“You don’t have to show me now,” I say quickly. We haven’t even slept since escaping the barrow; I shouldn’t have brought it up. I asked too much of her then, and I’m asking too much now, and—
She slips her cool fingers through mine and waits for me to meet her eyes before she smiles. “I have enough for this. They call the coven in the Black Forest the Well, but there is a well inside of me, one that is tapped into magic. It refills slower than I’d like, but it does refill.”
A well. I feel as if I have one, too, one that I never realized was empty until it was filled with her magic.
Before, during the battle with the soldiers, I reached out for Fritzi’s magic subconsciously, and she offered it to me. Now, I close my eyes, and I can feel, somehow, the gentle tapping ofsomethinginside of me.
It has the same rhythm as my heartbeat.
Rather than grabbing for it, I just…open the door.
Warmth blooms in my chest. I focus on the feeling of it. On cold mornings in Trier, when I worked undercover, I would sometimes gulp strong whiskey for warmth, the burn forcing my body awake. This is like that, but without the sour acid in my throat, without the fire in my lungs. It’s all power, all warmth, and no burn.
“You feel it?” she asks softly.
I nod, my eyes still closed.
I breathe in, and when I breathe out, the magic seeps into all of my body, just for a moment, every nerve tingling.
When I open my eyes, the tree above me is heavy with shining red apples.
Interlude
Dieter
I have been waiting so patiently.
Watching only.
See, sister, I can play itsafetoo.
The charm she has now obscures what I could once see so easily. Rude. My sister and I are bonded. She should never hide from me. But no matter what I have done lately, I cannot pinpoint her exact location. I cannot grasp her magic fully. It flutters from my hands like a little bird before I have a chance to pop its head off.
Glimmers. I have seen only flashes of her magic, like lightning in a storm.
That light has been fading.
Her well of magic is so very low right now.
She emptied herself for him.
She emptied herself forme.
22
Fritzi
Otto and I both stare up at the fruit he grew. And there is no explaining it away as any other cause, not in early spring like this, not when the tree was bare only moments ago.
“I, um—” I blink, swallow, and manage to drag my eyes to Otto’s.
His face is split in a wide smile. “Do I have easier access to plants because of you? Your affinity transfers over into me?”
My lips part. He waits, patient, expecting answers.
“Otto,” I say, voice cracking. “I have no idea how any of this works. I don’t know how you did—” I jut my chin at the tree. “I barely know howIuse wild magic, let alone the rules of what is easier for me or you, and how affinity affects it, and—”
“All right.” Otto squeezes my hand, his wonder leveling to that steady, resilient surety. Even when I’m floundering and panicked, he believes I’ll find the way. How does he trust me so inherently? How can he follow me so unflinchingly when I’m sitting here, admitting to having no answers, to just making this up as I go?
