The statue holds out the stone. Otto looks at me and waits for my move, the grating of our breaths echoing in the suddenly silent tomb. I can hear Cornelia and Alois talking softly, fussing over a wound she got, and hearing both of their gentle murmurs sets me at ease from worrying about their fates.
My focus goes to the statue. The now motionless statue, still holding that stone out, an offering.
“It was too easy,” I whisper.
Otto huffs. I can feel the depletion of my magic now slowly starting to refill, an empty bucket being brought back to full with a steadydrip-drip-dripof wild magic funneling in. The magic that Otto drew on to fight the statues. I’m glad he had it to call on; I don’t regret the terrifyingly low level I can feel my own internal source at now. Other than that, though, we’re all still standing. We’re all relatively unharmed.
I grab the stone from the statue’s palm.
The moment my skin touches it, I blink, and the tomb changes.
Otto vanishes. The murmuring of Alois and Cornelia deadens. The statue in front of me warps, ripples, and in a burst of foggy white light, it’s gone.
In its place is a woman with a hefty braid of brown and gray hair that hangs to the floor, various plants interwoven through her plait—yellow agrimony, spiked blessed thistle, fluffy green nettle, all plants for protection and consecration. Her gown is a long, swooping flow of midnight blue, the collar and sleeves set with ivory patterns of stitched animals. She has the same impeccable posture I remember from before, queenly and controlling, the same withering look in her pale blue eyes.
“Hello, Perchta,” I say, my voice a croaked whisper.
She still has the stone in her grip. I have my own hand over the top of it, but she doesn’t release it into my care.
I risk a glance around. The tomb is transformed. It’s just the two of us, the corpse, and the one intact statue back in its alcove. The tables set with finery and food are unmarred and righted, like the feast has only just been laid out, the gifts only recently displayed. A steady white light fills the room now, not the flicker of torches or even the pulse of the sun, but something consuming and resonant and otherworldly.
Perchta narrows her eyes at me. “You should not have come, Friederike Kirch. This stone is not yours to use.”
“I don’t want to use it,” I say. “I want to keep it safe from—”
“Liar.” She cuts me off with a shout that echoes off the walls. “I see your heart,champion—you would use this stone. You would use them all. You would break the Origin Tree, and you woulddoom us.”
My instinct is to lurch back, away from her anger, but the moment I try, I can feel my skin tug—it’s stuck to the stone, trapping me in frontof her. She gives a cruel glare that tells me she will only release me whensheis ready.
So I harden my shoulders and will myself to meet her gaze.
“I do not want to break the Origin Tree,” I try, but I hear the flimsiness in it. “I don’t want whatever cataclysm would come from breaking the Origin Tree,” I try again, and that at least is true.
Perchta scoffs. “But you would, if given the chance, utterly decimate our ways. You would make it so no witch was bound to the Tree. You think I cannot smell the wild magic on you? That I cannot hear the deadly wishes you make in the dark? You would undo our entire world.”
My chest kicks. In fear, yes; each word from her swells her presence until I forget that there was ever anyone else in this chamber but us. She is a goddess, and Holda cannot reach me in this tomb Perchta created to keep the stone safe, and I am so very, very mortal.
But I’m also breathless in grief.
“I don’t want to undo our world,” I say, pleading. “It isourworld, mine too. I don’t want to destroy anything!”
“You bastardize our ways at every turn!” Perchta shouts. “You—”
“I am not trying to bastardize anything!” Her voice is resonant, so I shout too, desperation finally snapping in me. “I never wanted any of this! I never wanted to be a goddess’s champion, I never wanted to get thrown into the middle of your war,I never wanted to be here!”
“And yet you are, and you have—”
“Yes. I am.” My jaw is tense, muscles winding so tight they vibrate. “I am here. I am here, and I have seen what Holda wants, whatyouand Abnoba want, and I’m not sure any of it is right. I don’t want to break our world. But I cannot let the rest of the world continue to suffer when we have the power to help.Thatis what I want. Not to break the Tree. Not to decimate our ways. But togrow. To—”
“How is that not shirking our teachings, our way of life? See the way you came into this tomb, the way you fought off my soldiers. This was a test, a test of worthiness for any who would seek the stone, and youfailed. You have abandoned all your teachings, your spells, and the methods imparted to you on how to access magic properly. You used the bond made between you and your warrior, but even that you have bastardized with wild magic! You have given yourself over to the vilest force we know, and you use it to corrupt the most sacred union between a witch and a warrior, so even the magic your bonded draws on is tainted.”
“We aren’t—”
“Had you wanted topassmy test,” Perchta barrels on, color rising in her pale cheeks, “you would have seen that this room holds everything a witch might need to cast the spells to unlock the stone from the statue. The table has herbs for one such as you, Friederike. It has supplies—supplies the priestess, Cornelia, used, when you did not. The way she fought with that soldier, Alois—they were far more in tune with the intentions of a bonded pair than the way you let your warrior nearly drain your magic dry. Did you even try to workwithyour warrior? Did you even try to make a potion? No. You are a danger to us. You and your warrior.”
I yank on my hand again, but it holds fast to the stone in Perchta’s grip, and I gape up at her with wide, panicked eyes as she towers over me.
“Otto and I have no one to train us,” I fumble, my voice losing its bite. “There’s no one to—”
