That was something I knew from an early age, because love can always be lost. It can be twisted, bent until it’s broken. It can sour, or poison, or kill.
There is fear in love, because love is so deeply powerful, and anything powerful can hurt. It’s like a flame, casting light even as it burns.
And our love is worth burning for.
She looks up at me through her lashes, and I know she can feel what I feel, understand me even without words. And it’s not because of magic.
Only love.
I lower my lips to hers. We have kissed with passion, with urgency. On the night before we bonded, when Fritzi made the meadow burst in blooms, there was a frantic nature to our mutual claiming, a desire to drown out all the noise and exist only within each other. But now, even though the world is chaos and turmoil, even though we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or the next day, or the next, even though nothing is settled—
I take my time.
I savor the taste of her. The softness. I draw the gasps from her lips, and I make her eyes widen with desire, and I relish in the warmth of her wrapped around me.
Even when she begs, her body and her lips both calling for release, I take my time. My eyes don’t leave hers, and when she falls, shattering, I am there to cradle her in my arms and make her whole again.
We avoided the city of Frankfurt as we traveled, but there’s no denying that the deeper we go into the state of Hesse, the fewer people we see. We near the ancient Roman fortification limes and skirt the town of Altenstadt. Literally named “old city,” this area was built upon Roman ruins.
On the other side there’s…nothing. Open fields—some plowed, some fallow—give way to groves of trees, the forests thickening as we venture farther past the limes. These verdant lands are bursting with the promise of spring, the trees young and nothing at all like the ancient wonders of the Black Forest so many days away to the south.
“The Roman campaigns against the Germanic tribes happened in the decade or so before and after Christ’s birth,” I tell Fritzi as our horses weave through the trees. “This was the dawn of Christianity, really, but also the dawn of Germany as a nation. The two are linked.”
“Mmhm,” she mumbles, only half paying attention.
“It was all strategy. The Romans wanted to hold Gaul—which is basically France, now—but the Germanic tribes were pressing in from the east, helping Gallic tribes. But the thing about the Romans is, they didn’t just try to conquer. They tried to convert.”
“Sounds familiar,” Fritzi mutters, and I give her a little nod of acknowledgment. The way the Romans worked was insidious and ingenious. Converting former tribe members to Roman citizenship and giving them a stake in the Empire meant that the conquered had a reason to not rebel and establish a new status quo.
“But they couldn’t get much past the Rhine,” I continue. “Romans didn’t expect the Germanic tribes to team up. They’d been used to dividing and conquering, but they couldn’t divide the Germanic tribes. So they set up forts and towns and invented a border so they could pretend they weren’t defeated. Just consider for a moment the Battle of Teutoburg Forest!” I laugh, despite myself. “It took the Romans more than a hundred years before they dared try to attack again after that battle!”
I glance up and meet Fritzi’s eyes. I can tell she has no idea what battle I’m speaking of and could care less what I’m saying, but it’s still sweet to see her endearing smile as I ramble.
“My point is, it’s not just that the Romans stopped invading the Celtic lands here,” I say, waving my hand toward this new forest. “It’s as if all of civilization vanished.”
She frowns, thinking, her brow furrowing in little lines under theshadow of her hood. “If the ancient tribes couldn’t hold the land, perhaps Perchta is ensuring that no one does.”
Wind whistles through the trees, early daffodils poking up through the undergrowth, but little else. Brigitta calls us to a halt when we crest a small hill, the trees clearing out to more open land. She points silently as I draw my horse up to hers.
Scattered at the base of another hill are the remains of houses and other small buildings. Crumbling stone foundations support a few rotting timbers, and there’s clearly a worn path connecting the homes in the small village to one another, but it’s been abandoned for at least a century, I suspect.
“Looks like someone tried to live here,” Fritzi says, her voice hushed.
“What happened to them?”
Cornelia, on the other side of Brigitta, shrugs. “Could have been a plague. Could have just been a small village that died out. It happens.”
“Could have been the goddess,” Brigitta growls.
“Or ghosts,” Alois chimes in cheerily.
Cornelia rolls her eyes. “It’s not ghosts.”
“You don’t know that. Itcouldbe.” Alois tilts his chin defiantly.
I glance at Fritzi, who shares my concerned look. There’s a feeling to this area that reminds me of the first time we entered the Black Forest together. The goddesses tested us then, ultimately granting us entry to their domain.
This land feels the same. A goddess’s chosen land, one we are not yet proven worthy to enter.
