoba protected the forests and life so fiercely. Why Holda guarded the barrier to death with such devotion.
The Well protects us. It’s a tap to allow a trickle of uncorrupting magic through.
But wild magic is a flood, and it ruins or drives a witch mad, drowning them in the wake.
To cement the connection to wild magic, a witch must sever their connection to the Origin Tree and its Well, the page said. This is the spell that must be recited to do so.
Only a few of us saw the page. The rest crouched around, wide-eyed and giggling still. Liesel had been there; she was about four years old, tiny and plump and observant.
“Are you all right, cousin?” she’d asked in her soft little voice.
I’d slammed the book shut.
Say the spell, the voice demands now. I can help you in ways you can only imagine. You need not suffer, you need not be a prisoner. Say the spell!
Had I heard the voice before I read the passage in Mama’s forbidden book? I can’t remember. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hear it, and right now, being dragged for senseless darkness beneath a hexenjäger city, I am closer than I ever have been to giving in.
I drop my heels again, but Bertram is ready for my protest; he hauls me toward the tunnel, and I go, helpless, as I have been all this time. Even when I turn, I see the kapitän behind me, and Johann behind him.
Reality crashes down on me, sharp and jarring.
There will be no leaving these tunnels.
I will be entirely at Kommandant Kirch’s mercy.
My lips part. A word is on the edge of my tongue, the first in the spell.
Say it, the voice pleads. Use me!
I could kill these hexenjägers.
I could use wild magic to wreak unrestrained havoc on these foul men—and be precisely the sort of monster they believe me to be.
My body shakes with self-hatred. I’d say the spell now, to save my own body, but I wouldn’t say it to save Mama and my coven?
That silences me.
Tears prick my eyes as the hexenjäger drags me the first few paces into the tunnel. There’s rustling behind, a shift, and then the smell of acidic smoke.
The kapitän has lit a torch.
It does little to chase away the dark, and with each step we take farther inside, the light from outside fades until we are in a world all our own. The tunnel is only an arm’s length over my head. The kapitän must crouch to fit, his broad shoulders caving forward to not brush the laid stones. The sound of water dripping echoes tinnily, a distant, steady tick, and my boots push through the occasional puddle, shallow and smelling of molded water.
I focus on those things. The way the air stinks of cold stone, iron and earthy; the feel of the chill on my skin, icy below ground. My boots slip on a grimy rock, and I falter, catching myself by the tight grip Bertram holds on me.
I feel the kapitän at my back, one firm hand going to my shoulder.
“Steady,” he says, gruff and low.
I shake him off and keep walking. Bertram glances back, once, and I catch a flash of discomfort on his face.
He doesn’t like being in this tunnel either. He isn’t walking to imprisonment and death, but still, I revel in knowing my captors are sharing even a small part of my misery.
A tunnel branches from our main one. As we cross the intersection, I feel a gust of wind from somewhere to the left. I shiver in the chill of it. Bertram shivers, too, and I get the feeling it’s more from fear.
“What is that?” Johann asks from the rear.
“Ventilation,” the kapitän says. “Keep going, Bertram.”
Bertram yanks my chain, and I stumble two quick steps. But another breeze blows, and he glances back at the kapitän questioningly.
Bertram’s eyes go to me, thin with accusation.
Does he blame me for a cold wind? What power I hold over this man. If only I could use it.
I keep walking, head down, not wanting to instigate Bertram at all—
The kapitän’s sharp cry is the only warning before the torch hisses out into nothingness.
Sinking, consuming darkness rushes around me, choking, thick. I see nothing, eyes strained wide in fruitless searching, breathing stunted as every muscle in my body goes rigid.
“What happened? Where’s the light?” Johann is frantic, his tone high and grating.
“The witch bespelled the wind!” the kapitän snaps back. “Bertram—”
Arms clamp around my body. A scream builds in my chest, but a thick hand plants over my lips, holding me silent as the weight around me pivots sharply to the left, yanking me hard.
Feet splash. “I’ve lost her!” Bertram’s voice from ahead rings against the walls. And if he’s not holding me, then—
I buck, manacled hands going up to grab the kapitän’s arms, but I can’t pry him off—and to what end, anyway? Cold sweat washes down my body as I feel his muscles tense around me, keeping me flush to his front, his limbs like stone, encasing me.
“The witch ran off!” the kapitän says like he isn’t holding me in his arms. “She can’t be far—Bertram, go on ahead; it’s a straight shot to the Porta Nigra from here, so if she went that way, she’ll end up nowhere good. Johann, back to the entrance—let nothing out, you hear me? I’ll search these side tunnels. Go!”
The booming shout rings in my ears, dizzying me. I long for numbness again, but fear rears up, a relentless hand snaking around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs in a cool, quick rush that condenses against the kapitän’s palm.
What is happening?
Why did he lie?
Footsteps part in stomping rushes—Bertram racing ahead, Johann going back the way we came. The kapitän holds me motionless for one second, two, three—
Then he drags me back a few paces, to where the tunnel split. Or, at least, I think that’s where we go—I still see nothing, but clearly he knows the route even without light.
My skin prickles with terror. A tight winding of dread, my body feeling too exposed, too soft.
I’m alone in an underground tunnel with a hexenjäger kapitän, and no one on earth knows he has me.
You said no one would touch me, I think, but I can’t get the words to form. You said you weren’t brutes.
I can’t stifle my cry as he shifts me higher against him, his hand slipping from my mouth.
“Don’t make a sound,” he hisses into my ear.
I would if I thought that would improve my situation at all—but who would come running? More hexenjägers?
One hexenjäger, I can handle.
One hexenjäger, I can kill.
He’s focused on wherever he’s taking me, his breath huffing fast, his heart hammering against my back. We take another turn, his boots sloshing through puddles that sound deeper now—another sharp turn, more water sloshing. How will I find my way out?
Never mind that now. Get away.
I lift my manacled arms and slam my elbow back into the kapitän’s stomach. He huffs a startled breath and releases his grip, but only barely—I manage a single step forward before he seizes my arm, a predator’s instincts, and slams me against the wall of the tunnel.
Terror shoots through me, a white fog across my mind, and all I want, all I am, is the need to scream. The kapitän’s forearm presses across my chest, his elbow and fist connecting with the bruised spots where his knees pinned me in the garden, and I wince, teeth flashing in the dark.
“I won’t make it easy for you,” I spit, terror disintegrating into anger. I fall backward into it; anger, I can use, and I thrash against his weight. “I may not have magic right now, but I have claws and teeth. Every moment, every breath will be a fight, jäger—”
“A fight? Schiesse, that’s not what I—stop. I know it’s hard for you,” he tells me, and for once, his voice is almost sorrowful, “but unless you want to end up on a stake, stay quiet and trust me.”
“Trust you?” I gasp, bucking. He’s incredibly strong. So strong I know I have little chance of overpowering him, and that realization sends a shudder through me, fed by the icy water soaking into my boots.
I have been manacled, bound, and locked in a prison wagon, but it’s his display of strength that reminds me how much of a prisoner I am.
“Yes,” he says, his breath warm on my face. He’s a voice only. A voice and a press of weight in the dark. “Trust me. And if that’s too impossible, then know that this is the only way to save everyone.”
“By purging the city of—”
“No. The people locked up by the hexenjägers. I’m going to save them, and you’re going to help me.”
I stare into the darkness, my eyes wide, brows to my hairline.
He doesn’t wait for my reaction. He grabs the chain between my manacles and hauls me on, and I go, because I can’t fight him off, because I have no other options, because his words are dancing through my head.
He’s trying to save the people he helped imprison?
No. This is a trick. This is some kind of final test before the hexenjägers burn me, before Kirch returns and has his fun. He’s trying to break me. That’s it—this is him, this is all Kommandant Kirch—
My mind is heaving, roiling. A panic, a delirium, a final shattering as the kapitän stops.
There’s rustling, the sound of keys rattling. I hear one go into a lock, twist.
Dim, hazy light pushes into the tunnel. I lurch forward, drawn to the light like a moth, my panic momentarily hesitating as my eyes adjust, and I can see.
Beyond lies a small square room, crates stacked against one wall, a distant, steady dripping breaking the silence. There’s a shaft in the ceiling where a ladder might go and no windows or doors beyond this entrance—it’s a cellar.
I don’t get a chance to ask a question. The kapitän shoves me into the room.
“Stay silent,” he says, and I hear the grate of his words fully now, see the desperation on his face. In that moment, he’s not just a soulless hexenjäger; he’s a boy, wide-eyed and scared.
He’s pleading with me. Begging me to stay quiet.
“What is going on—”
But he slams the door on me.
I throw myself at it. There’s no handle from this side, just a smooth outline, and when I hammer my fist on it, it doesn’t even rattle.
“Jäger!” I shout at the wall. No response. “Jäger!”
Nothing.
I kick it. It only sends a jolt of pain up my foot, and I dance backward until my thighs catch on a crate. I sit, heavy and shocked, staring at the door.
The shaft above dumps foggy light down on me—there must be windows up there, an exit. Around me, the crates are mostly whole, some dampened from moisture, the floor slick and the walls unbroken by other openings.
I glare at the opening in the ceiling.
Whatever game this hexenjäger is playing, whatever test Kommandant Kirch is putting me through…
I’m done.
I’m getting out of this cellar, and I’m going to find Liesel, and we’re going to the Black Forest.
Are you really going to them? asks the voice. Why go all that way when I am right here to help you?
I snort. Where were your useless questions when the kapitän had me in his arms? I shoot back. You’re slipping, Darkness.
I’m talking to the voice more than I ever have before.
This can’t be good.
I pull to my feet. My hands are still manacled—I’ll have to take care of that too. But for now, all I need to focus on is getting out of this cellar.
There are enough crates stacked against the wall that I can create a crude tower to climb.
Grim, I cast one last look at the impassable cellar door that leads out to the tunnels.
“I’m getting out of here, jäger,” I promise to the silence. “Then I’m getting my cousin and we’re going to the forest folk.”