So maybe itistime for a change.
Maybe, against all odds, even the ones I put against myself, I’m meant to bring it about.
Brigitta claps. “There you are!”
The fire heaves just as Brigitta rocks back onto her heels, and it isn’t Liesel’s face that appears, but Hilde, facing away from us, toward Brigitta.
“Brigitta!” Hilde says. “We’ve had no news since—”
A tussle, then Liesel’s face takes over, and Hilde lets out a sharp chirp.
“You couldask, little one!” Hilde says, her voice farther away.
“It’smyspell—you said hello to her, swoon swoon, now updates, please. Everything’s fine here. Where’s Fritzi? Otto?”
The fire shifts, then Liesel’s face turns to me.
She beams.
Until her eyes drop to my chest, and I can’t cover the bandage quickly enough.
But I realize—Ishouldn’tcover it. Even if I could. Liesel is young, yes; we want to keep her safe, of course; but we are long past the time when being kept safe meant lying or withholding information. From her or each other.
“What happened?” Liesel demands.
I look at Brigitta. Otto, standing off to the side. Alois, awake now, and Cornelia, leaning close to me.
My arms start shaking, and I feel that manic force want to bubble up again, but is it a sob, is it a laugh? Whatever it is, it is an unraveling, and it chokes me.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want torememberwhat I did to myself, to Otto, that Dieter was inside of my headagain.
But I think of the way Liesel told the council what had happened to us, how she reframed our trauma into an epic tale of bravery and poetic words.
If she can speak, so can I.
“Let Hilde listen in, Liesel,” I tell her, eyes tearing. “Something’s happened. A few things, actually.”
23
Otto
We travel fast, pushing the horses hard. Glauberg put us east of the Roman Limes, and we have to travel south to get back to the Black Forest and the Well. We cross the Main River outside of Frankfurt and the Neckar River at Heidelberg, keeping the Rhine to our right as we race our horses through the narrow stretches of land between the mountains and the rivers, avoiding settlements when we can.
I keep my horse a pace behind Fritzi’s, my eyes on her body, tracking the way she sways on her mount, watching for any sign of her slipping. I call for a halt before anyone else notices the grip on Fritzi’s reins loosening; I demand rest before she needs to ask for it, and when Brigitta urges us to drive through, I glare her into silence. It is urgent we get to the Well’s protection, vital even, but I will not have Fritzi die of exhaustion to get there.
She knows, or at least can guess, my motivations when we pause a third time. The spires of the Spayer cathedral are just visible across the river, and we’re not far from Baden-Baden.
“We can keep going,” Fritzi insists.
“No, our horses need—”
“I can keep going,” she adds quietly. My brow furrows, but I know better than to argue with her. I raise my arm, signaling to the others that we can continue. It’s a mark of how worried we all are that no one, not even Alois, makes a comment as we get back up on our horses.
We don’t stop until Baden-Baden. Brigitta, in front, slows us as we skirt the main town. A rider bursts out from one of the hills. I recognize her—a member of the Watch, one Brigitta must have instructed to patrol between the town and the Forest’s borders, extending the duties of the guards outside the magical barriers that protect the Well.
“Any activity?” Brigitta demands.
The woman—her name is Lina, I recall—shakes her head. “There was the market in town, of course,” she says. “Some merchants came from the north, but they moved on after market day.”
