Night of the Witch, page 20
Their fury is encased in sorrow.
“Rather than talk about your brother,” I say, “let’s talk about my sister.”
“Is she a witch too?” Liesel asks innocently.
“No.”
“Pity,” Liesel says.
“I accidentally sent her…elsewhere,” Fritzi says. She fills in her cousin quickly, giving her the rough details of the past days.
“A protection spell shouldn’t have done that to someone,” Liesel says.
“There’s something wrong with my magic.” Fritzi’s voice drops. “It was stronger than it should have been with Otto’s sister. It didn’t act as I meant for it to in the house fort either.”
“And your protection potion deflected Bertram’s blade too,” I add.
“It can’t do that.” Liesel pointedly speaks only to Fritzi, mostly ignoring me.
“But it did,” Fritzi says. “Have you noticed that? Magic…stronger than it should be?”
Liesel cuts her eyes at me. She doesn’t like speaking about magic in front of someone who still, even under the grime, looks like a hexenjäger. She pulls Fritzi’s ear down, whispering something to her, and whatever she says makes Fritzi’s grim face fill with sorrow and worry.
“Do you think you can do a little?” Fritzi asks her cousin.
Liesel nods tightly.
“Let’s start nearby. There was someone I met in the prison. His name was Jochen.”
Liesel mounds some dry, dead leaves in front of her. The tinderbox flashes; a spark ignites.
“He’s out of the tunnels.” Liesel mutters. “Jochen. Wearing a hood. There’s chaos in the streets.”
Perfect. That’s exactly what I’d hoped for.
Liesel shakes her head. “It’s hard to follow one person,” she says. “There are riots.” She looks up at Fritzi, her pupils incandescent. “The people are rebelling.”
My whole body sags in relief.
“What about Otto’s sister?” Fritzi asks. The wires around my heart ease a bit. I did not want to push the child, but I’m grateful Fritzi asked about Hilde on my behalf.
Liesel frowns.
“Please.” The word is raw from my lips.
The little girl heaves a sigh, then turns back to the small fire. There’s an intensity in her gaze—not on the flames, but through them. She sees something none of us can.
When Liesel speaks, her voice is different somehow, calmer but with more authority. “Hilde Ernst is in the Well.”
27
FRITZI
Otto stares at Liesel, expecting more. But when she leans away from the fire at her feet definitively, he looks at me in question.
“The Well is a place?” Otto frowns in confusion. I’d told him about the Well, but in the abstract—not as a place where his sister could go.
But Hilde can’t be there. I didn’t send her there.
Did I?
The lapping of the river a few paces behind us is almost deafening as I stare at the side of my cousin’s face in the afternoon sun.
“Liesel,” I start, “what are you talking about?”
She whips a glare at Otto, misreading my hesitation. “You don’t have to pretend, Fritzi. He’s one of them, and they know everything about us now because of Dieter.” She pauses, noticeably flinches. “Almost everything.”
Otto frowns and shakes his head. “Where is my sister? Is she—”
Liesel leans forward, teeth baring, and I think I should intervene, but I’m at a loss, missing something in what she’s saying, my body gone to ice and stone. “The Well. In the Black Forest. The place where all good witches draw their power. The place your kommandant is trying to destroy.”
I grab Liesel’s arm. “What are you talking about?”
She turns her fury on me. But somehow, it’s still directed at Otto, and it’s breaking my heart.
“That’s why Dieter wanted me,” she hisses. “He wanted me to divine a way for him to break through the barrier of the Well.”
My shock is too potent. It warps into horror and back again, and my stomach burns with nausea.
Because the Well, the coven in the Black Forest, is protected with wards even more powerful than the ones Mama put around Birresborn. Wards meant to let good witches in and keep bad witches out.
Only unlike Birresborn, there is no stupid, naive witch waiting inside the Well to drop the wards for him. He’d need a different way in if he wanted to go.
That’s what he wants? To access the Well?
Why?
My shocked horror clashes sharply with the ever-present wall of my grief. I choke on it, rocking toward Liesel; I catch Otto’s sudden spike of awareness, the way he twitches as if to lean toward me, but I’m fixed wholly on my cousin, on memories surging and biting.
Liesel’s bottom lip trembles, and she drops her gaze to the small fire. Her fingers curl over the crackling orange and gold flames. “He forced me to look for ways to break the Well’s wards. And I—I almost did. I would’ve broken, Fritzi. But I pretended the fire only told me where it’s located in the Forest, that Abnoba wouldn’t explain how exactly the wards work or how he could break them. It was enough to make him stop.” Her voice pinches, and tears drop down into the fire. “I just wanted to make him stop.”
I pull Liesel against me, burying my face in her hair. She smells of cinder and burning, a baked-in heat that she carries always.
Has she realized that I’m to blame? Has she realized that she helped me bring Dieter to Birresborn?
And because I refused to take the bonding potion he brought. Because I didn’t let him use my powers and bleed me dry.
He was forced to abduct Liesel, to get her to ask the flames for another way to complete his goal.
“Liesel,” I whisper, swallowing against my closing throat. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I let him get you. I’m sorry I led him to us.” I hiccup, a gag warping my voice, and I pinch my eyes against a rush of tears. “I’m sorry for everything.”
She wriggles against me and digs her fingers into my arm, squeezing hard. But she doesn’t speak. It’s too big, I know; it’s all too much, this day, this week, this month.
In a flash, she shoves away from me and glares at Otto. “But why is his sister in the Well?”
Otto looks at me, the same question on his face. “The Well is in the Black Forest?” he clarifies.
My tears freeze on my cheeks. He glances at them, back up at me, and I see his hands flex where they have gone lax on his knees.
I press the heel of my palm to my forehead, and on a deep breath, I explain one of the greatest secrets of my people. How the goddesses blessed a coven of witches to protect the source of all our magic and hid it deep in the Black Forest. How witches have run there over the past years to escape the hexenjägers, but the journey is perilous, to cross so much of the Empire, but some have risked it, if only for the safety it offers.
And that had been my sole focus when I’d stumbled onto Hilde’s cottage. Finding Liesel, getting us to the Well. To safety.
That was the spell I cast on Hilde.
Protection.
“You sent my sister to the Black Forest,” Otto says when I’ve finished.
I can’t look at him. My eyes are on the forest’s undergrowth, the flame still burning at Liesel’s feet, kept alive by her grip on the magic. It warms this small clearing, but I don’t think I’d feel any cold even if there was no fire.
“And that’s where Fritzi and I are going too,” Liesel tells him, drawing her chin up defiantly. She looks at me. “That’s where Abnoba says we’ll be safe.”
“Abnoba? You keep mentioning her,” Otto questions.
I finally meet his eyes.
There’s no blame waiting for me there. No accusation. Just concern, patience, and somehow, that’s worse, that he’s able to still see us as somehow on equal footing after everything I’ve done.
Numb, I shrug. “Abnoba, the Crone. One of our goddesses. The protector of the wilds and life. Perchta, the Mother, is the overseer of rules and traditions. Holda, the Maid, is the goddess of death and winter. Abnoba blessed Liesel—she’s been watching over her all her life.”
Otto’s brows go up. Which part is surprising—that our goddesses speak to some of us? Or that we have more than one?
Liesel tugs on my sleeve. “Dieter can’t get us in the Well. She told me to come there. Without me or a connection to the Well, he’ll never figure out how to get past the wards. They were set up by the goddesses themselves.”
“He is connected to magic,” Otto presses. “We saw what he can do.”
“I told you, he isn’t like me,” I say. “He’s a witch, yes; but he severed his connection from the Well. The magic he uses instead is corrupting: wild magic. There is no one who oversees it, no one who controls it, so it allows him to do anything he wants. But to access it, he has to feed it evil acts.”
Or bond with another wild magic witch, and use her like a tapped keg he can refill and drain, refill and drain.
I shiver, pushing away the image.
“Evil like burning people?” Otto guesses. “So your brother is still a powerful witch, but his magic comes from an uncontrolled source that he can only access by slaughter. And my sister is currently in a hidden sanctuary in the Black Forest controlled by goddess-blessed witches who protect your source of magic.”
Liesel puckers her lips. “He’s not as dumb as he seems.”
“But even if we’re safe in the Well,” I say, “Dieter will still be out in the world, wreaking horrors on innocents. When we reach the Well, we have to hope they’re able to help us stop him. Somehow. This is so much worse than him just being murderous.” Dread shakes through me, that there even is something worse than the murder of innocents.
“His magic explains why he pushed for the mass burning.” Otto rubs his wrist, works his way up his forearm, massaging the muscles stiff from rowing. “He was going to use all the deaths to charge him with enough magic to break that barrier, with Liesel’s help.”
“Magic has been wrong lately,” I say. “Because he’s attacking the Well’s barrier. But,” I twist to Liesel. “Why did Dieter want you to get him into the Well? What does he want with it?”
Liesel brushes her palms on her soiled skirts. “He kept saying he’ll get more. That little tricks like my pyroaugury would be child’s play after.” She looks up at me, tears brimming her eyes, and my guilt turns into a beast of teeth and claws at how exhausted she is. We haven’t rested, she’s barely touched the rations I laid out for her, and here I am, forcing her to relive what he did to her.
But she sits up straighter, her gaze boring into my soul. “He’s not just trying to break the wards that protect the Well. He’s trying to break the Well. He has wild magic, but if he has access to all magic without needing to be connected to the Well…”
There will be no limits on what he can do, no requirements of sacrifice or evil acts or rules. He’ll have all the magic in the world. He’s already started trying to break the wards from here, but nothing of what he’s done so far has brought them down or even really hurt them.
My chest goes cold, matching the frigid wind that drifts past us, fluffing the hair around Liesel’s face. “The forest folk will be willing to help us, then, if they know that that is his intent,” I say, barely feeling the words.
Liesel shrugs, her eyes fluttering in a slow, tired blink. “I tried to figure out what all he knows, but—”
“No—you’ve told us enough,” I cut her off. “Rest now.”
I help her lie down on a cloak I spread out, and I pull the edges around her, tucking her in as tightly as I can. The fire stays burning next to her, casting orange and gold against her face, and her eyes are shut almost instantly, lips parted in a small O. Her hand is clasped under her chin in a fist, and I see the edge of something sticking out of her fingers—pine needles. The little animal Otto had carved.
My chest twists, aching.
I remember when she was a babe, how she’d slept like this in my Aunt Catrin’s arms. Holding a toy. Innocent, soft.
Tears sting my eyes again, and I sniff, hard, looking up into the wind to dry them.
“Our paths align, at least,” Otto says softly. “We can make for the Black Forest. Using the rivers, we can reach the town of Baden-Baden. It borders the forest.”
I hang silent for a long moment. Wondering what conversation we would have if our paths did not align, if his sister was elsewhere, but Liesel and I still needed to get to the Black Forest. To the Well that Dieter is trying to break into, to corrupt.
“I’m going to get more firewood,” I say. It’s a lie—Liesel’s fire will burn now without added fuel. Otto doesn’t know that.
I shove to my feet and push into the forest, trying not to move too frantically, but the moment I’m far enough away from the makeshift campsite, I run. I only get a few paces before I realize how utterly stupid that is; I need to stay close, should any jägers pop up, should Liesel awaken with nightmares and only Otto is there to comfort her. But I need—I need to be away, to run, to move, to—to—
I drop against a tree, and all the sobs I’ve fought down, all the grief that’s been waiting patiently in my gut to destroy me, finally comes out.
Sobs rupture up my throat and shake through my limbs, and it’s all I can do to keep my feet. My mind plays over and over the image of Aunt Catrin holding Liesel in her arms as a babe, that one innocent memory breaking me when nothing else has been able to. But it’s gone now, Aunt Catrin, Liesel’s innocence—it’s all gone, because of me. Because of my brother. Because I was a fool, a love-blinded fool who thought Dieter had been banished for something simple and childish, not for wild magic, not for—
A twig cracks behind me.
I whirl, hands up, body immediately going alert.
But it’s only Otto. Palms out flat toward me, eyes wide in apology.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says.
I grunt frustration and scrub at the tears I know he saw. “You should’ve stayed with Liesel. I’ll be back soon.”
“After you gather firewood for the fire that hasn’t needed fuel once.”
My hands go stiff, rubbing at my cheeks, and that stiffness surges down my body.
Otto takes a step closer to me. I fold my arms, jaw set and eyes still hot.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says.
I laugh. It’s hollow. “You have no idea what is or isn’t my fault.”
“I know your brother. And I know his madness is nothing you can control.”
“But it is.” My voice croaks, drags against my tongue until I swear I can taste blood. “Because I let him in. I let down the wards that protected my coven. I let him into Birresborn. Me. I did that. I’m the reason—” I gag on a sob, and then I’m falling apart anew, sobs ripping me in half, half again. “I’m the reason they’re dead. He killed them all. Because I let him in and refused him.”
“Refused him?”
It all pours out. Words I can’t stop now, they’re free. “He came to Birresborn to get me. He wants me to bond with him. That potion I told you about. The one that can connect a witch to another person—two witches bonded, though? Two witches who use wild magic, bonded by that potion—he’d have all the power he needs. He’d use my body like an extra store of magic, and he’s so powerful I’d be unable to stop him.”
“But you have to take the bonding potion willingly.”
“Yes.”
“So there is no fear of that happening.” He says it simply. Like that’s the only thing that mattered, and it’s taken care of, so we’re fine.
I frown at him, head cocked. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I let him into my home. I betrayed my coven. All of this happened because of me.”
I expect Otto to leave. He knows now. He’ll walk away.
“Did you know what he’d do?” he asks quietly. “Did you know what he wanted before he came?”
I swallow once, twice, trying to force my agony back down again, but it’s awake now, and it’s demanding I crumble.
Hands over my face, back against a tree, I manage to shake my head. “No. I thought—I thought he’d just come home. I missed him. I didn’t know what he’d become. But I should have known. I should have stopped it—”
It takes me a full breath to realize Otto’s holding me now.
I feel the warmth of his body. The rush and grind of his exhale. The solidness of those arms, wrapped around me, pressing me into him, and it makes my whole body jerk to a pause.
“It’s not your fault, Fritzi,” he tells me again, more certain now. “His actions are not on you. It is not your fault.”
He just says that. Over and over. And I’m crying again, sobbing into the cave of his arms, letting him hold me in this frigid forest, on the run for our lives, as if we have time to indulge in my grief right now. But he strokes my hair and murmurs reassurances—It’s not your fault; your family would forgive you; you’re safe now, Fritzi—and I have to believe I’m dreaming.
When I find my breath, tears ebbing just enough, that’s what I say. Or demand, my tone low and surprisingly angry. “How are you real?”
Otto stills, hand in my hair. I push back to look up at him, knowing I’m well beyond a mess now, but he smiles at me, a confused tilt.
“You’re all contradictions,” I say, hands fisted in his shirt. “You were, until recently, an honorable hexenjäger. And now you’re a man who’s comforting a woman he should be furious with, at the very least, if not disgusted by—”
He shakes his head, hands on my elbows. “Why on earth would I be furious or disgusted by you?”
“Because of what I’ve done! To my coven. To you. To your sister. All the trouble I’ve made for you—”
“And I’ve made no trouble for you? Arresting you. Throwing you into my house fort without explanation. Dragging you into my escape plan. Arresting you again.”
