“I know. I wasn’t going to touch it.” I glance back to the bedroom, wanting to get my cloak and run, even if it is in the dark. Although if we do… she may be waiting for us there. I don't know what’s best. I don’t know what to do.
“You don’t have to do anything, Gretel. I’ll take care of it,” he says as if reading my mind.
“What do you mean? What are?—”
Hansel’s eyes harden. “I’m going to finish this place once and for all.”
Hansel
I’m done with this cottage and the fear it evokes. We burned the witch but this cottage… this cottage is cursed.
I take her face in both my hands and run my thumbs over her cheeks. Her lips. She stares up at me, her brow furrowed.
“Finish it?” she asks. “Hansel, what does that mean?”
“It means—this is over. This place won’t exist. You can forget all about what happened. You can move on, and so can I, because this cottage won’t be sitting here, haunting us.”
“But—”
I cut her off with a kiss. Feeling a sense of purpose. This cottage will be nothing but ash.
The only thing I’ve ever been more sure of than my new quest is Gretel. Something changed in me when I laid eyes on her for the first time. Now I know what that was.
Gretel hesitates for a second, like she might argue with me about what I said, but then she melts into the kiss, parting her lips to let me in.
We fit together. That’s the only way I can explain it. There’s no awkwardness when I kiss her. There’s no fumbling around, wondering what to do. I slide my hands down to her waist, holding the blanket close around her gorgeous body, and pull her close.
She’s warm against me. The blanket brushes against my waist, and her breasts brush against my skin, and God—if I didn’t have to finish this, I’d take her straight back to bed. If I didn’t have family waiting for me in the village, I might never get out again.
Maybe someday, I’ll have a bed of my own to give her. A house. A ring and life she deserves. Something other than all my bitterness and the old wounds from the witch.
Someday, when this cottage isn’t here anymore. When it’s scattered in the wind.
I break the kiss and pull her close, just holding her. I hate letting go so much I almost can’t do it.
But then Gretel moves against me, taking a nervous little breath, and this can’t wait. I should have done this the first time I came back here. I’d spent so many nights awake and sweating in my bed, wondering if the witch was really dead, and finally I came to find out.
Maybe she was waiting for the two of us. Maybe she really did lure Gretel here.
I press a kiss to Gretel’s forehead, then let go. It’s time to end this.
In here makes it feel like the chains might still be touching me. Those damned things are nowhere to be seen, so I can’t drag them outside and melt them down.
But the rest?
The rest of this cottage is weak. It’s just wood. It’s made of things that can be destroyed if a man puts his mind to it, and I’m putting my mind to it.
I let myself loose.
I start by the sink in the kitchen, tearing dried herbs off the walls along with the boards the hooks were nailed into. I rip off a set of indoor shutters, then make a loop around the cottage, pulling off the rest. Shutters on the inside and the outside. The witch wanted to be able to hide. She never wanted anyone to find out what kind of things she did in here.
It’s too bad for her that I found out. It’s even worse that Gretel and I survived, because now I’m going to wipe this place out of existence.
Gretel watches me intently, staying close as I tip the wood into the fire. It leaps up around the boards like it’s delighted to have something to blaze through.
I break down the chairs at the kitchen table. They go into the fire as well. The oven is roaring now, pouring heat into the house, but I don’t want to feed that thing. The bedroom grate is better.
“This is what you should have burned,” I say to the flames, though I know it wasn’t this fucking fire that wiped out the crops and sent people to early graves from starvation. “This hellhole.” She joins me in destruction, grabbing everything she can. The pillows and cushions. The drapes and the rugs.
