We told Brigitta we’d be back by nightfall. This was meant to be a scouting mission only, to reconvene and plan for how to take him out together.
My chest tightens. “Can we even access enough explosives in time, or—”
A scream rips through the tunnels. A bright, terrified cry, and I drop in half, hands over my ears, body tensing, ready to flee, ready to fight.
But Otto and Johann only dive toward me, Johann with one hand out like I might fall over, Otto seizing my arms.
“Fritzi?” Otto demands “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t hear—” But a warbling cry thuds across my mind again.
Friederike!Holda shouts.He’s found it; he’s found the stone—
Her voice devolves into shattering wails, so beset with terror and grief andguiltthat I stumble again, nearly going to my knees.
“He’s—he’s found it, he’s—” I can only mumble, consumed by Holda’s increasing panic, and then I’m scrambling forward, tearing through the thin stone barrier Johann set up to hide his tunnel. The stones clatter all around, but I don’t care about the noise, desperation funneling into every limb as I start sprinting blindly through the tunnels.
“Fritzi!” Otto tears after me, and I think Johann does, too, but I’m beyond myself, no thought, only drive.
I see the turns laid out, side routes to take as Holda unfurls the path to me. I don’t know if she’s meant to; I don’t know if this strains the limits of what she can do, but she is panicked, and so I go. Candlelight barelyilluminates me from where Otto and Johann bring their flames, but I don’t trip, racing into narrowing darkness like I know this path. Another turn, the tunnel slopes downward, going and going, down and down—
The tunnel widens. Opens into a massive circular chamber with stone columns holding the ceiling high above us. The space is lit by torches set into the walls, the floor is covered in an inch of water that makes the space smell of mildew and rot.
And in that space are a dozen hexenjägers and my brother.
Otto and Johann patter to a stop behind me at the very edge where the hall opens into the room. Otto curses. Johann is silent, his anxiety a tremble in the air.
The jägers have their backs to us, which is the only thing that saves us for the moment; they’re all transfixed on Dieter.
He stands at the far end of the chamber, half inside a massive hole that has been gouged into the wall. Within that hole, I can barely make out a stone table holding up a golden box. Even from this distance, I can see it’s encrusted with gems, untouched by dust or grime despite being hidden away. It gleams in the torchlight, sapphires and rubies.
“A reliquary?” Otto whispers, seemingly unaware he’s even spoken.
I want to ask him what he means—a reliquary? But I have seen items such as this in cathedrals and churches, one of the many types of treasures Catholics display on their altars.
This Catholic relic cannot be Holda’s stone…can it?
Dieter throws back the golden lid and peers inside. He looks so like a character from one of Liesel’s stories, uncovering a great treasure, that I’m hit with a pang of wanting to tell her, of wanting this to be a simple story—just a villain finding buried gems, easily defeated.
Then Dieter smiles. Even in the low light, I watch his lips curve as he reaches into the box.
And comes up with a stone the size of his fist, cradled in his palm.
“I’m glad you could make it, Fritzichen,” he says to the stone.
He turns and throws his smile at me across the room.
That yanks the attention of the hexenjägers, who whirl, some dropping construction tools to reach for weapons.
“Ah-ah,” Dieter says, staying them. “That is no way to treat my guest.”
Another lurch. He’s using my magic to control them. A dozen armed soldiers, all held by my brother’s control.
Disgust tinges my throat, rises up across my tongue like bile.
I cut Dieter off from overtaking me. There has to be a way to block him from my magic completely—how? How do I break the bond he made?
His face drops into a scowl. “Though you should not have broughtcompany, Fritzichen.”
