I stop Liesel and cup her face in my palms. “You were brilliant.”
She beams. “Really?”
“I was riveted, and I lived through everything you said. Although”—I smile—“I don’t remember some of those details.”
She shrugs happily. “The stories they tell in Baden-Baden always have things like that—daring rescues. Big heavy words. I may have added a few things.”
She’s been listening to storytellers down in the village. She goes with Brigitta and her contingent of guards, along with a dozen or so other Well children, the barest beginnings of friendship between the hidden witches of the Black Forest and the mortals who have lived unknowingly as their neighbors all these years.
It’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Yet another reason why Rochus and Philomena distrust me and what I represent.
And they have no idea about the truth of wild magic.
“Now,” I say to Liesel. “I believe you’ve missed almost a morning’s worth of lessons?”
Her face puckers. “I don’tneedlessons. Abnoba teaches me.”
And as comforting as it is to rely on whatever the Crone might be teaching her chosen champion, my very young cousin…
“Humor me, will you?” I tap her nose. “You are making friends with the other students, at least, aren’t you?”
That earns me a reluctant sigh. “Some of them are all right.”
“I’m glad; that’s—”
“None of them are as good at fire as I am.”
“Well. For all our sakes, I should hope not.”
She glares at me. Then smiles.
Her arms clamp around my waist in a throttling hug before she tears off across the treetop bridges, blond braids swinging behind her.
“In truth,” Cornelia whispers as Liesel scampers off, “I think the instructors of our little school here are all too relieved when Liesel iscalled away. Did you hear she threatened to burn one of theminside out? What does that even mean?”
“I could almost understand such a threat—hedidtry to get her to do arithmetic.”
Cornelia’s flat look in response has me backtracking.
I sigh. “We worked through it. She didnotactually burn him, which I have learned to take as a win.”
Cornelia laughs and loops her arm with mine. “Come on, then. The ceremony will begin two mornings from now, but the purification will start tomorrow at dawn, and we have much to still plan for it.”
I roll my eyes, but let her drag me down a staircase. “How have we not planned everything already? Though I do appreciate you giving us an excuse to leave the meeting early—”
“That was not an excuse,” she tuts, flipping her red hair over one shoulder. “We still have hours of work ahead of us.AndI hear your potion should be almost completed, yes?”
The bonding potion. I’ve been brewing it for the past three days—with, surprisingly, Hilde’s help. Otto’s sister lives in a little cottage at the base of the haven’s trees, the perfect sequestered space in which tothink, to brew and measure and create. And Hilde has added some helpful suggestions about beer brewing I’ve incorporated, ways to heat and add ingredients that complement the bonding potion’s particularities. Because this potion, if brewed wrong, will strip me of magic and kill Otto.
But do I even need a potion like this anymore? Couldn’t I just focus wild magic on Otto, on connecting him to me, and forgo any of this dangerous game?
Yes, Holda says. Immediate and sure.
I do not think now is the time to bring up wild magic’s potency to the council, I say back, even though I’d been toying with that very idea.
It will never be a good time, says Holda.
I grimace. What would Rochus and Philomena say if I refused the potion and performed the bonding with Otto on my own, with just wild magic? I’m still so new with it. So untested. Isnowthe time and way to both try my abilities and make the announcement to the whole of the Well that they have been lied to about magic’s true power?
